Spirent Delivers 802.11ac Wave 2 WLAN Testing Capability on Spirent TestCenter

San Jose, Calif. – February 9, 2017 – Spirent Communications Plc (LSE:SPT), an industry leader in test and measurement, today announced the availability of the Spirent TestCenter® WLAN 802.11ac Wave 2 test module. Combined with Spirent’s world’s first 2.5G/5G BASE-T Ethernet products, it is the highest performing and the most realistic 802.11ac Wave 2 wireless local area network (WLAN) multi-client emulation testing tool available on the market today.

Spirent TestCenter WLAN Wave 2 solutions can be employed for functionality and performance testing of IEEE 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points (APs) and end-to-end testing of WLAN ecosystems that include access controllers and gateways. A single 802.11ac Wave 2 test module, can emulate up to 256 realistic WLAN clients, and it validates a greater than 1Gbps maximum aggregated throughput with both the in-chassis 2.5G/5G Ethernet and Wave 2 WLAN test ports.

This solution has recently assisted Shanghai Telecommunications Technological Co Research Institute (STTRI), a division of China Telecom, to successfully complete the first multi-vendor 802.11ac Wave 2 Public Hotspot AP evaluation in China. The testing was focused on validation of the latest IEEE 802.11ac Wave 2 performance enhancements with multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output (MU-MIMO) technologies for wireless communications. It delivered comprehensive test benchmarking capabilities and results for China Telecom’s STTRI lab to quantify enhanced WLAN performance with the new 802.11ac access points (APs).

“By working closely with Spirent and many leading WLAN Access Point product vendors in the industry, we have successfully completed the first 802.11ac Wave 2 public hotspot Wi-Fi AP test,” says Gao Bo, Senior Staff Engineer of the Shanghai Telecommunications Technological Co Research Institute. “Spirent test solutions are capable of simulating various combinations of endpoints from all of the vendors participating in the test, setting a solid foundation for the advancement and deployment of ongoing operations for 802.11ac Wave 2 APs.”

“As more and more data is accessed via WLAN networking, it has become one of the most viable ways to access today’s internet.  The benchmarking data collected by this important test with Spirent’s 802.11ac Wave 2 testing solutions enabled STTRI to document the technology development trends and increased performance of the latest 802.11ac Wave 2 APs. The results will be instrumental in the future planning, designing, deployment and optimization of 802.11ac Wave 2 APs,” says Spirent’s Tan Hao, General Manager of Greater China and East Asia.

About the Shanghai Telecommunications Technological Co Research Institute, Ltd.

The Shanghai Telecommunications Technological Co Research Institute Corporation Limited is one of the three major research institutes of the China Telecom Corporation for the research and development of operational support and service technologies. It is responsible for WLAN new technology tracking and research, equipment testing and evaluation, and the formulation of corporate standards in the China Telecom Corporation.