January 2003

Testing & Monitoring Solutions

Telephony Network Analyzer

Agilent Technologies, Inc.

395 Page Mill Rd.

P.O. Box 10395

Palo Alto, CA 94303

Tel: 650-752-5000

www.agilent.com

Agilent Technologies, Inc., has enhanced its installation and maintenance portfolio for service providers and enterprise network operators by adding new capabilities to its Telephony Network Analyzer software. These capabilities are expected to significantly reduce the cost of testing voice quality on Voice-over-IP (VoIP) networks by providing non-intrusive Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) on live VoIP calls. The new release offers non-intrusive voice quality testing calibrated to the ITU P.862 standard, PESQ.

The Telephony Network Analyzer includes new measurement technology from Psytechnics, the inventors of PESQ, which allows users to make incredibly accurate measurements on live VoIP calls. Other enhancements include the following:

• The ability to see how end users are experiencing their service with non-intrusive MOS;
• More detailed analysis of VoIP packet loss, jitter, delay, and other parameters;
• One solution for QoS and signaling testing; and
• The ability to troubleshoot multiple versions of signaling protocols by offering analysis of SIP and H.323 signaling for VoIP calls.

Abacus2

Spirent Communications

15200 Omega Dr.

Rockville, MD 20850

Tel: 301-417-1224

www.spirentcom.com

Spirent Communications recently announced support for media gateway control protocol (MGCP) signaling, to enable testing of carrier-grade softswitches and media gateways. With the addition of MGCP, Spirent�s Abacus2 VoIP solution addresses the performance and functional testing needs of developers and alternative telephone service providers of VoIP products. The Abacus2 solution bridges the gap between testing the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and testing an IP-based network. By combining MGCP signaling and real-time transport protocol (RTP) streaming over the same port, the Abacus2 is able to emulate a media gateway, media gateway controller (MGC), or softswitch, which allows for verifying the functionality, quality, and capacity of many elements of a VoIP network. With the Abacus2 emulating real VoIP calls, the product or network under test receives a complete analysis of performance and services. In addition it supports real-time protocol analysis for MGCP, SIP, SS7, and TDM signaling. The Abacus2 VoIP solution is housed in a single chassis that supports PSTN signaling, SIP, and MGCP signaling, as well as voice quality measurement capabilities.

Message Generator and Traffic Simulator (MGTS)
Catapult Communications
160 S. Whisman Rd.
Mountain View, CA 94041
Tel: 650.960.1025
www.catapult.com

Catapult has announced significant enhancements to its Message Generator and Traffic Simulator product family. Release 11.5 of the Catapult MGTS provides new capabilities for high-volume network traffic simulation, expanded IP telephony testing, and improved test engineer productivity for telecom equipment manufacturers and carriers implementing high levels of test integration in their 3G wireless, IP, and SS7 network development programs.

The Catapult MGTS comprises state-of-the-art hardware and software to enable sophisticated, high-speed diagnostic testing of wireline, wireless, and IP technologies, including SS7 over ATM; UMTS; GPRS; and IP. MGTS Release 11.5 provides:

• Intelligent simulation of 3G mobile networks;
• Testing of real-time media streams transported over IP trunks; and
• Predefined test scripts for improved test engineer productivity.

IP Network Emulators

Packetstorm Communications, Inc.

20 Meridian Rd

Eatontown, NJ 07724

Tel: 732-544-2434

www.packetstorm.com

PacketStorm develops IP Network Emulators to produce WAN impairments such as delay, jitter, re-order, loss, bit errors, and the like. The company�s products can also emulate Diff Serv�s 64 levels and traffic conditioning with various queues (WFQ, RED, etc.) over multiple network interfaces including 10/100/1000 Ethernet, T1, DS3, OC-3, and OC-12. In addition, Packetstorm can provide time varying dynamic emulation and filter packets by combinations of bit patterns. The bit pattern filter can select packets by any field in the MAC, IP header, UDP, or TCP header, or payload. In addition, our emulator has a packet analyzer that can decode over 200 protocols. Essentially, the emulator recreates the dynamic behavior of the Internet such that any network model can be reproduced including those models that change with traffic, time, or the behavior or another traffic flow.

