{"id":11460,"date":"2017-07-27T14:30:44","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T09:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cigniti.com\/blog\/?p=11460"},"modified":"2017-07-28T10:47:20","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T05:17:20","slug":"how-network-virtualization-boosts-software-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cigniti.com\/blog\/how-network-virtualization-boosts-software-testing\/","title":{"rendered":"How can Network Virtualization Help Boost Software Testing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Software Testing is evolving each day with new approaches and methodologies. Virtualization is also being adopted for testing applications; especially for testing software over a virtualized network and to highlight real issues in a LIVE environment. Network Virtualization is a methodology that brings together the existing resources on a network by segmenting the existing bandwidth into independent channels with a secure interface. In this way, every subscriber is given a shared access to the resources of a common system.<\/p>\n

Network Virtualization is leveraged to utilize the network speed, ensure reliability, bring flexibility, and make the software testing process scalable and secure. Software Testing teams can benefit from network virtualization as it provides accurate ways to test an application. In a networked environment, the software testing teams can derive actual results with expected instances and congestion issues.<\/p>\n

[Tweet “How you can leverage #NetworkVirtualization for better #softwaretesting results?”]<\/p>\n

In this way, testers are provided with a complete range of testing scenarios that include delays and bad\/good patches of a network. The greatest boon is that the testing happens in a production environment. Additionally, being able to understand the application\u2019s functioning way before it goes live avoids failures in the LIVE environment. There are various commercial network virtualization products in the market, which are licensed as well as open source. They can be chosen as per the objectives of the project. The features of the product must be mapped to the application testing objectives, which could be a multi-tier Web application or a network-dependent application.<\/p>\n

Why consider Network Virtualization for Application Software Testing?<\/h3>\n

Software Testing is responsible for completing and concluding the software development process, which makes it critical. The tester is expected to prepare the test environment and report on the results by leveraging various tools. Considering the significance of software testing, a lot of investments are done in the tools and testing platforms. Setting up an environment implies that costs pertaining to resources and time are involved.<\/p>\n

Network virtualization enables enterprises to leverage virtual test environments and increases flexibility and efficiency of the hardware. Moreover, some of the software products need to get checked under particular conditions such as multiple configurations and network pressures. In such cases, the testing teams can depend on virtual networks to provide the required resources. The network settings can be altered as per the testing requirements.<\/p>\n

Network Virtualization helps you to combine multiple physical networks into a single network or separate single physical networks into multiple analytical networks. This helps to test the applications\/software under various settings and load test it for deriving near-to-real results. The current environment involves various challenges such as fluctuations in bandwidths, changes in the network, and spikes in traffic; network virtualization helps to gauge its impact on the application.<\/p>\n

Key Advantages of Network Virtualization<\/h3>\n

Network virtualization, also referred to as Software Defined Networking (SDN), helps enterprises to program and make the network available on-demand, despite no physical access to the switches or routers. The network is thus available for testing activities whenever required. This brings a lot of advantages to the forefront that enterprises can leverage.<\/p>\n