September 2007 Archives

SIM2 just released the Grand Cinema C3X 1080p Projector. I don't know whether to project this thing or drive it - damn thing looks like a cheery red Ferrari. SIM2's Next Generation Grand Cinema C3X 1080 3-Chip DLP is one of the first to utilize Texas Instruments DLP Product's latest DarkChip chip to integrate superior contrast plus benchmark-quality 1080p video display with the functions and features required to power today's sophisticated home theaters, all within the dramatic industrial design for which SIM2 is justly famous. It delivers astonishing performance from its compact design.

SIM2's new Grand Cinema HT30000 HOST system pairs a surprisingly compact projector showcasing the stunning cabinet designs for which the company is famous, with a discrete outboard video input processor that connects via SIM2's proprietary, three-line optical-digital High-Definition Optical Signal Transfer (H.O.S.T.) system, which is able to link the two over distances up to 750 feet (250m).

It includes 2 x HDMI-HDCP compliant digital inputs, one S-Video input, one composite video, one RGBS-YCrCb (RCA) input, and one RGBHV input. It also sports a USB and RS232 connector for control and software upgrades. It also has digital audio output and an external IR sensor. It supports PAL, HDTV (480p, 820p, 1080i, 1080p) ad well as PC support for VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA, UXGA, and WUXGA. It supports all the popular aspect ratios, including 4:3, 16:9 anamorphic, Letterbox, Panoramic, and custom adjustments. It also comes in black, gold, and high-gloss Gun Metal, which reminds me of Halo Master Chief's armor color.



SIM2 brags, "This next-generation home theater projector is titally unique to SIM2 - no other manufactuer has the ability to produce a high performance 3-chip projector with such compact dimensions, which is why SIM2 has taken out five separate patents for this product alone. The Grand Cinema c3X 1080 is without a doubt a true thoroughbred, offering unprecedented picture quality for the discerning home theater customer".

The C3X 1080 utilizes true 10-bit video processing to create clean, artefact-free video images. 10-bits-per-channel processing produces 1024 shades of grey (or shades of a single color) resulting in the ability to render over 1 billion colors on-screen. It's also Full HD 1080p capable, including 1080p@24fpbs. It also features 10,000:1 contrast ration and it has a choice of three lens options: T1 (short throw) 1.3-1.7:1, T2 (long-throw - standard) 1.7-2.6:1, and T3 (long-throw) 2.6-3.5:1 (avail Q1 2008).

Sweet projector. Maybe now I can finally ditch my bulky 65" rear projection TV and get me one of these. Of course, it retails for $29,995, so maybe not.

Who doesn't hate it when you try and plug two large A/C adapters into an electrical wall outlet, only to be frustated that you can only fit one? Not only do you have to install a bulky 6 outlet power strip just to connect two A/C adapters, but having a power strip on the floor of your living room doesn't exact pass the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). Trust me, I've tried. Most of us need to power up our laptops, cellphones, and a plethora of other devices, so being limited to one outlet just plain sucks. What to do?

Well, the 360 Electrical Outlet from 360electrical.com allows you to maximize your power cord connections even when dealing with big, bulky transformer plugs. The two rotating outlets let you twist and turn so you can make use of both outlets instead of just one. Sweet! Why the heck didn't somebody invent this 50 years ago when most houses were built? Sheesh! Go pick up some 360 Electrical Outlets on ThinkGeek.com! !

• Rated: 15A, 125V
• UL Listed design
• Receptacles "click and hold" in 18 unique positions
• Fits standard, single gang boxes
• Back wire

Fonality is offering world-wide training sessions as part of their Fonality trixbox Open Communication Certification (FtOCC). The next class is being held in London, UK from October 9-11 at the Sheraton Skyline Heathrow Airport hotel.

