CAMARILLO, Calif. -- QoSmetrics, a leading provider of network performance assurance hardware and software solutions, today unveiled a new technology for its flagship products that for the first time will allow carriers, service providers and large enterprises to accurately and more deeply analyze the quality and performance of digitized MPEG streaming video in real time. The upgrade stems from QoSmetrics newly developed V-Factor technology, an algorithm and methodology that when used maximizes video quality through the entire chain of delivery right down to the end user. V-Factor removes previous limitations of relying on assessments that only inferred quality by delivering the first true technology that provides specific delay, loss and jitter metrics and pinpoint accuracy to network performance impairments. For the first time, V-Factor will allow for video quality measurement from a central network point but with the foresight of how a user might perceive them at their end point.
QoSmetrics V-Factor-enabled products are being beta tested by select unnamed carriers and service providers in Europe and Asia. V-Factor upgrades will be available by the end of April in a QoSmetrics general release version 3.3 for existing customers and will be shipped as part of new product purchases for video testing applications in the same timeframe. Release 3.3 provides a new microcode for QoSmetrics NetWarrior hardware probes that will provide real time video streaming decoding and video quality monitoring. This new addition provides, as with previous products, Internet Protocol (IP) Service Level Agreement (SLA) metrics such as delay, loss and jitter based on the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standard Y1540/1. It also provides metrics for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) such as Mean Opinion Score (MOS) capabilities based on ITU G107 and Video-over-IP metrics based on QoSmetrics' V-Factor and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) TR101290 metrics, as well as other Key Performance Indicators (KPI).
Network engineering management and quality assurance management at carriers, service providers and large enterprises that are deploying voice and video applications such as Internet-Protocol-TV (IPTV) and triple play (data, voice and video) applications are prime customers for QoSmetrics' newly upgraded products. Aggregation points such as a Point of Presence (POP) that connects a DSL Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) device to the multicast network are good candidates for V-Factor use. QoSmetrics' NetAdvisor - the central software monitoring solution - can be deployed in a service provider's control room and a user can access the NetAdvisor using their web browser. NetAdvisor provides both secured and un-secured access to users. The V-Factor microcode resides in NetWarrior, QoSmetrics hardware probe, but V-Factor can also be ported to other network appliances such as a setup box. With such simple and clear applications, QoSmetrics now offers customers, for the first time, a cost-effective solution that lets them also test and assure video quality in real time with the same degree of accuracy that they test and assure voice and data network performance.
"We are confident that our V-Factor technology will become a benchmark for how to accurately, precisely and cost-effectively measure digitized streaming video for the delivery of next generation services such as IPTV," said Yves Cognet, Chairman of QoSmetrics. "With V-Factor, network engineering management can gain the same level of confidence and assurance in the delivery of video-based services that they can now get with their data and voice networks to help them in their challenges of meeting tough SLA agreements and therefore assuring themselves of greater revenue."
QoSmetrics SA