Testing Utilities

On SmartClass Teacher LIVE, there are two test tools: One, the Test Station, and two, the Test Network.

gerry avatar finalBy Gerry Sullivan

Date of Creation: 2019-11-23

Last Update: 2023-02-21

Test Station

 

Highlight a station in the table, and then click on the Test Station button to view the screen of that station on the teacher’s primary monitor.

Test Network

 

Clicking on the Test Network button launches the Network Performance Testing panel, shown below:

 

 

This utility is extremely useful for benchmarking the performance of a WiFi network to better match user expectations with SmartClass capabilities. To use this utility, at least some of the student stations must be connected.

 


The upper right portion of this panel is used to structure the type of test to be done. In the above example, the activity is set to Audio Pairing, and the number of student stations to be simulated is set to 20.

 

From these parameters, SmartClass calculates the total load to be applied to the network. The formula used is:


Data = # of stations (e.g. 20) x Activity bandwidth (e.g. 400 Kbps) = 8000 Kbps


To provision some allowance for overhead, a buffer of 20% is added to this total:


Transfer Data Target = data (e.g. 8000 Kbps) x 1.2 = 9600 Kbps


This transfer is shared evenly over the number of active stations:


Total Data Transfer = Transfer Data Target / # of stations (e.g. 2) = 4800 Kbps

 

Note: that in the example shown, the actual data transfer (Yellow) is approximately equal to the target data transfer (Red), so the network should support this pairing operation with 20 students.

 

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