Tuesday, June 10, 2008

VoIP Testing With Open Source Seagull Multi-protocol Traffic Generator Test Tool.

Are you thinking about testing you IMS and SIP performance?. There are many tools out there some free, some costly and some very costly. SO people tend to put IMS testing to back ground and the implementors also do a poor job of promoting testing the capabilities of environment and the networks.

So one at a time, we will bring up testing suits for VoIP IP Telephony, Starting with free testing software. If you are aware of these software please leave a comment. (We also make it easier to leave comments at this blog soon, like on wordpress!)

So today we will bring out a Seagull!. Seagull is a free, Open Source (GPL) multi-protocol traffic generator test tool. Primarily aimed at IMS (3GPP, TISPAN, CableLabs) protocols (and thus being the perfect complement to SIPp for IMS testing).

Seagull could be used as a powerful traffic generator for functional, load, endurance, stress and performance/benchmark tests for almost any kind of protocol. If you are wondering what these protocols are, you do not need this tool yet but there is always a chance to learn something. But it is very easy to use and understand.

In addition to being free (as in beer), its openness allows to add the support of a brand new protocol in very short time, - with no programming knowledge. For that, Seagull comes with several protocol families embedded in the source code:

  • Binary/TLV (Diameter, Radius and many 3GPP and IETF protocols)
  • External library (TCAP, SCTP)
  • Text (XCAP, HTTP, H248 ASCII)
  • Protocols are then implemented on top of those protocol families using user editable XML dictionaries. Those dictionaries describe how messages and parameters are encoded, allowing a great flexibility.

    A Seagull scenario - written in XML - describes the messages that are sent and received. It also indicate the behavior to adopt in case a message is unexpected or a check on a parameter fails.

Seagull supports currently the following protocols:
  • Diameter base ( RFC 3588) and any Diameter relating application - IMS Cx, Dx, Ro, Rf, Sh over TCP or SCTP or TLS over IPv4 or IPv6.
  • TCAP ITU and ANSI and any protocol over TCAP (Camel, GSM MAP, IS41, Win, ...) either over SS7 (E1/T1) or SIGTRAN. For that, it relies on HP OpenCall SS7.
  • XCAP over HTTP over IPv4
  • HTTP over IPv4
  • H248/Megaco ASCII form over UDP or TCP or SCTP/IPv4
  • Radius (subset) over IPv4.

Entirely coded in C++, Seagull is optimized for performances.

Specifics regarding SIP Protocol could be found here.

So if you are the technical type, why don't you head out and download the SIP / IMS Testing Software.

Ready to install packages are available for HP-UX (PARisc and IPF/IA64), Linux and Win32 (Cygwin). Seagull can also be compiled from the source code.

A short white paper on Seagull "Seagull - Open Source tool for IMS testing" is available.

Seagull Documentation.


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