To face today’s extremely complex networks, like IoT and 5G, network virtualization, a multitude of devices, protocols, and new and legacy services, all running in parallel, Mobileum developed the Automation Framework, a tool to reduce the challenges with network design, technology integration, deployment, operation, and maintenance, thus minimizing the risks of network or service failure. AF enables lab and production teams to automate manual testing and monitoring processes at all stages of the network lifecycle, from design to deployment and operations. It includes the capability to run variants of existing test cases (5G, IoT, voice, data, messaging, etc.), and allows power users to define new test cases or scenarios by simply using keyword-driven scripting on top of a group of testing building blocks.

AF augments end-to-end active test data with input from third-party tools to quickly troubleshoot multi-vendor networks and complex service issues, thus guaranteeing service performance and availability.

Boost Your Continuous Testing with CI/CD/CT

Mobileum’s Automation Framework can work standalone or be easily integrated into larger automation processes such as CI/CD/CT pipelines, where the addition of a continuous testing component is vital. To provide even more flexibility, our AF works in tandem with the proven Mobileum's SITE testing scenarios using RESTful APIs that allow users to automate the system and extract data generated from periodic tests and automation tasks. With the SITE RESTFul API and the Application Framework, users can:

❖  Automate tasks from third-party systems based on user input or automated process, e.g. after a software upgrade
❖  Pull data and result files from the SITE system
❖  Integrate the SITE platform into their operational process, e.g. create chat-bots, build web-applications for performance monitoring, etc.

Orchestrate and Execute Even the Most Complex Test Scenarios

Manual processes can no longer address increasingly more complex products and networks. With virtualization, different building blocks from different vendors can be combined and software upgrades and roll-outs are delivered at a faster pace to constantly deploy new services. AF supports automated end-to-end testing strategies, allowing production or lab automation-testing tasks, such as:

❖  Automate manual processes, e.g. health or status check process, Method of Procedure (MOP)
❖  Run active testing, periodic or ad-hoc
❖  Trigger service acceptance test procedures
❖  Design and execute user acceptance testing
❖  Integrate and share data between 3rd party systems via RESTful APIs

How does Automation Framework Work?

With Mobileum's AF, engineers can automate a wide range of operational, testing, and troubleshooting tasks.

Mobileum's Automation Framework provides among other features:

❖  Keyword-driven test implementation with proprietary and open-source libraries
❖  RESTful API Integration with 3rd Party Tools
❖  Web Application automation with Selenium
❖  Leverage SITE's end-to-end active testing capabilities (5G performance testing, IoT testing, etc.)

Keyword-driven Scripting for Flexible Automated Testing

Mobileum’s Automation Framework provides a wide range of low-level building blocks to create various automation tasks using simple, keyword-driven scripting, thus achieving more concise, maintainable, and flexible testing.

Leveraging more than 30 years of SITE expertise, AF offers a library of keywords associated with actions or functions, which can be used and reused to build a wide range of test scenarios. AF also accepts keywords from well-known open-source libraries provided by Robot Framework. Own libraries can be created. Existing test cases can be simply parametrized and run ad-hoc or periodically depending on the use case.

The key advantages of the SITE Automation Framework are:

❖  Create their own, keyword-driven automation test tasks
❖  Define expected output values and map verdicts to outputs
❖  Customize reports and KPIs 
❖  Access a wide range of libraries to build automation tasks
❖  A state-of-the-art web interface to parametrize and schedule already defined automation test cases
❖  Integrate the automation tasks with third-party systems using SITEs RESTFul API

Simple and Collaborative Automated Testing with Third-party Tools

To successfully deploy and run today’s networks, operators need to rely on an ecosystem of technologies, often using multi-vendor implementations and multiple testing tools incapable of aggregating results into one single version on performance. This scenario creates an operational overhead as engineers interact with disparate tools individually for performance analysis, troubleshooting, or any other monitoring task.

SITE's Automation Framework enables users to integrate third-party tools, systems, and platforms into their automation process, simply using RESTful APIs calls and SITE's RESTful APIs as part of the automation task.

Key advantages of AF's collaborative automated testing:

❖  Easily integrate RESTful API calls in the automation tasks, e.g. augment E2E test data with passive traces
❖  Provide system abstraction with its own SITE RESTful API towards the third-party platform, e.g. chatbot integration
❖  Reduce troubleshooting times by providing more data to engineers

Automated PCAP File Analysis with RoboShark

Mobileum's RoboShark fully automates PCAP analysis in SITE and SiC deployments, by eliminating complex, time-consuming, repetitive, and error-prone manual drill-down analysis,  thus decreasing OPEX. It automatically searches for test cases with PCAP, dissects the PCAP for relevant information, generates KPIs, and triggers alarms. How:

❖  Write your Wireshark analysis into an automation script (once)
❖  Define matching filter for tests (once)
❖  Enable RoboShark (once) 

RoboShark will then automatically and periodically:

❖  Search for all new matching tests with PCAP
❖  Apply filters
❖  Analyze the PCAP files from tests
❖  Compare values
❖  Generate KPIs
❖  Allow for reporting of aggregated results or trigger alarms 

Leverage Mobileum's SITE end-to-end Active Testing Capabilities

Mobileum's SITE is an all-in-one testing and monitoring solution, covering all services and technologies from a single platform. Our new Automation Framework includes the capability to create and deploy variants of existing SITE test cases, such as:

❖  5G performance testing
❖  IoT and eSIM Testing
❖  Voice, data and messaging testing
❖  IMS service testing
❖  Emergency services testing 

Mobileum's SITE generates real-time traffic into the network to emulate the real subscriber behavior. Probes are connected to our analytics platform and placed strategically throughout the network to provide geographical coverage, fault localization, and alarms.

6 Key Benefits of Mobileum’s Automation Framework solution