Spirent Validates Cisco’s Medianet in Largest Public 1GigE and 10GigE IPTV Test

The test bed utilized Spirent’s multiplay solutions including Spirent TestCenter™ to validate the resiliency of Cisco’s medianet solution. In addition, the test demonstrated Cisco’s ability to monitor as well as maintain video quality under a variety of network conditions, including jitter, real-time loss and short term latency.

“As service providers seek to deploy large scale IPTV networks, manufacturers of network equipment are increasingly looking for flexible and proven ways to test the gear that will support these systems,” said Carsten Rossenhövel, Managing Director, EANTC AG. “Spirent has been an invaluable partner in this test, emulating realistic traffic profiles required to assess the performance of multiplay networks and multi-technology platforms in an effort to ensure delivery of the highest Quality of Experience (QoE).”

This sophisticated test setup included 300 1GbE and 10GbE ports, more than 318,000 hosts and
over 739,000 streams. Spirent was selected by EANTC for this Cisco medianet Megatest for its unique ability to:

* Use short term latency and real-time loss to intelligently measure the behavior of video buffers to validate how well the video traffic will perform in a live network
* Leverage test lab automation based on the industry leading Automation Continuum framework to shrink test time and rapidly move through test iterations while still measuring all key metrics in a single pass
* Deliver reporting with intelligent trend analysis to quickly analyze key QoE metrics across large volumes of data

“We’re proud to be the ongoing defacto choice for the largest and most complex public communications tests in the industry,” said Tim Jefferson, general manager, Converged Core Solutions Group at Spirent. “Our involvement in this recent IPTV test solidifies our leadership position in supporting the needs of the most respected makers of next-generation communication equipment. When it comes to providing cost-effective, scalable test solutions that ensure the highest level of QoE, Spirent is the leader.”

Communications industry leaders such as Cisco continually turn to Spirent to tackle their multifaceted testing needs. With its ability to deliver enhanced realism by scaling in multiple dimensions, including ports, traffic, users, and sessions, and automate testing with Spirent NoCode™, Spirent’s suite of testing solutions enabled Cisco to assess true network performance under real-world conditions. Additionally, Spirent allowed Cisco to measure video quality, and to compare the results to Cisco’s own video monitoring capabilities, helping the vendor deliver the highest QoE.