Voip test

As the migration to VoIP services gains momentum, service providers are facing a host of new issues to deal with. Not only do they have to ensure that their networks are ready to deliver real-time packet voice, they have to ensure that the quality matches that of the PSTN--quite a challenge when voice has to share bandwidth with every other application on a converged network. While it might be a challenge for service providers to adjust to this brave new world of IP, it's also providing a major opportunity to another set of players--the test and measurement vendors.

Compounding the problem--and increasing the opportunity for the T&M guys--is the fact that there is a shortage of expertise at many service providers when it comes to VoIP, according to Jessy Cavazos, communication test industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

"The VoIP market is emerging and end-users such as network equipment manufacturers, service providers, carriers and enterprises require guidance. Also, these are the same companies that have gone through the telecoms downturn. These organizations have lost experts, and there is a definite opportunity for VoIP test vendors," she said.

Frost & Sullivan forecasts that the VolP T&M market will grow from $133 million in 2003 to $607 million in 2010. According to Cavazos, the spending is going through a normal market cycle, where demand was initially from the R&D market, but has now started to shift into manufacturing and installation, maintenance and more recently monitoring and management. And while the market pie might be growing, so too is the competition among vendors, with newer companies such as Empirix, Inet (recently acquired by Tektronix for its VoIP expertise), Viola Networks and Wildpackets joining the more established names. Cavazos says that there are now around 20 vendors targetting the VoIP niche.

Using the right tools

Just as packet voice is a different animal to traditional circuit-switched voice, so too are the tools needed to test and monitor the network different. John Govert, Acterna's vice president for service assurance solutions, notes that while there have been some attempts to modify existing TDM test equipment to support VoIP networks, these have had limited success. One of the reasons he cites is that with VoIP the majority of testing is done on Ethernet circuits, something that traditional telephony T&M gear has not performed testing on.

As a result, he says that traditional IP test equipment is in a better position to support VoIP through the addition of new features, with the added advantage that gear such as data analyzers can support other protocols on the same network that provides VolP service.

"This is important because most networks combine IP data and Vole It is very important for monitoring and analysis equipment to be capable of supporting both VolP and IP data to truly identify and resolve issues. This is especially true in call centers where VoIP is being combined with CTI technologies using IP data applications," Govert says. He notes that a combined VoIP and IP data test set is also more cost effective.

Bahaa Moukadam, vice president of IP telephony at Spirent Communications, also believes that VolP test equipment must cater to a whole new set of requirements compared to traditional IP network testing gear.

"Voice as an application forces IP networks to require a substantially higher level of performance assurance and requires a knowledge of traditional routing methods as well as a comprehensive understanding of call set-up and teardown protocols," Moukadam explains. "Visibility into the performance of specialized call management, gateway and other application servers is also critical. These new requirements place more than a handful of modifications on to traditional IP testing equipment to satisfy current customer needs."

He says that service providers need a robust toolset and methodology to analyze the proper configuration of routers and other IP network devices and to test the interactions of voice with data under real-world stresses before adding voice capability to an existing network. As well, network and device performance must be tested not only for its readiness to support voice atone, but also voice within real-world scenarios of multiple concurrent applications and various utilization scenarios.

Converged challenges

While vendors are busy adapting their test gear for VoIP, the operators themselves are also adapting to the new converged environment. According to Frost & Sullivan's Cavazos, service providers have evolving and growing needs when it comes to monitoring the network.

"They are first looking for detection, meaning whenever there is a problem, degradation of the call or service, they do not want to wait for the customer to complain. They cannot rely on their network management system to tell them that a router is down because with VoIP the network knows how to reroute the calls through different ways. Hence, the router or switch is not a direct indication of service issues. They need a VoIP monitoring solution to detect service-related issues," she explains.

Cavazos also points out that the ratio support requirement per port is high because the revenue dollar does not justify the support dollar, so systems have to be developed to reduce support costs. The most effective way to do this is to reduce the number of truck rolls via more effective monitoring that can not only pinpoint faults, but also responsibility. "If there is an IP demarcation point and a customer is reporting quality issues, they want to be able to determine who is at fault--them or their partners."

And of course customers don't care if it's packet or circuit-switched voice--they want the same quality. Acterna's Govert points out that new carrier-scale IP-based tools are required to maintain profitability, accelerate and automate service turn-up, minimize truck rolls, provide rapid and accurate fault identification and isolation, and proactively monitor service performance. "The cornerstone of these challenges is the ultimate challenge--endusers have become accustomed to virtually flawless quality and reliability for voice services."

Making things more complicated is the fact that in the IP world the network configuration is continuously changing as new users and access devices come online and field technicians reconfigure--and sometime misconfigure--routers. According to Spirent's Moukadam, service providers are faced with the challenge of continually monitoring the effect and impact of these new elements.

"Traffic patterns change by the week, the day and the hour, if not the minute and second. Moreover, for service providers, live networks mean vast networks of networks with thousands, if not millions, of users," he notes. "Users may not notice half a second delay on a file transfer, but half a second on a link delivering voice will cause the user to hang up in frustration. The assumption that if the IP network can carry quality data, then voice is just another application, is fraught with danger."

In other words, VoIP providers have a major challenge ahead of them. But one person's challenge is another's opportunity, and in this case it could be a useful one for the test and measurement sector, telecom.

RELATED ARTICLE: VoIP T&M firms eye services

As well as selling VoIP hardware and software testing tools, vendors have also stepped into the market for providing VolP testing and monitoring services.

Jessy Cavazos, communication test industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan, believes that the VoIP market could be ripe for such offerings. "Since VoIP is an emerging technology, I would assume that there is a more pressing need for services in this area than there would be in other markets that are more mature," she said, adding that a number of vendors are moving into this area, with one of the strongest announcements coming from Spirent Communications.

In October Spirent launched its IP Telephony Network Assessment Service, aimed at service providers and large enterprises. The firm will provide an assessment of network infrastructure, QoS metrics in a mixed traffic environment and voice quality analysis.

Bahaa Moukadam, Spirent's vice president of IP telephony, said many customers lack the knowledge, expertise and resources to assess network readiness for VoIP.