[VoiceOps] CPE side Passive Monitoring

[Anthony Caiozzo]

Chiming in from the vendor perspective here... Telchemy manufactures a
variety of embedded and non-embedded applications that are focused on
measuring voice, video and other real-time service application performance.


Our VQmon software is the de facto industry standard, is P.564 Class 1
compliant and serves as the cornerstone for many industry products that
feature MOS scoring and associated diagnostics, such as Adtran (mentioned by
Jay below) as well as Edgewater, Polycom, Cisco and a wealth of network
measurement / management tools and applications.  A full list of vendors
with products currently shipping can be found on our website -
http://www.telchemy.com/partners.php.

There are typically three methods employed to measure/report on call/session
quality:

1. Measure live call quality @ the endpoint - typically achieved with an
embedded performance analysis model (VQmon) baked into the device.  
Here's pointer to a joint solutions guide
(http://community.polycom.com/polycom/attachments/polycom/technology-partner
s/12/1/Telchemy-SQmediatorSolution%20Guide_01082013.pdf) that covers how we
measure and report on EOL performance with Polycom, though there are a
number of other IP endpoint vendors that support the rfc6035 distributed
reporting model.  The benefit of this approach is being able to account for
all impairments that affect your customer experience - but the downside is
that sometimes you're measuring things (e.g. LAN performance) that you're
not directly responsible for or have no control over.  However - at the end
of the day - being able to understand what the net effect is of the total IP
connection can certainly be of immense value. 

2. Measure call quality @ the WAN demarcation point - typically achieved
with:
	a) a hardware probe (http://www.telchemy.com/appliances.php)
passively analyzing live customer traffic - providing full call setup,
teardown and media quality metrics
	b) a software probe running on customer provided hardware
(http://www.telchemy.com/sqprobe.php) passively analyzing live customer
traffic - providing full call setup, teardown and media quality metrics
	c) an active test agent (http://www.telchemy.com/dvqattest.php)
generating synthetic voice, video and data transactions to create a profile
of application performance and serve as a test head that can both probe the
carrier network as well as the local LAN for real-time, proactive diagnostic
purposes.

Recalling that Kris was looking for a tool that enabled him to isolate WAN
performance - it sounds as if our hardware/software probe line would make
most sense for his application though collecting performance information
from EOL devices certainly provides useful diagnostic information when one
needs to provide empirical data as to which side of the WAN connection is
causing the issue. 

Questions?  Happy to help however I can.

-anthony


Anthony Caiozzo
Telchemy - www.telchemy.com 
m: 617-312-5189  f: 678-387-3008
e: anthony.caiozzo at telchemy.com
support: 1-866-TELCHEMY
Skype: acaiozzo

-----Original Message-----
From: VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Jay
Hennigan
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 12:36 PM
To: voiceops at voiceops.org
Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] CPE side Passive Monitoring

On 10/29/14, 3:45 AM, Kris Alberts wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Looking for a cost effective, easily deployed, useful passive monitoring
> probe to be deployed at the customer prem for voip traffic monitoring.
>  My main objective is to reduce MTTR and provide a clear demarcation
> service for customers that supplies their own LAN. We use a variety of
> CPE device (primarily Cisco though) so I will need to find an external
> hardware probe that caters for all use cases.
> 
> There seems to be a variety of solutions available so was hoping you
> could share you experience on some of the solutions that you are using.
> I really need to understand the extent to which the added visibility
> optimised your product in terms of better support, fewer truck rolls
> etc. All of these listed products claims to do just that.

We use the Adtran TA900 series as a demarcation point, they are a very
versatile SIP toolbox with huge feature set. They also do voice quality
monitoring, can do packet capture, and can (but aren't required to)
interface with Adtran's N-Command central server that can store
historical data, back up configurations, etc.

This isn't passive, but it provides very good monitoring in addition to
PRI conversion, analog drops, SIP proxy, etc.

--
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - jay at impulse.net
Impulse Internet Service  -  http://www.impulse.net/
Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV
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