ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Spirent Communications™, a wholly owned business group of Spirent plc (NYSE: SPM and LSE: SPT), today announced two new test solutions that combine voice, fax and data modem test capabilities into single card solutions. Subsystems of Spirent’s Abacus1 and 2 solutions, the new Voice Resource Generators (VRG1 and VRG2) provide a full range of capacity testing and emulate high-density V.90 or newly adopted V.92 modem technology for both client and server modem traffic.Designed to meet the variety of user testing requirements, Spirent’s VRG1 test card provides capacity testing for up to 72 data modems or fax machines for circuit generators (CG), while the VRG2 test card supports up to 504 data modems or fax machines. The new high-capacity cards eliminate the need for fax and modem manufacturers, and service providers to purchase multiple test card solutions. Utilizing one of Spirent’s single-card VRG solutions, network equipment manufacturers are able to transmit a converged mix of fax, data and voice traffic at the same time, in order to validate the performance of their devices and expedite time to market. Additionally, Internet service providers can leverage the new Spirent solutions to verify service capacity capabilities and optimize bandwidth to assure enhanced subscriber services.“V.90 and V.92 modem technology continue to be the most popular methods for Internet access, therefore the converged network architecture needs to consistently and reliably deliver business-critical voice, data and fax services, said Bahaa Moukadam, vice president of product marketing, Spirent Communications – Performance Analysis Broadband. “Spirent’s VRG cards save customers time and money by enabling the necessary network and device reliability testing in single-card solutions.”Specific features of Spirent’s new VRG test cards include transmitting user-defined testing patterns, viewing the received test page, tracing information that reveals the details of each phase of a fax transmission and reporting connection speeds, throughput, and line-error rate for each channel. For data modem testing, both VRGs support Bell 103, Bell 212, V.21, V.22, V.22bis, V.32, V.32bis, V.34, V.90 and V.92, reporting connection speed, throughput, ping round-trip delay and bit-error rate testing for each channel. Users can send/receive ping and test FTP over a modem link by downloading or uploading files to an FTP server. Additionally, VRG1 can be used to test voice quality using PSQM or PESQ and VRG2 provides the CODECs emulation and PESQ voice quality testing for VoIP legacy and converged networks.In a separate release:Spirent Communications™, a wholly owned business group of Spirent plc (NYSE: SPM and LSE: SPT), today announced the addition of H.323 call generation and protocol analysis to its high-density platform for telephony testing, Abacus2. With today’s announcement, Spirent’ s Abacus2 leads the industry as the highest capacity, single-chassis voice over IP (VoIP) solution that supports PSTN and VoIP signaling, including session initiation protocol (SIP), media gateway control protocol (MGCP), H.323 protocol analysis and voice quality measurements. Abacus2 provides call generation with real time protocol (RTP) media and signaling from the same port. Capacity, feature, voice quality, and protocol decode testing from a single test set are new features and available for the first time.The highest capacity solution in the industry, Abacus2 can test 8,000 simultaneous VoIP calls with media and more than 32,000 without. The new H.323 functionality enables Abacus2 customers to test IP-PBXs, IP terminals, gatekeepers, and H.323 gateways. Developers and users of VoIP network products now can test both functional and performance capabilities of their products including call signaling, call connections and call load capabilities. This is crucial to delivering carrier-class voice solutions to enterprises and service providers.“Currently, customers may be using as many as five test systems to achieve the same testing Spirent can provide in a single-chassis solution,” said Bahaa Moukadam, vice president of product marketing, Spirent Communications – Performance Analysis Broadband. “With Abacus2’s combined features, users can analyze and debug product faults more efficiently and accurately, which allows them to deliver better quality products in less time.”In a separate release:Spirent Communications™, a wholly owned business group of Spirent plc (NYSE: SPM and LSE: SPT), today announced the addition of Megaco (often referred to as H.248) functionality to its high-density platform for telephony testing, Abacus2. By enabling Megaco signaling, the Abacus2 is now able to test media gateways, media gateway controllers and systems that use Megaco signaling. Megaco is a newer protocol for gateways that provide conversion of traffic from PSTN to VoIP networks. It is used for wireline and wireless voice and video transmission, enabling Spirent test tools to determine capacity and performance of these products and networks.Spirent supports Megaco, MGCP, SIP, and H.323 call signaling, as well as RTP, UDP and IP for media transmission. Megaco has potentially important roles to play in next-generation networks including 3G wireless and voice over ATM. Spirent has incorporated these protocols into the Abacus2 to enable the testing of equipment that is at the forefront of technology and to allow users to test their legacy circuit-switched technology. Spirent continues to aggressively develop the latest technology test tools while meeting customer needs for legacy product testing.“Abacus2 enables faster and more thorough testing, leading to better quality products in less time. Spirent doesn’t want to see any more stalled VoIP deployments due to quality issues,” said Bahaa Moukadam, vice president of product marketing, Spirent Communications – Performance Analysis Broadband. “With Abacus2’s combined features, network equipment manufacturers gain a better understanding of their products’ capabilities and performance, while reducing the amount of time and money spent in R&D and quality assurance.”Spirent plc