Shunra’s Virtual Enterprise (VE) Suite helps you predict how voice, video and data services will perform over various satellite networks. The VE Suite enables satellite network testing by creating a virtual satellite network in a lab environment under conditions such as very high delay, high throughput, packet loss, mobility-related variability and signal loss. You can re-test applications after you modify them to see if those modifications improve performance. You can also create worst-case scenarios – such as the loss of line-of-sight due to end-user mobility and/or heavy channel congestion and noise – to see how applications will perform under these challenging conditions.

Shunra’s VE Suite enables you to avoid, among others, the following pitfalls of testing applications and services over live satellite networks:

• Testing on the production satellite environment is risky and can compromise the performance of live applications already running.
• The production environment is not accessible for extended tests like overnight tests or long stress tests.
• The testing schedule is limited to off-hours and weekends, resulting in overtime costs and resulting in a failure to test the application under realistic business-hour conditions – thereby producing inaccurate results.
• Security may be breached by exposing the application to the production environment before it is fully production-ready.
• The production environment is not repeatable. Even if the tester finds a problem in the application, it is hard to reproduce the application's "break-points."

Numerous organizations implement their critical business applications over satellite networks. These satellite networks are used to support everything from retail locations and remote offices to TV news vans and mobile combat systems. They are often characterized by high latency (because of the extreme physical distance between the satellite and the ground) and dropped packets, which can dramatically impact application performance and functionality. Network bandwidth and QoS may also vary greatly between places where the signal is strong and places where the signal is weak or the channel is congested – a factor that can be especially problematic for mobile users who experience different conditions as they move across coverage areas.

WAN emulation technology is absolutely essential to validate and analyze the viability of applications under specific satellite network infrastructure conditions before production roll-outs – or before the satellite is launched. Learn more about Satellite Network Simulation