Hello All,
I'm currently preparing to compare a number of broadband wireless providers in some meaningful way to make an empirical decision on coverage and performance. We're looking at Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint.
I realize that true coverage and performance testing involves a lot of sophisticated tools and hardware that the carriers use, but that isn't a practical option. We'll be initially subscribing 400 units, so at $59 a pop that's a $285k investment per year - so picking the best carrier in our area is important.
I'm wondering if anyone has ever undertaken such a task, and if so, what software/hardware you used to do it? At a very basic level I considered running three separate laptops in the same vehicle, each pinging the same host, and then analyzing the results of a good, long drive test by looking at latency and packetloss. These seem like the easiest and most practical measurements for sustained testing.
Throughput is, of course, a major issue as well, so I considered stopping in 20 or 30 random locations and doing a throughput test on each.
Ideally I'd love to be able to record signal strength (RSSI) and BER at 1 second intervals on each, but I don't think that's an option.
So, any additional suggestions or pointers toward software/hardware would be greatly appreciated.
--Shawn