The offical name for the class is the FtOCC Administrator Certification course and it covers the following topics:

• trixbox CE and Pro installation and administration
• Common troubleshooting issues
• Asterisk® configuration files
• Management tools including FreePBX, HUDlite and more
• Dial plans, call routing
• IP Telephones / Softphones
• The ins and outs of VoIP
• E1/PRI/BRI and basic analog configuration
• Building your VoIP integration business

If you're interested in finding out more about the London class you can check it out here. Note, you'll get a $50 discount if you use this link.

Huawei Technologies today announced that it has successfully completed commercial technology testing for ‘VoIP over HSPA’ in Shanghai in conjunction with QUALCOMM. They claim it is the industry’s first VoIP service display with an ALL IP end-to-end solution that is based on a commercial chipset and IMS-based system platform. Being 100% end-to-end IP is part of the beauty and promise of IMS and apparently Shanghai is leading the way. I'm in the process of testing/reviewing a carrier-class IMS testing tool from Navtel Communications that Huawei might find useful. Navtel's tool was designed for IMS and can handle 256,000 unique SIP or NCS (cable/MSO VoIP) subscribers, 374,000 unique endpoints for H.248 ( BGF), 128K Unique RTP streams for SIP and NCS, and 192,000 RTP streams for H.248 ( BGF).

In any event, I should explain that High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is a mobile data packet technology of Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) that allows mobile phone users to enjoy high-quality, richer voice communications at a low price.

According to their release, Huawei put IP voice into an HSPA transfer channel, a technology called ’VoIP over HSPA’. The testing uses Huawei’s UMTS/HSPA and IMS systems, including all RNC（Radio Network Controller ） base and all IP transmission system and QUALCOMM’s MSM7200 chipset solution. To date, Huawei has already completed commercial testing of ‘VoIP over CDMA（Code-Division Multiple Access）’, ‘VoIP over WiMAX（Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access）’ and ‘VoIP over HSPA（High-Speed Packet Access）’ and passed interoperability testing with IMS（IP Multimedia Subsystem）.
 
‘VoIP over HSPA,’ which is based on the 3GPP IMS standard, allows operators to enrich their current business models by replacing circuit-switched calls, as well as delivering services with new business models, such as offering free Internet-quality calls. ‘VoIP over HSPA’ is an operable mobile technology that ensures high voice quality and quality of service (QoS) while the billing and security can be completely controlled by the carrier.

Huawei and QUALCOMM’s testing indicated that ‘VoIP over HSPA’ increases the traffic capability by 50% in comparison with traditional voice communications technologies.  If the migration is from ‘VoIP over HSPA+’ the traffic capability can be increased by 100%. Enhanced features such as uplink interference cancellation will enable further gains, achieving almost three times the capacity compared to current R99 systems.

The debate of whether portable GPS units are better than in-car GPS units has raged for a few years now. I've always been a big proponent of portable GPS units, ever since I installed Destinator1 on a PocketPC 5-6 years ago. It was a heck of lot cheaper than spending $2,000 for an in-dash navigation system in my car. Well, Marketwatch apparently came to the same conclusion that portable GPS units often trump in-dash units in an article written today.

According to the article, Consumer Reports gives the highest marks to the Garmin Nuvi 660 at about $700. The Garmin Nuvi 350 has almost identical features but it $200 cheaper and with a smaller screen, came in a close second. When TMC went looking for a GPS unit to share with traveling employees, I recommended the Nuvi 350, since it is one of the best portable GPS units on the market and it is very reasonably priced. The Nuvi 360 is also pretty good and it adds Bluetooth hands-free calling functionality to your cell phone. Best of all, the Garmin's use NAVTEQ maps, which I still say is far superior to TeleAtlas maps used by TomTom GPS receivers. NAVTEQ maps are much more accurate in my opinion.

Nevertheless, Consumer Reports gave best bang for your buck goes to the TomTom One. They also gave best bang for the buck to the Magellan Roadmate 2000 and the Garmin Street Pilot C330, all for $300 or less.

