[Asterisk-Users] Assessing network quality

[Rich Adamson]

> I am trying to trouble shoot one of my ISP's network and compare to my 
> other ISPs offering. Although network 1 is reasonably fast and has low 
> enough latency, voice quality is not good and the reason for this is not 
> readily apparent using standard network tools.
> What tools can be used to assess the quality of the network in terms of 
> it's suitability for voice? I am using ping, mtr, smokeping for general 
> network reliability and using visualroute to give me info, but I need 
> some voice specific quality metrics. Any ideas?

Check out www.netiq.com for their Vivinet Assessor product. Simulates
up to about 200 calls from each Endpoint. Endpoint software can be download
for free and runs on Win32, Linux, Sun, HP, etc.  The Assessor product can
be rented for a two-week period (or whatever), but its rather expensive.

We just simulated 2,400 simultanous calls originating from multiple 
PC's (each emulating a couple hundred sip phones with g711) in one 
building, crossing the client's gig backbone, and heading for a
Asterisk/Call-Manager type server in another building. Generated 
some rather interesting measurements in terms of jitter, dropped pkts,
etc. Our client needed to assess their entire network which consisted
of 26 buildings, a star backbone, Cisco hardware, etc. They are going
to move from a CO Centrex environment to a commercial pbx product
via a bidding process, and needed some assurance their infrastructure
would handle the voip traffic.

Part of the Assessor product uses snmp to poll routers and switches
to monitor for dropped packets, queue size, cpu utilization, memory,
and other critical operational measurements (in addition to tracking 
jitter and other voip parameters via each of the Endpoints).

It would be rather interesting to see an open source product that
could be used in a similar large scale fashion.