January 2001

Testing Tools For VoIP

Congratulations! You've just spent months developing a solution that just may claim the mantle of being the world's next killer app. Gather the marketing folks! Issue a press release! Order up the champagne!

Wait a minute. Just because an application worked as expected within the predictable comfort of your development environment doesn't necessarily mean it will perform flawlessly when it leaves the lab. The world -- with additional prodding from Murphy's Law -- doesn't work that way. To avoid application failures and the loss of the reputation you worked so hard to establish, it is essential to test an application under a variety of simulated real-world conditions. And then test it again.

This roundup offers forth several of the available VoIP and network testing products and solutions designed to help you rigorously test your products and applications before releasing them into the cold, harsh arena of real-world telecommunications. As with any roundup in INTERNET TELEPHONY� you must consider this a starting point; a base upon which to build your research as you look to acquire the testing solution most properly suited to your needs.
�- The Editors

Gordon Kapes System 930 Telephony Simulator
Gordon Kapes, Inc.
5520 West Touhy Avenue
Skokie, Illinois 60077
847-676-1750
The System 930's protocol analyzer displays ISDN messages sent to or received from either digital interface. Simple, menu-driven programming and extensive online documentation make it easy to use and permit an "end-to-end" simulation of PSTN/VPN. All this allows you to simulate telephone calls transmitting across a digital telephone network, testing candidate applications connected at both ends.

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Shunra's The Storm
Shunra Software Ltd.
One Kalisa Way
Suite 203
Paramus NJ 07652
201-634-8787
Shunra's The Storm can be used to develop, test, and evaluate content, applications, or devices that will operate in a normal enterprise system. The Storm's proprietary hardware functions like an Ethernet bridge, working just like a hub when the emulation is inactive, and as a WAN emulator when the emulation is active. Using its Ethernet ports enables the connection of any Ethernet-compatible device to Storm. Likewise, it is possible to connect a hub or switch to link up multiple devices through one port.

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Telcordia SGCP-ICOP
Telcordia Technologies
445 South Street
Morristown, NJ 07960-6438
973-829-2000
Supporting all Windows-compatible Ethernet interface cards and allowing testers to insert custom text comment in the log file during testing sessions, the SGCP protocol isolates the issues in your telecommunications system in an easy to read, intuitive manner. The ICR node is a new SS7-capable node that contains the intelligence for Internet call routing.

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Hughes Software Systems' HyperTest
Hughes Software Systems
11717, Exploration Lane
Germantown, MD 20876
301-601-4230
The "HyperTest Framework" provides the functionality to control, monitor, and configure different testing tools from one central location. The HyperTest Framework also allows for the programming of different logical conditions at the central location, by which the control and configuration of one tool can be dependent on the response of the other tool. HyperTest Manager is available on Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT Platforms.

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Catapult Communications' DCT
Catapult Communications
160 S. Whisman Road
Mountain View, CA 94041
650-960-1025
The Digital Communications Test system from Catapult is designed to deliver customizable test solutions to meet ever-changing configuration and test requirements. DCT can provide either an independent test solution, or one that easily integrates into an existing test environment, and can simulate and monitor telecom network entities in a flexible, multi-user, multi-protocol, programmable test environment. DCT is designed to be scalable and leverages the strengths of Sun workstations by offering a modular software and hardware architecture.

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Hammer Technologies' (Empirix) Mega-Controller
Hammer Technologies
205 Lowell Street
Wilmington, MA 01887
Tel: 978-694-9959
The Mega-Controller, a new addition to the Hammer product family, provides a unified interface for controlling multiple test systems, and can scale to control in excess of 20,000 channels. "As the capacity of systems increase, the ability to control test resources from a single interface becomes critical," says Mark MacLean, Hammer's Performance Test Product Manager. It enables equipment manufacturers and service providers to test high density, next-generation equipment using real-world traffic profiles coupled with tone, voice, and fax traffic, as well as a wide range of protocols, including ISDN and SS7.

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RADCom's AudioPro
RADCom Equipment Inc.
575 Corporate Drive
Mahwah, NJ 07430
201-529-2020
AudioPro automatically detects and analyzes RTP voice streams and H.323-compliant signaling streams. AudioPro allows audio quality to be evaluated using a combination of subjective listening tests and measured QoS parameters, and signaling performance is quantified with metrics such as call setup and release time distributions.

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Agilent Technologies' Telegra VQT
Agilent Technologies
395 Page Mill Rd
P.O. Box #10395
Palo Alto, CA 94303
650-752-5000
The Agilent Voice Quality Tester (VQT) enables the design, deployment, and operation of voice services on next-generation networks by providing accurate and objective measurement of voice service quality. Key features of the VQT include: Testing and detailed analysis of voice clarity using PSQM+ and PAMS; robust voice delay measurements; echo and echo canceler performance measurements; silence suppression analysis; DTMF tone distortion analysis; easy one-click testing; and analog FXO and E&M, T1 CAS, E1 CAS, and ISDN PRI interfaces. In addition, the Agilent Advisor with VQT Undercradle combines VoIP protocol analysis and troubleshooting, RTP and IP performance testing, and voice quality testing, all on one platform.

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Tektronix' CRTC02
Textronix, Inc.
14200 SW Karl Braun Drive
PO Box 500
Beaverton, OR 97077
800-835-9433
Tektronix offers the full range of products used to design, build, deploy, and manage next-generation global communications networks and Internet technologies. The CRTC02 provides speech coder and decoder tests, transmitter measurements, and simulated call setup and data transfer. The CRTC02 allows for quality assurance through the simple generation of customized test features.

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Spirent's SmartVoIPQoS
SmartBits
26750 Agoura Road
Calabasas, CA 91302
Tel: 818-676-2300
SmartVoIPQoS supports testing for all applicable VoIP standards. It utilizes new capabilities of SmartMetrics cards to generate traffic that represents different classes of service (voice, data, multimedia) at up to full-line rate. The application then analyzes the performance of each incoming stream to test a device or network's ability to forward very large numbers of data and voice flows by measuring statistics such as loss, latency, and jitter for every packet transmitted.

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Kahala's wav.3
Kahala Systems Corporation
8502 E. Chapman Avenue, Suite 225
Orange, CA 92869-5616
714-516-9229
The wav.3 supports detailed protocol analysis and decodes for all the protocols under the H.323 specification. It provides extensive call signaling analysis, which empowers the user to verify proper negotiation from call setup through teardown. Graphical summary reporting of critical H.323 performance parameters include: RTP Inter-arrival Jitter, RTP Delay Variation, and RTP Lost Packets. wav.3 provides RTP AutoPort Discovery and automatic update of RTP look-up tables. With the appropriate audio codecs installed, wav.3 can also decompress full duplex audio streams for playback through the laptop sound system.

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Adtech AX/4000
Spirent Communications
3465 Waialae Avenue, Suite 200
Honolulu, HI 96816
Tel: 800-348-0080
The AX/4000 Broadband Test System is the world's most advanced system for testing IP performance and Quality of Service. The AX/4000 mAX Generator and Generator/Analyzer modules generate and analyze IP traffic up to 1 Gbps over a variety of physical interfaces. Advanced OC-48c and OC-192c test modules provide IP test solutions at speeds as high as 10 Gbps. Completely modular and designed for extreme flexibility and value, the AX/4000 also offers solutions for ATM, frame relay and Ethernet, providing the capability to test the inter-working of multiple broadband technologies on a single platform.

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