« T-Mobile Talks up UMA (or the Equivalent) | Main | BusinessWeek on T-Mobile, Others Convergence Plans »

August 3, 2006

AirMagnet Offers VoWLAN Test Suite

By Glenn Fleishman

If you can move data over it, you’d better be able to test: AirMagnet is known for planning, testing, and monitoring wireless LAN networks, and their latest product logically extends that into voice. The VoFi Analyzer is designed to determine the performance and security of VoWLAN. It’s a new technology and thus existing tools need to be updated or new tools developed for the particular characteristics. What happens if 50 people associated with a couple APs on insufficient backhaul make calls at once? Does the system leak authentication data? And so on.

AirMagnet cites an Infonetics’ report that the market will grow to $3.7b for VoWLAN by 2009. That’s a lot of purchasing decisions that could go wrong. VoFi Analyzer works across the entire VoWLAN chain, from IP-PBX through the network to the phone. It’s not just a tester, but a monitoring tool for quality across an active system. The company scored with an early AT&T connection; that firm is testing the software.

The press release doesn’t mention it, but I expect that AirMagnet is working with VoWLAN systems and handset makers to have secret sauce (or even open protocols) inserted in those products to provide better  reporting. Reporting often leads to improvements by tying in streams of performance data to systems that can act on it. A WLAN switch that can read VoIP service data might increase or decrease the power output of a given set of access points, or force associations of laptops to other APs, leaving a voice-heavy area preserved.

Posted by Glennf at August 3, 2006 10:43 AM

Categories: Testing, VoWLAN

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://db.isbn.nu/mt3/mt-tb.pl/3914

Comments

Post a comment