Patent ID: 7447622

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a processing unit; and a system memory coupled to the processing unit, the system memory storing engines operable by the processing unit, the engines comprising: a simulation engine to produce network conditions for testing performance of gaming software on a gaming network, wherein the simulation engine generates a filter profile, the filter profile including multiple simulation filters that have been selected, combined and sequenced in order to produce a customized profile for testing performance of the network conditions; an executive test engine, the executive test engine comprising: a timer; and a progressive testing module that uses feedback to alter the progression, sequence, and combination of the simulation filters in the filter profile, the altering done in response to changing adverse network connectivity conditions, wherein the progressive testing module: proceeds logically from easy testing, in which network adversity conditions presented by the filter profile are light, to rigorous testing, in which the network adversity conditions presented by the filter profile are more difficult; and has access to the timer as a reference for measuring performance and measuring the duration of a progressive simulation being applied; and a connectivity engine to establish the configuration of the gaming network, including simultaneously establishing multiple different network connectivity simulations between external devices connected to the apparatus, wherein at least one of the simulation filters is selected from a plurality of simulations filters, the plurality of simulation filters comprising: an upstream bandwidth controller; a downstream bandwidth controller; a data transfer latency simulator; a packet loss simulator; a data packet burst simulator; a packet sequence controller; and a jitter simulator.