By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
In fifteen years of covering the latest and greatest inventions in Wi-Fi and related technologies it sometimes happens (although rarely) that this question presents itself: “Why did someone not think of this before?” Newly released Orb – created among others by the co-founder and former CEO of Ookla (Speedtest.net) – is the QoE connectivity measurement platform that you could easily imagine being deployed everywhere with vast industry benefits. Here’s our interview with Orb founder and serial entrepreneur, Doug Suttles.
Is it practically possible to measure and report connectivity QoE at for every Wi-Fi client and network device? If you ask former Ookla CEO and serial entrepreneur Doug Suttles the answer is a resounding yes. His new venture Orb is a competitor to Ookla – and Orb is already making speedtest.net look stale.
The consumer versions of the Orb apps were released in late April and has already racked up close to a million downloads, Doug Suttles says. The simple fact driving Orb (a fact that most of us have known since the birth of Wi-Fi) is that speed alone is not a true measure of connectivity quality. Instead Orb’s secret sauce is deriving three scores from a combination of measurements that together make up the ‘Orb Score’, which ultimately – Doug Suttles believes – is an excellent measure of connectivity QoE.
“We still measure speed, but we focus more on continuous measurements of responsiveness and reliability. From this we create a combined score out of 100. The results are easy to understand for pretty much anyone. The Orb Score quickly tells you how quickly your connection responds to requests, how reliable it is, and how fast it transfers typical data. So far, consumers love to use it and we know professionals will too,” Doug Suttles says.
Orb has thus far been released a set of consumer app available on almost all platforms but the company has big plans and believes Orb can be deployed into any enterprise or service provider network, for example into home broadband CPEs and enterprise-grade APs. Add to this that Orb can already be installed on multiple client devices for monitoring, such as on your phone, tablets, and much more. In fact, Orb has been designed specifically for massive deployment everywhere, Doug Suttles says.
“Orb is very light touch – meaning the software itself takes up minimal computing resources and has been specifically designed to be deployed everywhere without hampering the performance of the network. CPEs, Wi-Fi repeaters, mesh units – Orb can comfortably be installed on all such devices. This means we can deliver business-critical information as well as live troubleshooting capabilities to service providers and enterprises,” he says.
Professional use of Orb will be the company’s primary source of revenue. Add to this that some organisations may want to start announcing their ‘Orb Score’ to promote – for example – the excellence of their hotel Wi-Fi. They could even choose to make their live Orb Scores available online. The beauty of this is that it will push the industry towards better Wi-Fi quality, Doug Suttles says.
“If we can contribute to organisations competing on connectivity quality, this will be of huge benefit to both consumers and businesses. There never really has been an objective and true measurement of the connectivity experience and we want to make it available everywhere. We believe there is enormous value in that on multiple levels,” he says.
There are plenty more twists to the tale of Ookla and Orb that involve Wi-Fi planning companies Ekahau and newcomer Hamina. Doug Suttles acquired Ekahau while CEO of Ookla, but it ended up being run independently of Ookla for several years. Perhaps predictably, former Ekahau executive Jussi Kiviniemi left and formed competitor Hamina where Doug Suttles now serves as a board member. Hamina is today a formidable Ekahau competitor as is another new Wi-Fi planning tools company (and WiFi NOW partner) Sidos, also co-created by a former Ekahau executive.
/Claus.
