Mini Maxwell can now emulate adverse network conditions over an indefinite time period - several minutes or several hours. This is useful for observing the effects of multiple adverse network conditions on your application.

Examples of automated, real-world scenarios include:

(1) slowly increasing the network loss, delay, or jitter and then suddenly dropping it back, pausing and beginning again.

(2) creating a pattern of rising and falling waves of packet loss, delay, jitter, or packet duplication.

(3) imposing and relaxing a sequence of bandwidth limitations.

Using a simple spreadsheet, the user can define a set of impairments (e.g. drops, delays, jitter), along with the duration of the impairments (e.g. 50 ms, 100ms) and Mini Maxwell will perform each impairment for the specified time.

Mini Maxwell Automation works with Mini Maxwell's packet classification system so that the automation can be focused onto as many as five different packet flows in each direction.

The user may optionally run the automation as fast as five times real-time or as slow as 1% of real time.

The user may limit the number of cycles or the overall run time. The user may also stop the automation at any time, and when desired, return Mini Maxwell to its baseline settings.

Because the automation architecture is based on a spreadsheet, it may be saved and reloaded to be used again.

A senior engineer working with a web browser interface can pre-configure Mini Maxwell, save the settings and shut down Mini Maxwell. A junior engineer can use the pre-configured Mini Maxwell in a headless mode by plugging it in and connecting it to the network. The junior engineer can then run the tests or emulation and note the results.

The user can specify a set of filters and impairments and save these settings into persistent memory. When transported to a different network and powered up, Mini Maxwell will automatically activate those settings without any user intervention.

In the testing and debugging process, it is always helpful to see how the application performs in perfect conditions, and then compare that performance to adverse network conditions.

With Mini Maxwell's new Bypass Mode, the user toggles between two modes: a network emulation under adverse network conditions and normal operation (without impairments). This lets the user do easy A-B comparison testing, with and without impairments.

When activated, Bypass Mode disables all impairments permitting a clear channel for network traffic to flow unimpeded. This lets the user do easy A-B comparison testing, with and without impairments.

Watch a video on how to set up and run Mini Maxwell automation.

Mini Maxwell 2 provided:

• Rate limitation on each of 5 user-defined bands of traffic in each direction.
• Longer packet delay (up to 10 seconds).
• Higher maximum packet rate.
• Faster web interface.
• Improved interface for building packet filters. (Revision 7 and later.)
• More accurate timing.
• Larger (1 gigabyte or larger) and faster internal flash memory file system.
• Auto MDI/MDI-X (auto-crossover) ethernet interfaces.
• Faster CPU (500mhz).
• More memory (256Mbytes).
• USB 2.0 ports.

In addition, Mini Maxwell 2 uses a more flexible and higher performance software base designed to support additional future applications and capabilities.