NetQoS VoIP Monitor ties end user to network to give better QoS

SAN FRANCISCO (BusinessWire EON) August 20, 2007 -- NetQoS^® Inc. today launched NetQoS VoIP Monitor to help organizations gauge how well VoIP systems are delivering end-user services and pinpoint the network causes of quality issues. By adding call setup and call quality metrics to its existing VoIP management capabilities within the NetQoS Performance Center, NetQoS now offers the most comprehensive performance monitoring solution for converged networks.
NetQoS VoIP Monitor is a network-based VoIP solution that links quality of experience to network performance to speed troubleshooting, without server agents or probes. The product, working with Cisco IP Telephony systems running Cisco Unified CallManager 4.2 or later, provides insight into two of the most important components of VoIP quality: call setup operations (such as time to dial tone and post-dial delay) and audio quality (MOS and underlying network impairments). By tracking actual end user call quality, providing alerts on call performance issues, and isolating the cause of VoIP problems to the network source, NetQoS VoIP Monitor enables organizations to improve performance with faster troubleshooting.

“Monitoring VoIP performance without measuring actual call quality is like cooking without tasting the food. NetQoS VoIP Monitor focuses on the VoIP application itself, enabling IT personnel to understand call quality and connect it to the network impairments that may be causing issues,” said Jim McQuaid, senior product manager for NetQoS. “Combined with the existing VoIP capabilities of the NetQoS Performance Center, which includes end-to-end performance monitoring, traffic analysis, and device performance management with IP SLA reporting, NetQoS now has a powerful solution for ensuring optimal network and application performance before, during, and after VoIP implementation.”

With the addition of NetQoS VoIP Monitor, the NetQoS Performance Center now provides a complete solution for managing an enterprise VoIP system alongside all other business-critical applications by enabling IT professionals to:

• Measure response times to show the impact of VoIP on existing applications
• Determine the volume of VoIP traffic across the WAN – including who is using it and when – to ensure VoIP traffic is not starving out other business-critical applications
• Monitor the health and availability of VoIP devices
• Perform active VoIP testing/monitoring via Cisco IP SLA to measure VoIP jitter, latency, and packet loss
• Obtain metrics on call signaling/setup protocols
• Gauge the quality of voice calls

Specific NetQoS VoIP Monitor Features

• Passive, centralized monitoring of signaling flows producing key metrics, such as time to dial tone.
• Summary call quality data for all calls in the system, including calls using any PSTN gateway.
• Integration with the NetQoS Performance Center to provide a single web-based console for managing converged networks.
• Real-time call watch monitors the in-progress quality of all calls from selected phones for immediate analysis.
• Safeguards to avoid false alarms, such as alerts only when call performance problems affect a designated minimum number of call minutes or calls.
• Operations and Network Engineer views into call quality data, with separate Administrator views for configuration.
• Ability to scale to monitor large numbers of phones for enterprise VoIP deployments.
• Available as a single standalone unit or in a distributed configuration (up to ten individual Collectors and a single Management Console unit).

NetQoS VoIP Monitor is packaged in the appliance form factor common to other NetQoS products and deploys in a matter of hours. It is available as a standalone unit or in a distributed configuration. NetQoS VoIP Monitor is available in September at a starting price of $29,500. The NetQoS Performance Center is available to customers at no additional cost with the purchase of one of NetQoS’ product modules.

Visitors to VoiceCon Fall may view a demo of NetQoS VoIP Monitor at NetQoS booth #547. For more information about NetQoS VoIP Monitor, visit http://www.netqos.com/solutions/voip_monitor/index.html.

About the NetQoS Performance Center

The NetQoS Performance Center product suite provides global visibility, via a single Web-based management console, into the key metrics necessary to quantify network performance across an organization: end-to-end performance (NetQoS SuperAgent^®), traffic analysis (NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer™), device performance (NetQoS NetVoyant^®), and VoIP quality of experience (NetQoS VoIP Monitor). The NetQoS Performance Center provides a top-down view of all applications — data, video, and voice — for the entire network infrastructure. IT professionals can also drill down into this data with customizable, role-specific views in order to:

• Measure end user response times
• Provide consistent application service delivery
• Understand how infrastructure changes affect network and application performance
• Isolate performance problems to the application, server, or network
• Identify the applications and users consuming bandwidth, and when
• Avoid unnecessary WAN costs
• Manage the convergence of voice, video and data
• Identify virus or denial of service attacks

Press Release.

Tags: VoIP Testing, VoIP QOS, NetQoS VoIP Monitor, NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer™, NetQoS SuperAgent®, NetQoS NetVoyant®, VoIP quality, VoiceCon Fall, NetQoS VoIP Monitor, Cisco Unified CallManager, Cisco IP Telephony, VoIP quality