Telecom Test Product Announcements Coincide with Supercomm
-- Test & Measurement World, 6/24/2004
With Supercomm running June 24-26 in Chicago, numerous telecom test-equipment makers have sent new product announcements to the T&MW offices over the last few days.
Several companies announced test products for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which is now finding rapid deployment in service provider and enterprise networks. Acterna, Agilent Technologies, NetTest, and Spirent Communications have all announced VoIP test products, but other telecom test products have appeared this week.
Acterna (www.acterna.com) introduced four test products for deployment of VoIP networks. The FST-2802 Ethernet and Fibre Channel tester now tests protocols to layer 3, the IP layer. Acterna has also introduced an on-site training course covering VoIP testing.
The company’s T-BERD 8000 optical network tester now supports wavelengths of 1250 nm through 1650 nm. The polarization mode dispersion (PMD) module for the T-BERD 8000 combines PMD, spectral attenuation, and DWDM channel measurements in one module.
Agilent Technologies (www.tm.agilent.com) introduced the N2X multiservice tester on June 21. At the opening of Supercomm, the company also announced enhancements to its OmniBER OTN communication performance analyzer that tests SONET/SDH technologies.
The OmniBER OTN (www.agilent.com/comms/otn) provides Generic Framing Procedure (GFP) encapsulation analysis, which lets you decode framed and transparent GFP frames encapsulated within high-order and low-order SONET containers. Another enhancement is Ethernet payload analysis, which enables frame sequence and "packet BER" of Ethernet traffic transported over SONET/SDH.
Anritsu (www.us.anritsu.com) introduced the MP1590B network performance tester. The instrument performs Ethernet over SONET, Ethernet/IP, Virtual Concatenation, Optical Transport Network (OTN), and SONET/SDH tests. The MP1590B supports all the Ethernet modules of the company’s MD1230A test system, allowing it to conduct Ethernet and IP performance tests from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps while using its other input modules to test Ethernet over SONET, OTN, or SONET/SDH links.
Circadiant Systems (www.circadiant.com), a maker of stressed-eye testers, has added 850 nm and 1310 nm wavelengths to its Circadiant Systems' optical testers.
optical testers. The additions let the company’s equipment perform stressed-eye conformance tests on IEEE 802.3ae 10 gigabit Ethernet components and systems. 
The company has also added electrical stressed-eye test capability to its equipment. The electrical test feature lets you test communications on 10 gigabit Ethernet switches, servers, and routers for compliance to standards.
Ixia (www.ixiacom.com) announced that participants at a Power over Ethernet (PoE, IEEE 802.3af) test event at the University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Lab’s (www.iol.unh.edu) PoE Consortium used the company’s PoE Tester. The event was held June 1-4 in Durham, NH. Participants included Linear Technology, Matsushita Electric Works, PowerDsine, Red Hawk/CDT, Texas Instruments, and Transition Networks.
Connector maker Molex unveiled a loopback assembly (www.molex.com/fiber/lcloopback.html) designed for Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) and Small Form Factor (SFF) devices. The assembly lets you test a device’s communications by looping back a transmitted data stream into a device’s receiver. You can use it to test gigabit Ethernet, ATM, Fibre Channel, and other communications channels.
Last week, NetTest (www.nettest.com) added VoIP to its tester line. The company also enhanced its CMA 5000 gigabit Ethernet tester. The enhancements reduce testing time by simplifying test setups. The CMA 5000 also lets you specify start and stop line rate bit-rate resolution (100 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 1 Mbps, 100 kbps, or 10 kbps. Thus you can test the throughput of Gigabit Ethernet over SONET or SDH links that contain concatenated virtual tributaries or circuits.
Spirent Communications (www.spirentcom.com) has introduced several new products just prior to and during Supercomm.A push-to-talk (PTT) tester lets you monitor registration delays, call setup delays, floor availability delays, audio delays and audio quality. PTT is based on VoIP technology. Spirent’s Abacus 5000 IP Telephony Test Migration System emulates an entire VoIP/PSTN network, which lets you perform end-to-end testing with legacy systems. You can test for scalability, performance, and voice quality.
The SmartSight portfolio of diagnostic software, network interface devices, and professional services can help you test wireline, wireless, cable service, enterprise-specific service failures in IP-based services such as VoIP, IP Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Video over IP, and Ethernet virtual LANs (VLANs).
The AX/4000 digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) tester now supports ADSL2+ which makes the so-called “Triple Play” (Internet Access, voice, and video over DSL) possible. The mAX IP and mAX SLAM interface for the AX/4000 can generate and analyze multiple data, voice, and video streams so you can perform quality of service (QoS) tests on ADSL2+ DSLAMs.
Sunrise Telecom (www.sunrisetelecom.com) has added a fiber-analysis module to its Scalable Test Toolkit (STT). The module includes a dual wavelength OTDR, visual fault locator, bidirectional loss test, optical return loss, and variable optical attenuator.
