Agilent Technologies has introduced a multiplay test solution to combine line-rate, hardware-based performance statistics for video, voice and data services on the same test port.
Network equipment manufacturers and service providers can use the Agilent N2X multiservices test solution to characterise the ability of individual network elements or entire networks prior to deployment. The test solution can help enforce quality of service (QoS) requirements and meet subscriber quality of experience (QoE) expectations, across multiple services at once.
N2X provides powerful and flexible multiplay traffic generation and analysis based on user-defined subscriber profiles. It is easy to simulate complex network topologies and dynamic subscriber behaviours using the large breadth of N2X protocol emulations, including DHCPv4, DHCPv6, PPPoX, MLD and IGMP.
Each test port can concurrently display real-time video media quality metrics and IPTV channel-zapping times along with voice MOS and data-forwarding performance measurements on a per-subscriber basis. This capability is critical in order to identify how the number and behaviour of multiplay subscribers and mix of service traffic impacts overall subscriber QoE.
Enhancements to the product include:
- Per-port multiplay measurements have been added to the existing N2X IPTV QoE productivity applications for both IPv4 and IPv6 networks;
- New N2X VoIP SIP emulation software to complement existing software for testing video and data services and cover all multiplay service implementations;
- N2X ANCP/L2CP protocol emulation to validate the topology discovery and line configuration capabilities of ANCP-enabled routers and switches, which are key to ensuring subscriber QoE.
