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Networks & Infrastructure
GLOBALCOMM: Testing Kicks Up a Notch
New Services, New Networks Drive Equipment Vendors’ Changes
by Jim Barthold
The demand for new services like the triple play of voice,
videoand data over IP networks and a changing network
environment itself are leading equipment vendors to revisit
and revise their technology.
Spirent Communications, for instance, is using GLOBALCOMM
to unveil a wireless channel emulator -- the SR-500 -- that lets
both WiMAX equipment vendors and service providers test
network reliability before placing products in the field. The
emulator works within the Spirent Test Center to emulate field
conditions without being in the field.
The SR-5500 is for “both the fixed and mobile versions of
WiMAX,” said Salim Manji, the SR-5500 product manager at
Spirent. “It is a lab piece of equipment that lets the base
station and the subscriber station communicate in a regular
RF environment that looks like it’s happening in a real world.”
Agilent Technologies, meanwhile, is concentrating on the
services that are running over converged IP networks –
whether cable, telco or wireless – with a triple play test product
aimed at R&D engineers, test engineers, quality engineers
and those who are installing early deployment and verifying
network topologies, said David Bass, vice president/general
manager of Agilent’s Data Networks division.
“Everywhere that triple play services are coming off the core
and out to subscribers they have labs and they all have R&D
teams that use these tools,” Bass said.
The testing tools should help operators get new services to
market more quickly and more reliably, he added.
“The service providers are in intense competition and under
intense pressure to get new revenues from their new services
and to compete with each other on alternatives. They have to
get these new services deployed…but they have to perform.
Making sure that they perform together is a new complexity,”
he said.
Bass said the Agilent tools can distinguish different services
being delivered down the pipe and assure that they operate
together.
“That is quite unique,” he claimed. “That is a new complexity
in the testing problem.”
The new equipment, he emphasized, is an addition to what
network providers are already using.
“All we’re doing is adding new network interfaces and new
applications. This is an application that gets added to the
standard platform and then it brings on emulation and
simulation of entire network infrastructures,” he said. “This
allows the service providers to verify when they turn up the
service that they have quality that will be delivered to every
single end user.”
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