If you are tasked with managing and performing real-time
monitoring of hundreds of VoIP gateways scattered across the world, you
might just be facing a nightmare, to say the least. Fortunately, a company
called Adir VoIP Technologies has a software suite called Voxis to aid
Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs) in this daunting task. The
Voxis suite consists of four components:
- Voxis Miner � Provides intelligent data reduction, analysis,
alarming, and reporting that supports service level agreement (SLA)
management, network troubleshooting, and fraud detection.
- Voxis Dialer � End-to-end PSTN testing and analysis that
captures the caller�s network experience.
- Voxis Streamer � IP �mesh testing� for a comprehensive,
real-time view of network health for VoIP.
- Voxis Dashboard � The real-time data collection of all call
activity on an entire VoIP network.
We focused our testing on Voxis Dashboard, since the other three
applications do not work remotely through a proxy server, which is how we
were connecting to the ITSP network. Voxis Dashboard is a client-server
software application used to monitor and manage voice over IP (VoIP) traffic
in real time. As call traffic originates from the public switched telephone
network (PSTN), travels through the IP network, and terminates back onto the
PSTN, performance, statistics, and alarm information is monitored at
checkpoints along the way. Obviously, call traffic originating or
terminating through another carrier�s network is tracked for that portion
of the call flow that is carried within Voxis� domain. The Voxis server
application resides either on a single UNIX Sun server or on redundant UNIX
Sun servers. It monitors all call traffic passing through provisioned
gateways. We should point out that the advantage of Voxis Dashboard is that
it uses a lightweight, fault-tolerant message transport system similar to
XML that uses a fraction of the resources used by SNMP.
In any event, we tested the Voxis Dashboard software application
extensively and were pleased with the results. From the main GUI, you can
launch the Alarms, Spans, Calls, Hosts, and other various screens. We first
tested the Hosts screen, which features a color-coded square to quickly scan
for the status. You can check a box next to the gateway host and then view
the active processes. In addition, Dashboard provides you with the ability
to get details on the gateways within your system, including gateway make,
model, and IP address. You can monitor host processes that carry calls from
entry into the IP network through the call termination point. Besides
monitoring processes, you can also start, stop, or bounce (restart)
processes. Other interesting features include a ping and trace route
feature, as well enabling alarms to be sent to third-party software through
a probe or via SNMP traps.
TROUBLESHOOTING/MAINTENANCE
Using the �quiesce� feature you can put an individual T1/E1 span out of
service, for maintenance, troubleshooting, or repair. Quiescing a span
places a span temporarily out of service without interference from calls or
without affecting service. As existing calls siphon off the span, the
channels are �busied out� so that no new calls arrive on the channels.
Once the channels are clear, maintenance can begin. You can also toggle a
gateway server from �production mode� to �maintenance mode,� which
will allow you to upgrade or add new hardware to the server. In addition,
from the user interface you can reboot the gateway simply by clicking on the
gateway name from the Hosts screen and then clicking the Reboot button.
VIEWING ALARMS
Next, we examined the Alarms screen, which also features color-coded squares
indicating the severity of the alarm � blue being the lowest, and red
being the highest. A running tally at the bottom of the screen by alarm
severity was a useful feature. From this screen you can simply highlight one
or more alarms and remove or acknowledge them. Overall, the Alarms screen
was pretty straightforward and easy to use.
MONITORING SPANS AND CALLS
The most interesting screen within Voxis is the �Spans� screen, which
shows the span groups (usually named by country, but not necessarily) and
allows you to select a span group to view the individual gateways, T1/E1
trunks, as well as down to the individual channels. According to Adir, in
most situations, operations support personnel are individually assigned
specific gateways or spans that they must monitor and troubleshoot. Thus,
Voxis provides the ability to present a customized list of spans so that you
need not view a multitude of spans assigned to other users. From the Spans
screen you can view the Group name (e.g., Carrier Kuwait) and the number of
T1/E1 channels in use and the number of channels available. Simply by
selecting the check box next to the Group name we could view the details of
the individual T1/E1 spans. To drill down even further for more details, we
were able to check off the individual gateways to view call details in
real-time. In addition one can view individual account details and account
balances.
Within the Spans screen the spans are color-coded for quick visual
inspection. Red indicates the span is inactive and not capable of taking
calls, green indicates the span is active and available for calls, and
yellow indicates the span is active but is not taking any new calls because
it was placed out of service. Further, you can view individual channel
status by color whereby gray represents that the channel is available (no
calls are in progress), purple indicates the caller is in a dial/menu mode,
and green indicates a call is in progress. Further, a teal color indicates
that a fax call is in progress. Also, we should mention that the service
provider could terminate any active call at will.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
We noticed that we could not double-click on gateways within the Spans
screen and then bring up the gateway properties in order to reboot the
server or toggle the status from Maintenance to Production mode. This would
be a nice feature to add. Also, if Adir developed its own billing software
package and integrated it into the Voxis product suite, this might help
round out this solution.
According to Adir, key features that they will be adding to their next
release include support for DS3/E3 spans, including monitoring gateways in
the Cisco ThunderVoice architecture, additional alarm messages, enhanced
redundancy, and additional call states and QoS information
CONCLUSION
Voxis Dashboard supports several popular gateways, including Nuera, Cisco,
and Net2Phone gateways. Voxis Dashboard is an easy-to-use, yet powerful
quality monitoring and performance management tool that service providers
will find indispensable. TMC Labs was impressed with how easy and powerful
the Voxis Dashboard was and we wouldn�t hesitate to recommend this product
to service providers or ITSPs looking to ensure service quality and reduce
operational costs.
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