Rohde & Schwarz Collects Field Test Data Through Files.com Inside Carrier Networks That Block Every Other Path

Rohde & Schwarz is one of the world's largest manufacturers of electronic test and measurement equipment: a privately held Munich technology group with more than 15,000 employees, over €3 billion in annual revenue, and a presence in more than 70 countries. Its mobile network testing business, built on the SwissQual product line, measures how cellular networks actually perform, benchmarking coverage, capacity, and quality of experience for carriers, regulators, and private-network operators. The company did not just adopt the standards for that work. It helped write them: SwissQual co-invented ITU-T P.863, the POLQA voice quality standard that underpins mobile network benchmarks worldwide.

The instruments in this business are smartphones. Specialized measurement packages run on Android test phones out in the field, logging in depth everything the cellular network does. When a test concludes, the phone holds large log files, and those files are the deliverable: nothing Rohde & Schwarz sells arrives until the logs reach the internal environment where they become maps, charts, and analytics. And the phones do their collecting inside networks and facilities that belong to customers, governed by security policies Rohde & Schwarz does not control.

The files needed a place to pass through, not a place to live. Rohde & Schwarz made Files.com that transit point.

Every Path Off the Phone Had Closed

The collection tools were designed for a world where that data had somewhere to land.

“Our collection tools out in the field are designed to automatically upload information to an FTP, SFTP, or HTTPS-type storage system, and many of our customers no longer have that in-house capability because of the concern about moving files from outside the firewalls into their billing environment.”

One by one, the destinations disappeared. Carriers and enterprises that once received uploads on their own FTP servers retired that capability rather than keep a door open through the firewall. One of the largest wireless carriers in the United States goes further: inside its environment, a phone may not be connected to a laptop over USB at all, and external file-transfer platforms are blocked by default. An engineer there could finish a full day of testing and have no permitted way, physical or networked, to move the results onto the laptop where processing begins.

Rohde & Schwarz's own infrastructure could not take up the work. Its customer portal was built for delivering documentation and support files to people, not for receiving automated uploads from dozens of unattended devices in the field.

The structural problem was that Rohde & Schwarz controls neither end of the transfer. The phone sits inside the customer's network; the analysis environment sits inside its own. Any fix that asked a customer to host a server, open a firewall port, or install software would die in that customer's security review, and those reviews were exactly what had closed the old paths. Meanwhile the load kept shifting toward Rohde & Schwarz, because every customer that lost the ability to receive files in-house became a customer expecting Rohde & Schwarz to handle it.

“We're out in the field collecting huge amounts of data, and that data has to get somewhere.”

A Transit Point Both Sides' Policies Could Accept

The fix had to meet both sides where they already stood. It had to run unattended through the protocols already built into the collection application, because nobody babysits a test phone. It had to require nothing hosted, installed, or opened on the customer's side. And it had to carry a security posture strong enough to survive review by some of the most restrictive IT organizations in the country, because inside those networks it would be the only door.

Phones Upload Out, the Private Network Pulls In

At the conclusion of a test, each phone uploads its logs automatically to Files.com over the SFTP and HTTPS endpoints the collection software already speaks, using credentials programmed into the device. One engineer's login typically serves up to four phones, sometimes six, all uploading in parallel into the workspace tied to that login. A field collection system can have 24 phones connected, and a busy test period puts 30 to 40 devices uploading at once.

From there, the private network reaches out. A Rohde & Schwarz post-processing tool polls the Files.com site and pulls each new file into the internal analysis environment, where raw network logs become the maps, charts, and analytics customers pay for. Inside locked-down customer environments, engineers retrieve their own uploads the same way: sign in from a corporate laptop with the same credentials and pull the files down, no cable involved.

“It's there as sort of a DMZ, if you will, for these files.”

The same neutral point carries traffic in both directions. Customers who collect measurement data with Rohde & Schwarz tools send it into the site over secure FTP, and Rohde & Schwarz delivers files out through the site to customers whose own IT blocks external file transfer entirely.

The Data Now Moves Where a USB Cable Cannot

With the workflow in production, Rohde & Schwarz replaced a collection process that stalled wherever a customer's security policy hardened with one that runs unattended from test conclusion to analysis.

• The data moves where it physically could not before. Inside the carrier that bans USB connections between phones and laptops, and that had blocked the platform outright, IT reviewed Files.com and whitelisted it for internal use. By the team's own assessment, it is the only way they can make the workflow function there.
• The path runs end to end with no hands on it. Phones upload when a test concludes, the post-processing tool drains the site automatically, and nobody moves a file between the field and the analysis environment.
• The pattern absorbs real field scale. One customer alone keeps roughly 30 phones programmed to upload into the site, and several terabytes of measurement logs move through it, growing month over month.

Extending the pattern costs almost nothing, because the customer side holds no infrastructure. Bringing a new fleet of test phones online means programming a login into more devices. Nothing gets installed at the customer, and no firewall request is ever made.

A Service That No Longer Depends on the Customer's Firewall

Before this, whether a measurement campaign could deliver depended on things Rohde & Schwarz could not control: whether the customer still ran an FTP server, whether its policy allowed a USB cable, whether its IT would entertain an exception. Now the customer's security posture no longer decides whether the data comes home. The phones upload out to Files.com from wherever they are, the private networks on either side tunnel in and take what belongs to them, and neither side had to open, host, or rebuild anything to make that true.

That is what Wattenberg means when he calls it a DMZ for files. The answer to a world where every network is locked down was not persuading anyone to unlock theirs. It was putting a neutral point between them that both sides' policies could accept, and letting Files.com be that point.