VON show goes beyond voice

VON Fall 2006 conference and exhibition, Boston, MA, September 11-14, 2006. www.von.com.

Martin Rowe, Senior Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 9/14/2006 11:19:00 AM

In just a few years, the VON conference has grown from a niche show to a hefty one that now boasts 250 exhibitors. Where VON originally stood for "Voice On the Net," the conference now uses the tagline "voice, video & vision."

Although voice over IP (VoIP) is still growing, video has really fueled VON's growth. Paralleling the growth of exhibitors showing everything from servers to billing software, the test component of VON has grown, too. In fact, test-and-measurement companies now contribute panelists to VON's conference sessions.

On Monday, September 11, Chris Kirk and Gary McFarlane of Tektronix joined Patrick Kelly of OSS Observer, Arndt Schroder of Tandburg Television, Keith Wymbs of Tut Systems, Todd DeWitt of Oxford Networks, and moderator Tim McElligott of Telephony to discuss "IPTV Quality and the Customer Experience."

The panelists discussed people's intolerance for low-quality video and how measurements such as packet jitter and loss play into the IPTV experience. "Quality begins before deployment," Kirk told the audience. "You need to test network elements such as headends and servers." Part of the problem is that, as Wymbs noted, "Networks were built for 10^–4 packet loss, but that's not good enough for video. You need 10^–8 packet loss."

DeWitt reported on his company's deployment in central Maine. Oxford Networks delivers uncompressed video to homes over GPON optical networks. "We had to recable many homes," he said. That's because cat-5 cable used for home networks limits bandwidth to 100 Mbps and the uncompressed video needs a 10-Gbps bandwidth.

Communications technical experts weren't the only speakers at VON. A theatre on the show floor featured Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-MA) who talked about the Telecommunications Act of 1996. (For more, see "A good idea at the time" in my "Rowe's and Columns" blog.)

IMS makes a splash
Fall VON saw the emergence of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and the equipment to test it. IMS is a protocol layer that, when completed, should let you use any communications service over any access network (WiFi, DSL, cable, cellular).

Spirent Communications introduced the Spirent Protocol Tester. It comes with a large set of predefined test cases for testing IMS core-network elements. The company has published a white paper, "Simulation Testing and Monitoring In IP Multimedia Subsystem Networks." As part of the announcement, Reef Point Systems demonstrated its security for voice and video calls that uses IMS to provide network access.

Tektronix announced Spectra2|VQM version 2.0 software for its Spectra2 network tester, which early IMS adopters can use in network test. Spectra2|VQM Version 2.0 adds video-quality testing to its voice capabilities.

There were plenty of other test-equipment announcements at VON. Radcom announced Omni-Q for IPTV, an instrument that monitors IPTV networks for network quality (jitter and packet loss), video-stream quality, video decoding, video-stream statistics, and other parameters. Ixia added capabilities to its Optixia modular test platform that supports voice, video, and data testing. The system can simulate up to 40 million Web site users making up to 1.5 million calls per second. For video, the system can simulate 30,000 users of standard-definition video.

JDSU introduced the QT-50 VoIP tester, which measures mean opinion score for voice quality. It also measures packet jitter and loss. Shunra Software unveiled the VE Network Appliance STN, which lets you simulate a bridge, switch, or router so you can alter the speed that network traffic flows across a LAN. Codima Systems announced autoVoIP Traffic Simulator, which can test VoIP networks prior to operation.

Azimuth Systems announced its Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) test suite for testing of VoWi-Fi phones and converged wireless devices. Opticom enhanced its content-quality test capabilities with PEVQ 2.0 software for video-quality testing. The software provides a score for video quality.

New-product announcements were just part of the news at Fall VON. Alliances and industry organizations also formed. The V2oIP quality alliance is now being organized starting with JDSU, Ditech networks, Empirix, Telchemy, Polycom, and Global IP Sound. A press release stated the alliance's goal to "combine the expertise of key technology providers, service providers, and industry experts to define industry best practices." Brix Networks and Texas Instruments will collaborate to develop tests that use the BrixWorx central-site correlation and reporting engine in conjunction with TI's PIQUA system to automate gathering of IP performance metrics.