Consumer Reports does give the advantage to in-car GPS systems for having voice recognition functionality and for having larger screens. Yes, but try walking around Disney World and mapping attractions, restrooms, etc. with an in-car GPS unit - it can't be done!

But with a portable GPS, not only can you map interesting Disney attractions, you can even map where you parked your car to quickly find your car and minimize the risk of being stuck in the park's mass exodus at closing time! Now that is a sweet use of GPS!

Bah! I was just checking out Technorati at the end of the work day (5:23pm) to see if there was anything interesting going on news wise - and their website just went down. Technorati has been pretty reliable over the years. Hopefully this is just a hiccup and will be a very short outage.

Update:
Very short outage - it was only down for ~3 minutes. Probably a server reboot. Nothing to see here. move along...

Gizmo just announced a beta version (Gizmo for Mobile Beta) of their software for BlackBerry devices. The Gizmo Project gives you IM and VoIP to not only fellow Gizmo users but also Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and Google Talk users. You also get free calls to other Gizmo users.

Alas, outbound calls to phone numbers are terminated using Gizmo Project's paid services (similar to SkypeOut). Assuming of course you actually believe in paying for voice minutes on your cell phone.   Why not just use Jajah for free worldwide calling?

But no matter. Head on over to www.gizmo5.com from your Blackberry's browser or you can download it from the Gizmo Website locally and transfer it to your phone. Least you can get free IM to all the major IM networks and free calls to fellow Gizmos - that's cool enough for me.

Hey, finally some good news for Vonage! According to Fierce VoIP, "A federal appeals court has vacated the $58 million in damages awarded to Verizon by a lower court that found Vonage guilty of patent infringement." In addition, the $58 million dollars in damages was vacated.

Now Vonage isn't out of the woods yet. According to the Fierce VoIP article, 2 out of the 3 patents will have to be revisited by the lower court and don't forget about the $69.5 million to be paid to Sprint Nextel in a court decision reached two days ago. Check out the Fierce VoIP article for more details on this at least temporary win by Vonage.

Switchvox, a provider of Asterisk-based solutions, has been acquired by Digium, the founding company of the open source Asterisk software solution. This is the second recent acquisition since Digium also recently acquired Astricon. Switchvox, with 1400 Systems Installed and over 66,500 handsets deployed, is an interesting acquisition for Digium. At first I was taken aback by this announcement since Switchvox took the open source Asterisk GPL code and added their own proprietary code. Why would Digium a strong proponent of open source acquire an Asterisk solution with proprietary code? It didn't make sense, but it will become crystal clear in my interview with Digium’s Bill Miller and Mark Spencer.

The first question is why did Digium feel the need to acquire Switchvox?

Bill Miller: The whole concept of making Asterisk easy to use is obviously what has been driving our whole goal. With the Asterisk Appliance we have part of that, but we really do want to own and control the CPE-based solution. And what really what Swithvox brings is what we think is the top GUI out there that is CPE-based. We’re not going to build a hosted environment. We’re not going to build what Fonality has and we clearly don’t like that approach. We believe that this gives us without a doubt the solution that we believe will mass market adoption.”

Will Switchvox keep the company name and product name?

Bill: They’re going to become Digium. For the foreseeable month or two then it will be business as usual because we don’t want to change anything and they’ll continue to offer their products, the SOHO and SMB version. We are working violently on an integration plan that we will announce the product strategy and the details going forward.

So they will keep their name, they’ll be a part of Digium, the product line will still remain Switchvox?

Bill: At least until we get it branded and re-launched as a Digium product with a subscription attached to it.

What happens to Switchvox employees?

Bill: All the employees from Switchvox will remain employees and we will keep the facility in San Diego. It will become the first regional office for Digium and sales office as well on the West Coast.

Knowing that Digium strongly supports open source and calls proprietary or hybrid-open/proprietary solutions “evil” (See Mark Spencer’s IT Expo keynote), I was very interested to hear his response to my next question and that is, “Here’s a tough question for you. So now typically Digium the developers of the Asterisk GPL code, totally open source, what have you. But Switchvox obviously took the Asterisk GPL code but added their own proprietary stuff. You’re not going to take the Switchvox code that they’ve done over the years and add it to the GPL, correct? That’s going to be your secret sauce.”