Network Quality Monitoring System (NQMS)

Consultronics Limited

160 Drumlin Circle

Concord, Ontario, Canada

L4K 3E5

Tel: 905-738-3741

www.consultronics.com

NQMS provides network administrators with the tools required to ensure that their networks are running at peak condition. NQMS provides proactive monitoring across all network components, using specific, user-definable monitoring parameters. NQMS is designed to allow for timely reactions in the event of malfunctions or performance degradation. As a result of the increasing dependency on VoIP and cellular networks, Consultronics has introduced automatic Mean Opinion Score (MOS) testing with its NQMS line of products. MOS offers true speech quality assessment of both fixed and cellular telecommunications networks. Along with the traditional measuring techniques employed by NQMS, the addition of MOS testing enables operators to properly assess and predict the quality of speech. Consultronics� family of NQMS products employs, the widely used MOS algorithm Perceptual Analysis/Measurement System (PAMS).

Shunra\Cloud 4.0

Shunra Software

555 8th Avenue, Ste. 1102

New York, NY 10018

Tel: 212-279-8895

www.shunra.com

Shunra Software today released the latest version of its award-winning IP WAN emulation software product. The Shunra\Cloud 4.0 emulates a real-life point-to-point WAN to test the performance of any application, technology, or service under a wide variety of network conditions such as latency, packet loss, jitter, bandwidth constraints, and more. Shunra\Cloud integrates WAN emulation into the application testing process, empowering users to ensure the network readiness of their technologies, prior to deployment. Additionally, Shunra\Cloud�s new filtering feature allows users to include or exclude IP addresses from the emulation, enabling the product to be integrated with other performance management and testing tools, such as user load tools, functional testing tools, traffic generators, and network analyzers. Shunra\Cloud can be set to automatically start, stop, and run multiple times under different network conditions and parameters, enabling users to fully automate and customize the WAN testing process.

Intelligent Systems Management

Teltronics, Inc.

2150 Whitfield Industrial Way

Sarasota, FL 34243

Tel: 941-753-5000

www.teltronics.com

Teltronics Intelligent Systems Management (ISM) products include the Site Event Buffer enterprise agent (SEBea) and IRISnGEN. These products provide an end-to-end solution for managing alarms in the enterprise network world. The SEBea continually receives traps from elements on the network with problems and can routinely query the network elements for proactive fault detection and reporting.

Digital Central Office Switch Simulator

GL Communications

207A Perry Parkway, Suite One

Gaithersburg, MD 20877

Phone: 301-670-4784

www.gl.com

GL Communications recently announced a major upgrade to the Digital Central Office Switch Simulator (DCOSS), providing carriers and other operators with the ability to test virtually all elements of their networks. Using DCOSS, technicians can run networks through a wide variety of scenarios and capture the resulting performance data.

The latest DCOSS upgrade-version 5.0-has more than two-dozen new features, including:

• The ability to support the Windows 2000 operating system in addition to Windows NT.
• A next-generation Quad Trunk card that supports software selectable T1/E1 interfaces. Two Ethernet ports are also provided to allow for VoIP connectivity in GL�s next generation DCOSS IP applications (available in the first quarter of 2003).
• The addition of GR-303 protocol support. This feature equips operators to deal with emerging digital network technologies.

System 930 Telephony Simulator

Gordon Kapes

5520 West Touhy Ave.

Skokie, Illinois 60077

Tel: 847-676-1750

www.gordonkapes.com

Developers of telephony products intended to connect with telephony circuits prefer access to the �real thing� when testing their solutions. But gaining access to the �real thing� is an expensive and aggravating proposition. Enter Gordon Kapes� System 930 Telephony Simulator.

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 permit an �end-to-end� simulation of PSTN/VPN, which allows developers to simulate telephone calls transmitting across a digital telephone network, testing candidate applications connected at both ends.

The 1.544 Mbps System 930 is designed to emulate the network or user side of Robbed Bit T1, NI-2 compliant ISDN-PRI, GR-303 CSC, GR-303 Hybrid, and NFAS (non-facility associated signaling) using T1 framing. 4ESS, 5ESS, and DMS100/250 switches can be emulated. The System 930�s software facilities accommodate Q.931 public or private networking protocols as well as private or proprietary networking protocols that employ out-of-band progress tones. The System 930�s internal �bulk� call generator can be programmed to initiate up to 48/60 T1/E1 and 32 analog calls on a repetitive basis.

