Level Four to demonstrate unique ATM stress testing tool at ACE 2004

Network Stress Tester is a new approach to stress testing that simulates high volumes of actual ATM transactions rather than simple message traffic. A number of Level Fours European and Middle East customers are BASE24 users, this includes Lloyds TSB, Nationwide Building Society, LINK Interchange Network, Giro Bankcard, OTP Bank, Den norske Bank and Arab National Bank. Network Stress Tester provides more realistic stress testing that in turn enables better performance and capacity testing of ATM networks. This provides banks with a greater level of confidence when new ATM functionality is deployed. Network Stress Tester, which was announced earlier this year, is currently on trial at a major UK bank, with pilot discussions underway with a number of Level Fours existing customers. Network Stress Tester creates a virtual ATM network based on the actual data from a banks live ATM system. The stress test is a true reflection of the transaction mix for each bank, including cash withdrawal, cash deposit, account balance check, cheque book order, or money transfer. Network Stress Tester incorporates the differences in ATM hardware and software and is able to replicate multi-vendor networks. Variants in the transaction mix can be adjusted to test a network for future changes. For example a bank could change the proportion of EMV transactions used in the stress test, to test the performance of the network at a higher percentage of EMV transactions. Many existing stress testing solutions cannot handle the complexity of EMV transactions, therefore do not provide a true representation of EMV-ready network performance. Level Fours Network Stress Tester enables banks to prepare more fully for the roll-out of new hardware and software through stress testing new parameters in advance. Some alternative stress testing solutions require a mainframe to run a full testing program, which is expensive to maintain purely for testing purposes. Level Fours Network Stress Tester is a flexible and cost-effective desktop system. A small to medium ATM network could be tested from just one high specification PC. Network Stress Tester is scalable so is equally capable of stress testing larger networks of more than 10,000 ATMs and volumes of 400 transactions per second (TPS), using rack-mounted servers, controlled through a central management function. Network Stress Tester is part of Level Fours successful ATM Channel Development Suite that has been implemented at leading financial institutions worldwide for complete end-to-end ATM network testing from the desktop.