CASE STUDY: ACTIVE
[REV: 2.5.1]
DOMAIN: HARDWARE VALIDATION

5G-Scale

Designing the Future of Ethernet Validation

Role Senior Lead UI/UX Designer
Project Next-Gen High-Speed Network Testing Platform

01 // What is the product?

Imagine the internet as a physical highway. Every email you send, every Netflix movie you stream, and every AI query you make is a car traveling on that road. Today, that traffic is moving at the speed of light, and the volume is exploding.

Now, imagine what happens when a self-driving car company releases a fleet of 1 billion new cars onto that highway overnight. If the road isn't built perfectly, the asphalt cracks, the bridges collapse, and traffic stops globally.

5G-Scale is the crash-test facility for that digital highway.

It is a massive, high-performance testing platform used by the world's biggest tech companies to validate their network equipment before it goes live. It generates 1.6 Terabits of traffic per second—enough to download the entire Library of Congress in the blink of an eye—to stress-test routers, switches, and chips.

If the internet is the infrastructure of the modern world, 5G-Scale is the inspector ensuring it doesn't crumble under the weight of the future.

02 // Who are we designing for?

We are designing for the architects of the modern world—the people who build the backbone of the internet.

NEMs

(Network Equipment Manufacturers)

Companies like Cisco, Nokia, and Juniper who build the physical routers and switches.

BUILDERS

Hyperscalers

(Tech Giants)

Tech giants like Google, AWS, and Meta who own massive data centers and need to ensure their servers never crash.

OPERATORS

Chip Makers

(Silicon Designers)

Companies like Broadcom and Nvidia who design the silicon brains powering AI.

INNOVATORS
The User Persona

Alex

"The Validation Architect"

Alex isn't just an IT guy; he is a specialized engineer working in a high-stakes environment.

He needs to prove that a $200,000 router prototype won't fail when 10 million users connect to it simultaneously.
Validating this hardware usually requires 10 different tools, complex physical cabling, and weeks of manual configuration. If he misses a bug, it could cost his company millions in recalls.
He thinks in terms of physics—heat, electricity, signal integrity, and massive data flow.

03 // My Role as a UI/UX Designer

In a domain dominated by hardware, my role was not just to "make it pretty." My role was to be a Translator.

I had to bridge the gap between a room full of roaring servers and a quiet web browser.

I had to learn the difference between a "Physical Port" and a "Logical Lane." I had to understand that a single cable could carry 8 different data streams. If I didn't understand the physics, I couldn't design the interface.

I worked daily with hardware engineers, firmware developers, and product managers. I had to translate their requirements ("We need to expose FEC stats") into user benefits ("Let's show a heatmap of signal quality").

The system supports up to 1024 test channels simultaneously. My biggest design challenge was Scale—creating a UI that allows a user to manage thousands of complex parameters without cognitive overload.

04 // Physical Setup Breakdown

1

System Overview: Two 42U Racks

8U Occupied 32 Main Ports
2U Occupied Cisco Nexus 9300
Distance: < 2 Meters Apart
2

The Test Module (HSE-800)

1 Module = 8 Ports

Front Panel: 8x QSFP-DD Connectors

Current Setup:
Total Ports:
Total Capacity:
3

Port Architecture

Main Port (800G)
Lane 1106G
Lane 2106G
Lane 3106G
Lane 4106G
Lane 5106G
Lane 6106G
Lane 7106G
Lane 8106G

Total: 256 Sub-Ports System-Wide

4

Physical Cabling Map

Module 1 & 2 (West) --------- 16 Cables ---------> Ports 1-16
Module 3 & 4 (East) --------- 16 Cables ---------> Ports 17-32
TOTAL: 32 x 3m OM5 Fiber Cables
5

System Capacity

STEP 1: 1 Module = 8 Ports (8 x 800G) = 6.4 Tbps
STEP 2: 4 Modules x 6.4 Tbps = 25.6 Tbps
STEP 3: 4 Modules x 8 Ports = 32 Main Ports
STEP 4: 32 Ports x 8 Lanes = 256 Sub-Ports
6

> SYSTEM CHECK: COMPLETE

> PHYSICAL LINK: 32 PORTS [UP]

> HANDSHAKE: SUCCESSFUL

LAUNCHING_CONTROL_UI.EXE...

05 // UI Flow

(Visualizing the Control Center)

CLICK SCHEMATICS TO EXPAND

06 // The Business Value of ONE LabPro

(Why Companies Pay Millions for This)

Why does a company spend huge budgets on 5G-Scale? It comes down to one word:

RISK.
PROTECTION: $100M+

1. Risk Elimination

$5K fix cost

$5M-$50M/hour outage

+ $100M brand damage

Comprehensive PHY/L2/L3/Benchmark testing catches  pre-shipment, preventing catastrophic data center outages for hyperscalers and telcos.

SPEED: 300x FASTER

2. Time-to-Market Accel.

Manual (10 Eng x 6 Mo)
$1.2M Labor 24 Weeks
Automation (1 Eng x 1 Wk)
$4K Labor 98% Faster

Python automation + pre-built scenarios reduce validation from months to days, capturing

ROI: 3.6x BOOST

3. Hardware ROI Max

Single-Team Utilization $125K Value
Multi-Team Utilization $450K+ Value

$500K chassis supports multiple teams:

Silicon Team: Ports 1-16 (Chip Val)
Systems Team: Ports 17-32 (Switch Test)
24/7 operation, payback in 2 weeks
Bottom Line

ONE LabPro eliminates $100M+ production risks, saves $1.2M+ annual labor costs, and delivers 3.6x hardware utilization—transforming network testing from cost center to $60M+ strategic advantage.

07 // Conclusion

Designing for 5G-Scale wasn't about following standard web design trends; it was about designing for extreme performance.

By understanding the intense physical reality of the lab—the cables, the heat, the sub-lanes—I was able to build a digital interface that feels calm, controlled, and powerful. We successfully turned a complex physics experiment into a streamlined software product, empowering the engineers who build the future of the internet to sleep a little better at night.