Technology developed by Irish firm Shenick is to be deployed across thousands of households in the US that use a mix of triple-play services such as internet TV, voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and high-speed internet in order to test quality and guard against security attacks.
Shenick has signed a deal with San José-based Redback Networks, a developer of next-generation broadband networking equipment for the creation of smart broadband networks, whereby the company’s DiversifEye technology will be used to measure the quality of service of triple-play subscribers’ lines as well as check their vulnerability to hacker attacks.
Established in 2000 and based in Dublin, Shenick has deployed its DiversifEye integrated network, application and security attack emulation and performance assurance test systems throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
Robert Winters, co-founder of Shenick, explained: “A triple-play service provider can have hundreds of thousands of customers using the system in various ways, 24 hours a day. The quality of experience the users enjoy has always been a major concern and it is even more so, now that progressive telecom companies are offering triple-play services – high-speed internet, video (IPTV) and voice applications, such as delay-sensitive VoIP.
“Worldwide, telecom companies are already delivering triple-play broadband services. So it’s essential for Redback to be able to create and test household subscriber usage profiles, in which, say, one person is on the web, one is using the phone and others are watching TV and DiversifEye gives them that capability, too,” Winters said.
Essentially, DiversifEye offers thousands of triple-play broadband users in a box. That is, it can emulate an almost infinite variety of user traffic scenarios, with IPTV, high-speed internet, voice applications, streaming and other services all running simultaneously. It can show how a system under test responds to everything from one IPTV viewer’s experience all the way up to the endless traffic variations generated by millions of internet users.
“We offer broadband subscriber management systems that must perform under a variety of scalable operational conditions and usage scenarios and at the end of the day, triple play’s all about the user’s quality of experience,” says Arpit Joshipura, Redback’s vice-president of product marketing and management at Redback.
“There is zero compromise when it comes to issues such as IPTV subscriber quality and Redback required a highly granular, realistic perspective on service and performance, right down to the triple-play subscriber household level and the individual users therein,” Joshipura said.
By John Kennedy