Mark Spencer: Well actually, the plan is to be able to take technologies that exist today as external things in Switchvox right - so Switchvox much like Fonality was kind of built on the idea of trying to keep the stuff out of Asterisk and put it somewhere else where it could be retained as a traditional and proprietary product. And our goal is to migrate those technologies from you know – try to get stuff that’s today ‘proprietary’ outside of Asterisk into technologies that can live within Asterisk and be open source. So yeah, we definitely intend to try to have some strategy for moving some of those technologies from Switchvox into open source Asterisk.

I replied, “Wow. That’s interesting. So you’re taking the proprietary code that they’ve developed - a lot of the secret sauce that Switchvox wrote and you’re going to help bring that to the open source community. You really are eating your own dog food.”

I recalled Mark Spencer's IT Expo keynote where he espoused the benefits of truly 100% open source solutions and how this contrasted sharply with some of Digium’s competitors such as Fonality. Again, Mark called hybrid-open/proprietary solutions “evil”. I couldn't help but think of Digium vs. Fonality as Superman vs. Bizarro. Who is Bizarro and who is Superman I leave for you to decide. Speaking of Bizarro, the season premiere of Smallville featuring Bizarro will be on tonight (Thursday).

I'm also reminded of Star Trek's Mirror Mirror episode where you there were nearly identical characters from alternate universes - but one set of characters good and one evil. (Though who wasn't rooting for "evil" Spock? Gotta love that goatee!)

Mark Spencer: So as a contrast right, look at what Fonality did. They bought an open source project [trixbox/asterisk@home] and then turned it into a proprietary product. What we are trying to do is go the other way. Take something that started out as a fully proprietary product and to try to leverage that to bring some additional technologies into open source. That's an interesting angle that I don't think anyone has covered.

An interesting angle indeed. Take proprietary code, make it open source, and give it to the Asterisk community. Beautious, I say!

FōnCloud appears to be a new Voice 2.0 application in the works. Shai Berger, one of the founders of FōnCloud, happened to post a comment to my Proof is NOT in the Pudding Media.com post where I was very negative about speech-recognition word spotting to push ads to users. I wasn't familiar with Shai or FōnCloud so I thought I'd check out www.foncloud.com, but it simply says "coming soon". I headed on over to Shai's blog and noticed he called his blog "Call the Cloud".

In his somewhat rebuttal to my Pudding Media blog post, Shai explains why having a 3rd party on the call in the "cloud" is a good thing.

He writes in Look Past the Pudding:

Once you have speech recognition “on the call” lots of options open up. What if you could explicitly direct the cloud during your call?

“Cloud, show us Italian restaurants downtown.”
“… what’s the weather for tonight.”
“… call me a taxi.”

What if you could define your own voice commands (like a vocal YubNub?).

Once we become comfortable that the cloud is a 3rd party on our call, a world of possibilities opens up.

Think about this in a business context…
“Cloud, what appointments do I have next Tuesday?”
“… conference in Bob from accounting.”
“… how many units of the XL45 do we have in the warehouse?”

<snip>
Cloud-routing of phone calls is ultimately going to improve the calling experience.

If it’s done right you will want to make your calls through the cloud and it won’t be about saving money at all.

That’s what we’re working on at FōnCloud.

It's this last line that is most fascinating. It sounds like FōnCloud is working on something that sounds eerily similar to Wildfire, a sophisticated personal assistant with speech-recognition built-in that allows to issue commands (get calendar, email, call Mr. Smith, etc). I actually met one of the founders way-back-when for a meeting in a Las Vegas hotel. I believe Wildfire started in the mid 1990s and was highly touted, but didn't get market traction. Perhaps now is the time?

