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F E A T U R E

Enable Your Mobile Apps

February 4, 2002
By Cornell W. Robinson III

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How We Tested Wireless-Enabling Products


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To test mobile-device-management platforms, we had to create a believable network to support the systems. We set up all five packages on a server and gathered a host of different clients, all equipped with 802.11b wireless LAN cards. The clients connected to a Symbol Technologies AP 4121 access point on a subnet from that of the servers. We set up a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server as a router. We then used Shunra's Cloud software to manipulate the connection's bandwidth. Knowing that not all organizations would have wireless LAN cards on their mobile devices, we tested operations at various speeds (11 Mbps, 56 Kbps, and 14.4 Kbps).

Each vendor's server software was installed on a 500-MHz Pentium III Compaq Computer Corp. ProLiant Server with 256 MB of RAM, running Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server with SP 2. The two back-end servers were installed on Dell Computer Corp. OptiPlex 600-MHz Pentium III systems with 256 MB of RAM, also running Windows 2000 Advanced Server with SP 2. Our four client laptops were Dell Latitude 266-MHz Pentium II machines with 64 MB of RAM running Windows 98 or 2000. We also tested on three Handspring Visors, two Casio Cassiopeias and one Palm m505.

We judged the following criteria: features (inventory, configuration management, file/software distribution, backup, scripting, encryption, groupware sync, data sync), ease of use (installation, manual, intuitiveness), configuration and management (customizability, scripting, uninstallation), reliability (checkpoint restart, byte-level differencing, security, server load-balancing), reporting (Crystal Reports, Microsoft Systems Management Server integration, logs) and mobile-device support (laptops, Windows CE, Palm OS, RIM BlackBerry).