Agilent Tests for the Next Generation

Agilent Technologies Inc. (www.agilent.com) this week at the Voice on the Net show in Phoenix unveiled the NGN Analysis System, a call monitoring tool intended to help service providers make softswitch-based networks as dependable as PSTN networks.

That’s important in these new networks in which trouble tickets often outnumber customers. Problems are common in such networks because, of course, they use new technology and bugs need to be worked out. Also, an MGCP call requires many more messages compared to an SS7-based call, which requires only five messages for call setup and tear down, so that presents more potential for problems.

The NGN software runs on a computer that plugs into the softswitch, SIP proxy or gatekeeper to pull signaling from all calls, creating a call flow record and keeping a record of each call in a separate folder. It also marks failed calls.

The interface for the system is web-based and the system is distributed so multiple users can access it.

The first release of NGN will begin shipping April 1. But Agilent plans to integrate its other products, such as NETeXPERT, Firehunter, acceSS7 and acceSS7IP, in with the NGN in future releases to support service level agreement monitoring, performance management, configuration management, voice quality testing and more.

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