Of course, TellMe, now a Microsoft subsidiary, also has speech recognition functionality and is well-known for their toll-free 800 number (800-555-TELL) that lets you issue commands to let you retrieve stock quotes, movie times, etc. TellMe also has the largest VoiceXML deployment in the world and they allow enterprises to develop VoiceXML applications. But TellMe doesn't exist in the "cloud", so it wouldn't be able to simply listen in on outbound calls to see if you issue commands for ANY outbound call you make.

In fact, according to Shai's LinkedIn profile, "FonCloud is building advanced features for web-telephony integration. Our target customers are all the consumer Voice Service Providers (VSPs) which includes telco's, cableco's, pure-play VoIP companies and PC-based offerings (Skype, GTalk, YahooVoice). Our features will be available as hosted services on a white-label basis."

Wow, this is VERY interesting. Since telcos, cablecos, and pure VoIP players all exist in the "cloud", they are the ones connecting the call and therefore they have the ability to listen to verbal commands or inject advertisements (like Pudding Media does). I certainly DO see the value in having the "cloud" intelligently listen to my conversations and listen for my verbal commands. I can see it useful for stuff like "Conference my entire IT department using their cell phone numbers" or "What is on my calendar today?" or "Read my email". You can get really advanced. For instance, teenagers can say "Tell me who hasn't yet accepted my evite.com invite for my party". Then you can say "call not responders alphabetically" or something like that. The possibilities are endless.

Tradeshows are always a fluctuating business. What could be the greatest tradeshow in the world one year, could be a disaster the next - or worse gone forever. Comdex anyone? As part of the TMC team, I strive as best I can to make sure TMC puts on a great IT Expo show, whether it's recommending speakers, moderating panels, or covering the plethora of news that inevitably comes out of Internet Telephony Expo.

So it is extremely nice to read Rich Tehrani's roundup of testimonials from the Los Angeles show from some very happy exhibitors. Certainly hearing feedback from exhibitors and attendees not only is a great morale boost to the TMC team, but it also gives an idea of what was "good" about the show - whether they were able to network with people, get customer leads, etc.

Let's face it, there are several other IP communications-related shows that TMC has to compete for attendees and exhibitors. So TMC is very proud to have had 6,871 attendees at IT Expo. We must be doing something right. I might add that inevitably at all the IT Expo's I've attended over the years, I encounter many exhibitors that tell me IT Expo's biggest strength is that it draws customers/buyers to the show. And don't forget that Rich offers a 100% money-back guarantee for TMC's VoIP tradeshow.

Of course, TMC is not beyond criticism or room for improvement, so by all means, if you have any  negative testimonials - let's call them "suggestions" for the show, post a comment here or on Rich's blog.

Truphone has announced true VoIP on the iPhone over WiFi. It's unclear from the announcement what sort of application runs on the iPhone. I assume it's a Flash VoiP softphone of some sort. They also announced VoIP Facebook integration! Oh the irony, I just blogged this morning about VoIP and Facebook integration, as well as native VoIP on the iPhone in this same post using Flash or Adobe AIR (future).

This from the truphone blog...

Truphone will today give the first public demonstration of a Voice over Internet Protocol over Wi-Fi phone call on the Apple iPhone. Chief executive officer James Tagg will make the VoIP call in front of an audience of 350 delegates to DEMOfall 07 in San Diego, CA.

The company will also give a demonstration of an application that mashes up social networking site Facebook and traditional telephony. Any Facebook user will be able to click on a friend's Truphone 'Call Me' button, and a free phone call will be initiated to whichever phone their friend has chosen. This will mean free calls to real phones for everyone in the Facebook community.

Altogether, Truphone will today demonstrate:
- VoIP on the Apple iPhone (SIP-SIP, SIP-Phone, Phone-SIP)
- VoIP from Facebook (to SIP and to PSTN)
- and, as an encore, Facebook-iPhone using SIP.

