Peering/Interconnect
Hammer XMS™ provides the functionality required by mobile network operators who need to monitor the quality of their VoIP peering connections. Empirix builds on its deep experience in monitoring peering connections to provide reliable analysis on voice quality provided by each peering partner and actionable information to enable providers to quickly address quality affecting issues.
Background
Introducing a VoIP core lowers the costs inside the network, but causes potential issues with transcoding between IP inside and TDM outside for interconnect and roaming. In addition, IMS services implemented for FMC and LTE cannot be guaranteed end to end if there is not IP available in the originating and destination networks.
Many VoIP peering companies now offer the capability for mobile operators to have VoIP peering capabilities, simplifying peering, providing comparable to TDM quality and lowering costs. Standards bodies such as GSMA have endorsed this trend by backing the IPX initiative which provides support for voice and IMS services and replaces the TDM based GRX.
Peering solutions provide significant economic benefits. In addition, the peering industry has reached a point of maturity in which high quality service should be achievable on a consistent basis. However, maintenance of high quality service demands attention to service metrics different than those used for TDM interconnect. A successful peering engagement for a mobile operator will require choosing the right partners, as well as having a solid SLA (service level agreement) and the tools in place to monitor that standards of quality are being met.
Hammer XMS verifies peering performance
Empirix Hammer XMS is deployed at several leading peering companies today and can provide mobile operators specific measurements common to most SLAs. Hammer XMS delivers solutions to troubleshoot and proactively address issues common to peering relationships:- Verify SLA agreements with peering partners by providing 24x7 quality analysis
- Identify potential issues before they cause a breach of agreed SLA
- Increase operational efficiency by reducing mean time-to-resolution
- Monitor both sides of SBCs to police traffic to and from peering partners
- Verifiable analysis such as identifying mismatched codecs promised versus delivered
- Provide business value by providing the means to analyze cost versus quality of each peering partner
- Single system with integrated analysis of Mobility and call quality issues including media quality analysis
- Full correlation of On-Net and Off-Net calls – irrespective of technology
- Support for protocols including BICC, SIP, GCP and RTP
- Support for IMS call models
- Support for Narrow and Wideband interfaces including GbE and 10GbE
- Real-Time analysis
- End to end correlation of all interfaces and protocols involved in service delivery
- KPI generation of network and service performance with deep dive into root cause analysis
- Scalable from small installations to network wide coverage
The diagram below shows a sample peering deployment
Hammer XMS provides unrivalled visibility by monitoring the marked interfaces and relevant protocols as shown in the diagram above.
