IMS Forum Details Plugfest II

The IMS Forum this week at NXTcomm is discussing the forum’s second plugfest, conducted the first week of June at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL). Plugfest II had 18 companies rapidly deploy and debug a fully functional, end-to-end IMS network running rich multimedia applications such as instant messaging and IP Centrex services.

“In the first IMS Plugfest our participants demonstrated that using IMS a service provider could bring online a large best-of-breed central office switch in eight hours,” said Manuel Vexler, chair of the IMS Forum Technical Working Groups. “In the second Plugfest, we showed that IMS can enable a service provider to start offering on-demand, IP multimedia and mobile services in a half week.”

The IMS Forum Plugfest II almost doubled the participant count over the first test event, which was held in January. With an 80 percent return rate from Plugfest I, the test event tripled the number of test cases to 43 from the original 13. IMS Services tested during Plugfest II included instant messages/ SMS/ multimedia messaging (MMS), voice mail, advertising-supported free voice, as well as fixed-mobile convergence and video sharing.

Platinum sponsors for the event included Empirix and Ixia. In addition to contributing as a gold sponsor, Sonus Networks sponsored a video documentary of the event which will be shown this week in the IMS Forum and UNH-IOL booths, 3669 and 1224, respectively and that will subsequently available on YouTube.

The first Plugfest focused on basic voice, routing fundamentals and the interoperability of the IMS transport layer.

Plugfest III, scheduled for October, will continue to test and refine the areas addressed in Plugfest II, with additional focus on IP video, wireless functionality and security, SIM card integration and IPSec. In addition, the UNH-IOL is building a core IMS test bed that will be used during the plugfests and that will also be available for week-long blocks of testing between events.

IMS Forum www.IMSForum.org
UNH-IOL www.iol.unh.edu

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