MegaSIP

RADCOM Equipment, Inc.

6 Forest Ave.

Paramus, NJ 07652

Tel: 201-518-0033

www.radcom-inc.com

MegaSIP is the SIP generation module for RADCOM�s award-winning VoIP Performer system. MegaSIP is a carrier-grade solution that generates high volume SIP-based traffic for VoIP system testing and emulates the stress levels of real-world network conditions. It enables developers, quality assurance labs, ISPs, and carriers to benchmark, load, test, and verify proper protocol implementation in VoIP equipment. Generating hundreds of thousands of simultaneous SIP-based calls, millions of SIP-based calls per busy hour, and thousands of media-based calls using the Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP), it allows customers to evaluate the performance and scalability of equipment used to deliver voice and data over IP networks. The MegaSIP Simulator provides two important capabilities: MegaStress and MediaStress. MegaStress generates peak load conditions, reaching 500,000 simultaneous calls and three million sessions per busy hour, at a setup rate of 2,000 calls per second. MediaStress can generate peak loads with 2,000 outgoing RTP channels in various codecs (for SIP calls created by SIP signaling).

Vivinet Diagnostics

NetIQ Corporation

3553 N. First St.

San Jose, CA 95134

Tel: 408-856-3000

www.netiq.com

NetIQ Corp. recently revealed their Vivinet family of products, formerly known as the NetIQ VoIP Management Solution. The Vivinet family of products includes NetIQ�s newest product Vivinet Diagnostics, a product designed to enable customers to easily pinpoint and diagnose call quality problems in a VoIP environment, as well as updated versions of the award-winning Vivinet Assessor and Vivinet Manager.

The Vivinet Assessor 2.0 now automates even more of the assessment process, making it easier to quickly assess a data network�s ability to support VoIP. New in version 2.0 is the ability to automatically inventory network devices, highlight limitations of those network devices, and project bandwidth requirements based on current utilization and expected call volume.

Vivinet Manager 2.1 is based on a proven scalable architecture that monitors the entire VoIP environment from one console. Vivinet Manager now offers greatly expanded support for IP telephony, call centers, video, and unified messaging.

The Hammer Call Analyzer

Empirix, Inc.

205 Lowell Street

Wilmington, MA 01887

Tel: 978-661-4800

www.empirix.com

Empirix (formerly Hammer Technologies) has unveiled a protocol analysis tool designed to speed debug of VoIP systems, the first in a new generation of application-aware analysis tools. The Hammer Call Analyzer is a revolutionary new tool for VoIP environments. Unlike generic protocol analyzers, the Analyzer is telephony protocol-aware. This orientation manifests in a variety of powerful capabilities, all designed to help engineers find the few proverbial needles in the protocol haystack. For example, the call list and multi-stage call flow display walk engineers through the individual legs of a particular call. This enables engineers to visualize problems in the way messages are exchanged between the various devices along the way and to quickly solve those problems.

The Analyzer features:

• Real-time, multi-stage call flow display;
• Call list for application context;
• VoIP and TDM protocol decodes;
• Intuitive protocol-aware searching, filtering, and capture;
• Pre-trigger packet capture; and
• Ability to import external traces for analysis.

Delta Protocol Analyzer/Emulator

Delta Information Systems

300 Welsh Rd.

Building 3, Ste. 120

Horsham, PA 19044-2273

Tel: 215-657-5270

www.delta-info.com

Delta�s H.323 Voice Call Emulator and VoIP Protocol Analyzer support equipment manufacturers, test labs, network administrators, and network service providers in development and use of VoIP and Internet telephony applications. The product is designed to deliver real-time, comprehensive protocol analysis and decode of H.323, MGCP, SGCP, SIP, and SDP protocols. The analyzer captures IP packet data, and automatically searches for signaling, audio, video, and data traffic. The emulator provides fine control over RAS call generation, call signaling, conference control, and media streams, providing conformance testing with full encoding and decoding for each protocol layer.

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