HVB Info Munich Support of a Network Upgrade, Munich, July 2002

Our customer
The HypoVereinsbank is one of the largest private banks of Germany. With its many associated companies, HypoVereinsbank is a market leader in the region of Germany, Austria and Central- and Eastern Europe.

Project aims
The project aim was to support HVB Info in preparing a network software upgrade. The ATM backbone devices of the network would then be upgraded to a new software version. This backbone would connect the different locations of the HypoVereinsbank.

EANTC supported this process by running regular performance tests to ensure that through the new software version, the performance benchmarks would match the expected figures and that the new software would not lead to any network failures.
The benefits of using EANTC

With specific load simulations for analysing long term robustness, EANTC was able to considerably reduce the total test duration. Our one day test was able to simulate the load characteristics of a three month period.

Scalability tests proved the extensiveness of the network according to the requirements of HVB Info.

With the help of the test support, a detailed performance analysis of the new software version was possible before the actual date of the software upgrade itself. This enabled us to identify and evaluate potential failure scenarios without the interference of a live network.

The project schedule and resource plan for running the network upgrade was optimised by HVB Info based on these test results - as such, resources were able to be moved to support other projects.

The EANTC test scenarios
EANTC, together with the customer and the manufacturer (Cisco Systems), conducted the following extensive on site tests:

• ATM signalling tests
• LAN Emulation signalling tests
• LAN Emulation performance tests

With this emulation of different load situations prior to the upgrade, we were able to eliminate the following potential risks including:

• whether the signalling implementation displays required long term robustness,
• whether active signalling and a large number of active connections will lead to potential failures in the upgraded network,
• whether the network performance is stable, even when experiencing high load
• if a signalling burst after a component failure, this will show potential problems.