Update: Oliver Starr from Blognation has some more juicy details and includes a screenshot:

Oliver writes, "Currently requires the use of terminal on the iPhone to tell the iPhone to use its on-board SIP stack to place the call over WiFi instead of via the SIM card. To use the terminal application, in turn requires that you first Jailbreak the phone using an application like iBrickr or iFuntastic. This is not an application for the inexperienced or the faint of heart."

Facebook is the most popular social networking site right now. Putting aside some of my anti-social networking views for a moment (due to tons of LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace email invites I get), why isn't Skype the #1 social networking application? Just to compare, Skype has over 220 million registered accounts and 9 million concurrent users as of January 2007. Facebook on the other hand claims 39 million active users as of August 2007.

It's tricky to compare their "active" user base numbers, since Skype users may shut down the Skype application or turn off their PC at the end of the day. This reduces their "concurrent" or currently "active" user base. So while it may max out at 9 million users at any given time, it may actually be more like 30 million unique Skype users over the course of a 24-hour period. Facebook on the other hand, since it's a web application may simply count a user as "active" as long as they logon at least once every 30 days.

Point being, both are very popular applications. So this gets back to my original premise as to why Skype hasn't taken off as a premiere social networking application. Let's look at what a social networking site allows you to do. First and foremost, a social networking site helps you find people, lost friends, business associates, etc. Skype too allows you to find people. I use Skype's Find People feature which lets you search by name, email address, language, city, state, country, age range, and gender as seen in this screenshot:



Skype's find feature is a bit limited however. You can't search on people's interest for example. Skype could easily transform it's website into a social networking site leveraging its database of millions of users. dating, interest groups, etc. can browse by category and 1-click initiate a Skype call or conference with or without video. Skype is about communicating with friends, family, industry colleagues. Many use it as their primary communications application. But while it is strong in voice and IM, it has virtually no web functionality (or Web 2.0 if you prefer). So combine Skype (communications) with social networking and you get social  networking communications. Bit wordy and networking and communications are redundant. Maybe just social communications.

Ironically, I had this post drafted for a few weeks, but got tied up with traveling to IT Expo, so never finished it and today I just came across news that Facebook is adding instant messaging functionality. So essentially Facebook is adding one of of Skype's core features (IM) - can a Facebook VoIP client be far behind? It seems that a new cool Facebook app comes out daily, though a web-based VoIP app is much more complex. Then again, Adobe has not-so-secretly been developing VoIP functionality which will run in Flash, which has a high penetration install-rate on both Windows and Macs, so it is cross-platform. So it wouldn't be too hard to embed a VoIP application on a Facebook page simply using Flash.

It certainly would be fascinating to see a Web 2.0 app like Facebook cross-over into becoming a (web-based) VoIP client application -- a traditional desktop application. Now with Facebook adding IM communications, Skype needs to step up and offer something more than just IM, voice, and video. Skype needs to get into the social networking game.

It shouldn't be that hard for them to add social networking to their website. They already capture some demographic information. Not to mention, one of the coolest features of social networking apps is the ability to view "connections" or links between people, i.e. see the buddy/contact list of your buddies. Skype could even display a graph depicting all of these "connections" simply by cross referencing your buddy list against the buddies within each of your buddies (level 1), and then the buddies within those buddies (level 2), and so on and so forth. Skype can leverage their "fat" desktop client for some features, but also extend much of the social networking functionality to the Web.

Just as an aside, I'm aware of at least two solutions that leverage Flash to be able to embed VoIP onto a web page. First, at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo, I met with Ming Yong from VoiceRoute who demo'ed Druid Live, a click-to-call Flash-based VoIP application platform. Using a browser both for the originating (outbound call) and terminating/receiving (inbound call) Ming demonstrated a VoIP call between the two browsers. No software download - all Flash.

I recently came across a company called Ribbit that built an application in Flex and which runs on the Flash Player, and therefore doesn't requires a download and supports full telephone capabilities. According to the website, "The RibbitPhone Component will give Rich internet application developers the ability to make and receive calls, record/send and receive voicemail, as well as add and manage contacts."

