VoIP

2004 Consensus Software Awards

Product Description

Avaya VoIP Monitoring Manager (VMM) is a tool designed to alert and diagnose VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) network quality problems. It collects and stores RTCP information about VoIP calls and makes this data searchable and viewable for the purpose of isolating problems in the VoIP network affecting voice quality.

VoIP Monitoring Manager sends SNMP alarms when the call statistics exceed user-configurable thresholds (for Jitter, Round-trip-time and Packet Loss).

The information collected and presented includes:

• Jitter

• Delay

• Packet Loss

• Sequence jumps/falls

• Firmware version (running on phones and media gateways)

• Codec

• Extension number

• IP address

• Trace-route

It is presented in a call-centric manner, allowing users to view it on an IP-session basis. This means that if an IP Phone user reports a poor quality call, an administrator can use VMM to view the IP path of that call, and will be able to identify which section of the call was problematic, significantly narrowing down the area of the network needing investigation.

Due to the large amounts of data collected, extensive search facilities are provided so that individual calls can be easily found. Users can search for call data based on:

• Date/time.

• IP Address/Host name.

• Extension.

• QoS Thresholds.

The collected data is stored for a period of time, allowing analysis after-the-fact.

Innovation

Avaya VoIP Monitoring Manager creates a business advantage for its users by complementing the cost savings associated with VoIP communication systems with the ability to monitor quality and to quickly isolate and resolve problems. For internet voice service providers VMM enables new, measurable levels of service offerings.

VMM is unique in the industry as it is the only monitoring solution that has information pushed to it. This means that, unlike other solutions, only one central server is needed, which can be any Windows PC. Competitive solutions require 'sniffer' modules to be located strategically throughout the network, which can be expensive. In addition to this added expense, these modules generally do not correlate data collected by each module into a system-wide view as VMM does.

Most solutions competing with VMM do not store the data collected unless instructed to. For example, an administrator is notified of a problem and instructs the collection module to store all real time data from this point on, for some short period of time. Generally the administrator will then have to review all of the collected raw data to find the relevant or interesting information. This is not convenient, and additionally, does not allow after-the-fact analysis. VMM has a sophisticated storage module that allows data to be stored indefinitely and includes options to store only 'interesting' data (obviously the size of the data store needs to be considered). VMM also provides a search mechanism allowing users to find the data they're interested in quickly.

The unique architecture behind VMM could also be considered new technology in VoIP monitoring. The "RAQMON" proposal (consisting of three draft RFCs ) currently being worked by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is partially based on the VMM framework.

Performance

Avaya VoIP Monitoring Manager is being used extensively in the field. It has a large international enterprise customer base including both international and Australian companies ranging from major investment and banking organisations, media outlets and information technology companies. The Australian National University (ANU) also uses VMM. Further information on VMM's customer base can be provided.

VMM utilises, and is based on, standards including RTP/RTCP, SNMP and SQL. As mentioned previously, its architecture is a partial basis for the proposed RAQMON standards currently being worked in the IETF.

VMM provides exceptional product support for VoIP business communication systems, allowing enterprises to confidently employ cost-effective VoIP systems.

This NetworkWorldFusion review includes praise for Avaya VoIP Monitoring Manager in the context of comparison of VoIP solutions across a number of vendors.

<http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/0630rev.html>

VoIP Monitoring Manager is developed by Avaya Auslabs, which is an ISO9001 accredited organisation.

Potential

Avaya VoIP Monitoring Manager is used world wide to enable network administrators to efficiently manage their VoIP business communication systems. While conceived originally from technical research conducted to anticipate the needs of users of the relatively new VoIP technology, VMM has evolved over the past 18 months to incorporate feedback and enhancement requests from its local and international users.

Examples of these enhancements are: 

Data Export and Copy to Clipboard (May 03):

• Enable export of raw data and graphs so users can build VoIP Network Performance reports.

Configurable storage options (Nov 03):

• Give users more control over data storage.

Requests from customers are currently being fed into future enhancements:

Database storage engine (May 04):

• Increases the performance of VMM as the number of concurrently active IP endpoints supported grows to in excess of 5000 per VMM Server.

• Enables more data to be stored and managed for longer periods of time.

Media Gateway Link Monitoring (Nov 04):

• Monitor IP links between media gateways:

  • IP Trunk performance.

  • Load balancing.

VMM has tremendous potential for growth. Trend analysis can be applied to the collected data, incorporating an increasing set of measurements as knowledge about VoIP grows. This analysis and associated research can be used to make recommendations to network administrators that will result in increased VoIP quality. Evolution into an expert system in the near future is conceivable - where not only could the tool make recommendations to administrators, but could be programmed to automatically correct misconfigurations contributing to quality problems.

Other information the judges should know

Website: Avaya Home Page: http://www.avaya.com/

VoIP Monitoring Manager is part of Avaya Integrated Management:

http://www.avaya.com/ac/common/index.jhtml?location=M1H1005G1010F2048

Following are some screenshots of the VMM client.

Screenshots

1. The first shows, in the left hand pane, the results from a search for all endpoints active over a specified time period. Identified by various icons, there are IP telephones, IP Softphones and Media Gateways listed.

The expanded Media Gateway shows the sessions it was in, including the extension of the other endpoint and the time during which each session was active.

The display in the right hand pane shows the Jitter, Round-trip time and Packet loss plotted against time, for the highlighted session.

2. Alternatively, the second screenshot shows an at-a-glance view of the health of a session (or endpoint) provided via the Summary Report

3. The Session Properties tab for the same session. It shows the 'static' metrics (i.e. properties that generally do not change during a session) for this session.

Content2004Copyright©Avaya
Format2004Copyright©Consensus Pty Ltd

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