Network Physics delivers integrated voice and application performance management with NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP.

Network Physics have announced the new NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP, which integrates VoIP call quality metrics into the more than 60 network and application performance metrics already offered by NetSensory application performance appliances. Managers struggling to make their networks support VoIP can now drill down from standard voice quality metrics to discover the network conditions responsible for call degradation, or monitor the impact of other enterprise applications on VoIP traffic and vice versa, all in real time. Unlike other products, which require complex deployments and data collection from hundreds of devices and handsets, the NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP is an option for the simply-installed NetSensory appliances, which require only a simple SPAN/mirror port or tap connection.

"Many enterprises have already implemented voice over IP: if not full deployment, then a pilot program to become familiar with the challenges of this technology," said Jeffrey Nudler, senior analyst, Enterprise Management Associates. "One of the challenges they found is the inadequacy of their management tools, which aren't able to deal with a converged network. Call managers offer no insight into the network causes of call degradation, and traditional network management tools don't deliver all the metrics required to judge call quality. Tools like NetSensory that can give voice and network managers common ground for problem solving, without adding yet another layer of management complexity, are sorely needed to advance VoIP in the enterprise to the next level."

"2007 will be the year of VoIP monitoring for us," said Deb Garrod, director of IT Shared Services US at OMD, the largest and most influential media communications specialist in the world. "So we're really excited about the NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP. Our NetSensory appliances have already made a huge difference in our ability to proactively manage data applications on our network. I fully expect that adding industry-standard voice metrics to NetSensory, as this Insight does, will give us the same advantage for voice applications, and play a major role in our network convergence efforts worldwide."

"Our main business focus is helping customers with the convergence of voice, data, video, and Internet technologies," said Paul Griswold, President & CEO at Finger Lake Technologies, a leading Cisco VoIP solutions provider. "The NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP holds a lot of promise for us. Not only will it make it easier to evaluate customer network needs when it comes to VoIP implementations, but its graphical presentation of the relationship between network performance and voice quality will help us vividly demonstrate the need for and benefits of the solutions we recommend, as well as easing the customer's management of day-to-day VoIP operations. As a traditional telephone company and a supplier of VoIP / SIP Trunks, we'll use the NetSensory Solution to evaluate our internal network to provide the best service possible. All this will add up to increased customer satisfaction, which is key to our success."

Real-time VoIP Insight

The NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP is the latest application of Network Physics' unique Insight technology. Insights are easy-to-use, point-and-click action guides that incorporate problem-solving best practices extracted from hundreds of customer cases in a wide range of industries. They enable IT staff to quickly solve application performance problems by integrating a wide range of metrics into meaningful diagnostic patterns, so that users can drill down from a high-level business view to network and application details.

The NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP exploits the integration capabilities of Insight technology to combine standard voice quality metrics such as listening, conversational, and transmission quality MOS scores, R-values, and others with the more than 60 network and application performance metrics offered by NetSensory appliances. Delivered as a software option for these appliances, the NetSensory Insight for VoIP provides real-time insight into call quality (both ongoing and real-time insight into call quality (both ongoing and completed), with the ability to drill-down to the underlying network conditions that govern call quality. Network managers can also view voice traffic in network terms and see its impact on other enterprise applications. This unified view of voice traffic as just another application on the network gives voice and network professionals the ability to communicate effectively and collaborate efficiently to solve VoIP problems.

The NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP possesses three key advantages over competitive products:

Single-arm deployment. Unlike other solutions, which require connection to, data from, and management of hundreds of handsets and call managers, the NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP, as a software option for standard NetSensory appliances, can monitor call quality from a single SPAN/mirror port or tap. The Insight automatically uses RTCP-XR call management data if such is detected, but this is not necessary for core functionality.

Real-time visibility of call quality and related network and application metrics. Data is gathered from actual traffic, and NetSensory's ability to correlate signaling and media data (call setup and call activity), and to monitor multiple channels (e.g., inbound and outbound, calling and listening) yields immediate insight into call quality and the impact of network conditions on it. In addition, NetSensory can even monitor the quality of encrypted calls, as long as the headers are transmitted in clear.

An extensible architecture. Implementations can easily be extended to cover distributed environments, and data from other VoIP products (e.g., the caller name supplied by a call manager) can be integrated to extend the reach of the solution. (Resellers can easily modify any NetSensory Insight to match specific customer needs using the NetSensory Insight Builder.)

With the NetSensory Solution Insight for VoIP, IT Managers can:

* Manage VoIP like any other application on their network.

* Aseline their network in preparation for VoIP rollout, and monitor the impact of voice on the network, and vice-versa, during implementation. This is impossible with solutions that require management data from other devices, rather than the single-arm implementation of the NetSensory solution.

* Plan efficiently for future VoIP capacity and investments.

* Escalate trouble tickets within VoIP providers using detailed information about the actual causes of call degradation.

* Communicate the business impact of VoIP implementations to non-technical managers.

www.networkphysics.com

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