A cool VoIP application utilizing Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) was created simulating the Apple iPhone UI called the AIR iPhone. Using the AIR iPhone combined with the RibbitPhone component you can make VoIP calls using the simulated iPhone. Of course, the app won't run on the real iPhone just yet since Adobe AIR doesn't run on any mobile devices, including the iPhone. However Intel and Adobe have promised to get Adobe AIR running on mobile phones with Intel's new low-power x86 mobile chips. So in theory, a 100% VoIP softphone client running on the iPhone is quite possible.

Anyway, check out the cool Adobe AIR iPhone video:


Conclusion:
Facebook has now entered Skype's space with the addition of IM. VoIP might not be that far behind. Skype needs to grow beyond offering simple avatars and ringtones and get in the social networking game to compete. In fact, this also holds true for MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. This probably explains why Microsoft is interested in buying Facebook. VoIP applications can no longer be silo applications or they will lose.

Rich Tehrani has word that Packet8 is going to be picking up 12,000 VoIP subscribers from some unknown VoIP provider that is folding up shop over the next 3 months. Let the guessing game begin, who is it?

Well, we know it isn't Vonage, since they have millions of subscribers, but they have their own problems, including another patent loss in the courts yesterday to Sprint Nextel, which I also wrote about here.

I'm always getting requests for information on good VoIP testing tools. Well, I just came across some interesting news that hit the news wires about a new bulk VoIP testing tool.

Ixia (NASDAQ: XXIA), a leading, global provider of IP performance test systems, has announced the IxLoad(TM) SIP solution, the first VoIP test platform to provide both functional and bulk VoIP testing. Ixia's VoIP test solution provides an environment of real-world triple-play traffic that accurately models live network environments. Using Ixia's test platform and the IxLoad SIP 3.40 solution, a single test chassis emulates millions of realistic call scenarios — surpassing the scale of most network appliances.

In the past, network equipment manufacturers and service providers used test equipment to perform either functional or stress testing, but not both. In addition, functional tests were performed on a very low scale for protocol correctness and stress tests used simplistic scenarios — not real-world conditions.

"Problems occur in modern VoIP networks because of stress conditions not directly related to the VoIP protocols,” said Jessy Cavazos, senior analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "Witness a recent network outage that was caused by a massive flood of connections to the network following a network update. Real-world VoIP testing can uncover such problems before they become very expensive.”

IxLoad SIP provides network equipment manufacturers a test solution needed to perform bulk VoIP testing on a wide range of SIP- and RTP (real-time transmission protocol)-based devices, including SBCs (session border controllers), security appliances and IP-based PBXs. Full state machine and message content control assures complete VoIP protocol testing for all vendors' devices. Protocol tests are quickly scaled and combined with the other components of triple-play traffic for a real-world VoIP test.

"IxLoad is the complete solution for VoIP and triple-play network testing because it addresses all aspects of voice delivery in a multiservice network, along with the video, Internet data and infrastructure traffic that accompany voice,” said Victor Alston, senior vice president of Product Development at Ixia.
Service providers and enterprises will find IxLoad SIP ideal for automated bulk VoIP testing. Regressions are performed easily with real-world scenarios that ensure that small changes do not cause unexpected outages.

"Ixia lets us be on the offense rather than the defense when it comes to network performance and reliability,” said Eric Douglas, vice president of Engineering at Deltacom, one of the largest facilities-based competitive communications providers in the Southeast. "In terms of ensuring network stability, Ixia is absolutely paramount. When you have network stability, customers are satisfied and anything is possible.”
IxLoad SIP emulates user agents that use SIP and RTP. Default configurations and state machines can be constructed for any session lifetime scenario. Message contents may also be customized to test SBCs that perform the deep packet inspections required to enforce QoS policies, thus ensuring that subscribers receive flawless video, high-quality voice calls and high-throughput Internet service.