Ixia, a leading supplier of IP test systems, today announced the next generation in residential and business VoIP testing. With its ultra-high performance, IxLoad™ Voice matches the capacity of modern media gateways with an unprecedented 1 million SIP- and RTP-based endpoints per chassis – five times the capacity of its nearest competing product. Ixia’s new Acceleron™-XP load module implements voice protocols with hardware to reach these major capacity milestones.

IxLoad tests VoIP network components, including IP-based PBXs, softswitches, call managers, session border controllers, and media gateways, using highly realistic scenarios involving multiple voice protocols, complex calling sequences, and triple-play mixes of voice, video and data traffic. IxLoad’s unique subscriber modeling emulates user communities that vary in service usage and timing. This approach yields performance results that accurately predict live-network capacity – allowing service providers to correctly provision their networks. Ixia supports all of the essential VoIP signaling and transmission protocols, including SIP, RTP, SCCP, MGCP, H.323, and H.248 – with complex call flows and Class 5 features.

After many years of isolated, small-scale consumer and business roll-outs, VoIP deployments have finally gone mainstream. Infonetics Research forecasts a 25% compound aggregate growth in residential and SOHO hosted VoIP subscribers through 2011, when they are expected to number over 187 million. To meet this growing demand, network equipment manufacturers must deliver VoIP devices that can handle more calls and a complex array of protocols and services. Both network equipment manufacturers and converged service providers of all sizes need to verify the performance and interoperability of new VoIP devices and networks, ensuring that they can handle complex, heavy VoIP traffic loads.

“VoIP protocols and technology may be well understood, but there are a host of potential problems when a high number of calls are mixed with large volumes of data and video traffic,” said Anupam Sahai, vice president of marketing at Ixia. “We developed our Acceleron-XP, VQM modules and IxLoad test application to emulate city-scale communities of real-world users – allowing our customers to discover and solve their device and network problems before their customers do.”

IxLoad emulates and tests security and network infrastructure protocols, including IPSec, PPP, DHCP and multiple forms of authentication. Voice call security is also supported by SIP/TLS and SRTP. Ixia’s VQM support module delivers real-time evaluation of end-user quality of experience (QoE), such as PESQ scores for 300 simultaneous calls – making it unnecessary to wait for time-consuming, post-test analysis. IxLoad facilitates rapid testing, refinement, troubleshooting and automation to maximize testing productivity.

“VoIP services have already been widely adopted by consumers and SOHOs, but we expect the next growth in adoption to come from SMBs,” said Matthias Machowinski, analyst at Infonetics. “For them, service reliability and voice quality will be key buying criteria. With Ixia’s new IxLoad Voice, service providers can comprehensively test their networks before they ramp up these high value subscribers, so that there are no surprises when subscribers are turned up.”

Ixia’s single platform approach, with a range of interfaces and targeted test applications, allows network equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprises to ensure the quality and performance for all of their devices – individually and in combination. Ixia’s test applications cover conformance, performance, automation and live-network maintenance. Ixia’s IxRave provides service verification of deployed VoIP and other networks with active testing; its unique testing and mapping facility ensures VoIP problems are quickly isolated to a geographical area or home.

With Ixia’s IxLoad Voice, NEMs bring their products to market faster, and service providers and enterprises can be sure that their deployments meet their capacity and responsiveness needs. IxLoad Voice allows service providers to evaluate components and provision their networks with confidence – eliminating expensive network degradation and down-time. IxLoad Voice is available immediately and will be demonstrated at IPTV World Forum in London from March 23^rd to the 25^th, in stand #34.

About Ixia

Ixia is a leading supplier of test, measurement and service verification solutions to Internet equipment manufacturers, carriers, service providers, government agencies and enterprises. Ixia’s platform is used to test IP networking equipment of all types and sizes, with powerful and flexible test applications that handle the widest range of Internet usage – from routing and switching to converged applications traffic to validating the service quality of live networks and services. Ixia’s multiplay test solutions are acknowledged as the market leader – addressing the growing need to test voice, video, and data services and network capability under real-world conditions.

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This material is for informational purposes only and subject to change without notice. It describes Ixia’s present plans to develop and make available to its customers certain products, features and capabilities. Ixia is only obligated to provide those deliverables specifically included in a written agreement between Ixia and the customer.