PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today introduced new tools that will allow equipment developers and service providers to evaluate the performance and scalability of key software protocols used to deliver voice and business data networking services over IP networks. The new applications are the industry’s first to support “stress” testing of key voice over IP (VoIP) and IP virtual private network (IP-VPN) protocols under peak loads and in simulated “real world” environments.. Stress testing allows equipment manufacturers and service providers to ensure that advanced services, such as IP voice calling and business data communications, will function reliably, at acceptable performance levels, prior to network deployment.

Agilent’s VoIP product for testing Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) implementations allows users to emulate a variety of SIP and PSTN1 equipment (SIP gateways/proxy servers, phones and PBX’s), generate simulated traffic for stress testing from both sides of the network, and manipulate many different protocol parameters to assess performance, reliability and fault handling. The test package can simulate thousands of users, placing and terminating both conventional and VoIP calls, and measure call set-up times, call completion rates and other performance statistics. Test cases can be repeated or scaled upwards to determine the capacity and robustness of the equipment being tested.

“As an ISP facilitator deploying IP services, we evaluate and maintain equipment from many different VoIP vendors,” said Lee Goodman, lead engineer, IP Communication Services of Genuity, a leading e-business infrastructure services provider. “Agilent’s VoIP test solutions will enable us to more accurately assess performance and pinpoint equipment software problems before they impact customer service levels.”

http://www.agilent.com