Spirent Communications supports Alcatel-Lucent’s triple play testing and tests Cisco's IPTV infrastructure

June 20, 2007

3 Min Read

LONDON -- Spirent Communications plc (LSE: SPT), a leading global provider of performance analysis and service assurance solutions, announced today it will collaborate with Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) to enable solution validation within Alcatel-Lucent’s powerful IP Transformation Center (IPTC), located in Antwerp, Belgium. Spirent’s collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent enables operators to transition to IP networks faster and with better quality.

"Spirent’s new platform addresses our complex triple play testing needs and improves our productivity in the lab significantly,” said Didier Balcaen, director of the IPTC hosted integration activities. “With Spirent TestCenter 2.0, we are able to emulate and characterize an end-to-end Triple Play network with 24,000 subscribers watching MS-IPTV, using VoIP telephones, and browsing the internet simultaneously with quality of service and quality of experience key performance indicators monitoring.”

Using Spirent’s triple play test solutions, Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Transformation Center (IPTC) lab in Antwerp can now validate QoS algorithms on their triple play network at high subscriber loads, and exceed all expectations to deliver unmatched subscriber quality of experience (QoE). The IPTC lab employs the Spirent TestCenterTM GUI, which easily converts test cases into automated scripts for around-the-clock testing. They also use Spirent TestCenter 2.00 with the L4-7 Triple Play bundled solutions to test with real H.264 video, real voice using SIP, and real application data.

“Spirent is pleased to be able to arm Alcatel-Lucent with innovative solutions that give it a competitive edge through testing,” said Rob Piconi, chief operating officer, Spirent Communications. “Our test and measurement solutions are much more than just boxes. Testing gives our customers a strategic advantage to gain a greater return on their investments, improve productivity and help ensure the quality of experience for end users.”

In a separate release:

LONDON -- Spirent Communications plc (LSE: SPT), a global provider of performance analysis and service management solutions, today announced that the European Advanced Networking Test Center AG (EANTC) selected Spirent testing solutions to analyze Cisco Systems’ IPTV infrastructure in a test commissioned by Light Reading.

Spirent’s Global Services team collaborated with EANTC to conduct an independent test of Cisco Systems IPTV infrastructure to verify an end-to-end IPTV and triple-play solution focusing on the network service requirements of broadcast TV and video-on-demand (VOD) applications.

For this event, Spirent supplied Spirent TestCenter, Spirent Video Quality Test System and Spirent GEM Ethernet Network and Impairment Emulator. In addition to test equipment, Spirent provided a three-person engineering support team for the pre-staging and the intense two-week period of formal testing. The Spirent Professional Services team collaborated with EANTC to create the test scripts to run the test.

With engineering support and equipment, Spirent offered load generators for emulation of 120 DSLAMs plus 65 service ports (GigE and 10GigE), performed video quality measurements, and conducted impairment generation for the duration of the test.

“IPTV is highly complex and requires a different, more holistic focus in implementation and testing than traditional broadband access technologies,” said Carsten Rossenhövel, managing director of EANTC. “We found that Spirent was a great testing partner for IPTV solutions and support services, and together we put Cisco’s network design under a rigorous test routine.”

Covering four main areas that included quality of service (QoS), massive scalability of broadcast services, high availability of all services and user experience during high network load conditions, this test event exposed the realities of IPTV service deployment and need for thorough testing before the service goes live.

Spirent’s test systems enabled EANTC to analyze QoS from the perspective of the user, often referred to as quality of experience (QoE), and by the handling of preferential services by the network including network resource allocation in the case of limited resources.

Furthermore, with Spirent TestCenter the test was able to identify small sub-parts-per-million loss in all the data, and to analyze the associated flows in detail, identifying the less than 0.00002 percent packet loss in IPTV multicast service.

“Testing of IPTV networks and service can no longer be about fixing problems when they arise,” said Neil Anderson, vice president, Global Services, Spirent Communications. “Spirent is helping our customers identify potential issues before going live, making testing a strategic advantage for them.”

Spirent Communications plc

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