Eyeing a communications technology whose systems are getting more and more attention from security experts in a slower economy that feeds the cyber-criminal activity, a Calabasas, California-based company today launched what it calls “the next generation in residential and business VoIP testing.”
Officials at Ixia, an IP test systems supplier, say their so-called “IxLoad Voice” solution matches the latest media gateways’ capacities with 1 million SIP- and RTP-based calls per chassis. The capacity – which Ixia (News - Alert) officials describe as five times better than the nearest competitor – is driven by the company’s “Acceleron-XP” load module.
According to Anupam Sahai, vice president of marketing at Ixia, 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.
“We developed our Acceleron-XP and 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,” Sahai said.
Certainly, as analysts at hi-tech market research firm Research & Markets note here, VoIP is emerging in this slower economy as an increasingly mainstream, cost-effective technology.
With the proliferation of VoIP, security experts tell TMCnet, threats of attacks are spreading.
This week, in an interview posted here, Radware Ltd.’s product marketing manager of security, Ron Meyran, told TMCnet that as more people get laid off, they will have more time to spend on the Internet and will believe that they can get things for free – a fertile ground for scams and identity theft.
Recently, Radware (News - Alert) introduced a new line of DefensePro products that are designed, among other things to protect VoIP services and, specifically, to address SIP vulnerabilities.
“The VoIP service offers voice services over a shared IP infrastructure,” Meyran told TMCnet. “The motivation to deploy VoIP rather than the traditional PSTN is cost reduction. However VoIP, based on SIP, is exposed to IP based attacks that do not exist in the PSTN.”
Officials at Ixia say their IxLoad tests VoIP network components, including IP-PBXs, softswitches, call managers, session border controllers and media gateways with realistic scenarios involving multiple voice protocol, 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,” company officials say. “This 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/Skinny, MGCP, H.323, and H.248 – all with complex call flows and Class 5 features.”
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Michael Dinan is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Michael's articles, please visit his columnist page.
