PINT's lab and research services

Lab overview: PINT's research and testing lab services provide evaluation and analysis of Web sites and applications, Web site development tool testing, Web server load and stress testing, Web acceleration testing and Web security products evaluation. PINT's primary mission is to provide corporate consulting services for public Web sites and extranets, so our focus in testing is on the use of Web technologies in the public Internet space. PINT also provides Web site audits, quality assurance testing, and site usability studies for many organizations including members of the Fortune 500. As our primary line of business is large scale Web site development and consulting, our Web related testing will also include real Web practioneers rather than solely relying solely on testing professionals.

Equipment in the lab: PINT has a mixed Solaris, 2000/NT, Mac OSX, Solaris and Linux environment for server testing and Cisco, Netgear, and Foundry equipment for network setups.

Software in the lab: PINT has over 800 versions of Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera, and other browsers available as well as a variety of esoteric Web access devices that can be employed for site testing. We also have a variety of commercial quality and load Web testing tools from vendors such as Watchfire and Coast as well as custom developed site evaluation programs.

Expanded lab capabilities: PINT has a relationship with the University of California, San Diego and access to faculty and networking resources there.

Network Connections: PINT's primary location is served by approximately 6MBps of connectivity from three network diverse connections. PINT also maintains a co-location facility at Inflow (www.inflow.com) for public site tests and can arrange to have significant WAN connectivity for large scale tests if required. LAN speeds for testing is generally either Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet, but other configurations are available.

Personnel: PINT has three technical testing personal for site, application, and server testing and two usability and site auditing professionals beyond our staff of thirty Web development professionals. The firm's founder Thomas Powell is generally involved in testing and test plan development and has authored site testing guidelines used in academia and at Fortune 500 firms.

For more on PINT's lab:

• http://www.pint.com

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