Network Performance Testing

Shenick and Fanfare partner to build Integrated IP Communications Test Solution

Shenick announced today that they are partnering with Fanfare to add full plug in support to the Shenick diversifEye™ product.  According to the press release, this will allow users of Fanfare's iTest product to control and manipulate per-flow testing from the Shenick product. A lot of the press release is focused on Service Providers and wireless markets, which is an area that Shenick focuses on more than many of the other players.  Direct from the press release: "NGN and LTE services and applications bring with them increased quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) demands. Per-flow test and measurement is the only mechanism to guarantee performance at these granular levels enabling providers to pinpoint application and individual user issues accurately" I think it's great that this support has been added on both ends so that users of iTest can take advantage of existing or new Shenick equipment.  I hope there will be more details about how deep the integration goes in the coming weeks. One interesting thing is the fact that both Fanfare and Shenick are part of the TesLA Alliance - I wonder how much the proposed TesLA standards have influenced this solution, and if we'll see more of this in the coming months since the standards are getting closer to being approved...

Leaders in IP Testing Announce the First Multivendor, Open Automation

A huge list of vendors today announced a partnership to collaborate on an open, multi-vendor solution for test automation, called TesLA. It seems to be led by IXIA, but there are some other big names along with them:

• Apcon
• Codenomicon
• Fanfare
• IXIA
• MuDynamics
• QualiSystems
• Shunra

It sounds too good to be true - a single framework for managing all of these types of devices from all of these vendors. I hope others will join as well so that we're not stuck with just one choice for some of these areas... I think this is a great idea, and I look forward to seeing the results of this sort of collaboration - I'm actually quite surprised that some of these folks are working together, since they have competing (somewhat) products. I am sure a solution like this won't work for everyone, and I am hoping folks in the alliance will consider the highly customizable nature of this sort of testing, and make sure their solutions keep that aspect in mind - many of us have needs to use our own external <insert whatever it is here> and will need a lot of flexibility in customizing any centralized tool to manage things. Full press release can be found here: Press Releases :: Ixia - Leader in IP Performance Testing