Next Generation Networks (NGN) and Applications are constantly pushing network boundaries in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE). Delivering QoS at the highest level correlates to the individual end user application QoE performance. ‘Per flow’ test and measurement is the only mechanism to guarantee performance at these levels, on this granularity.

Delivering real world proof of concept, demonstration and testing of NGN environments requires stateful traffic emulation, with the most realistic traffic flows representing actual deployments of several thousand individual clients utilizing many application types, over common services such as DHCP / PPPoE / VLAN Tagging is necessary.

DHCP / PPPoE / VLAN Tagging sessions are critical enablers for many services, not forgetting the scalable demand on current access network segments of several thousand subscribers. The services delivered in these sessions (Voice, Video or Data) are interactive by nature with functionality that is critical to defining QoE performance.

As individuals we are different, therefore there is a high probability that no two subscribers are likely to use the same service in the same manner or less likely to use the same interactive features in a similar manner concurrently. Next Generation Networking has advanced test requirements, the blanket test or the one shoe fits all, is no longer a feasible measurement of performance.

The most effective method of defining the performance limitations of Next Generation Networks is to build, test and measure on a Per Client ‘Per flow’ basis. Emulate stateful clients with multiple unique individual applications such as voice, video and data, emulate and measure performance of real world user scenarios with meaningful end user activity.

diversifEye benefits users by enabling emulation, control and performance measurements on a Per Flow basis. diversifEye differs from other macro traffic generators as it was developed from the ground up as a Reality Based Stateful Traffic Emulator. diversifEye was designed so that each application flow is treated as a unique individual element.

The 3GPP standardization of Evolved Packet Cores for LTE ensures Service Providers can deliver multimedia or media rich applications and services. Furthermore LTE harnesses the power of new access point technologies to deliver more applications and services to the subscriber.

4G technologies not only enable greater speed and throughput but are delivering a greater convergence of voice, video and data. The most used application will carry greater levels of video and audio content. As paid up subscribers, the expectant quality and performance on these mobile applications is high.

With millions of flows and gigabytes of traffic crossing the Service Providers networks, Service Providers are looking to the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) to deliver the millions of unique flows.

A key component of the EPC architecture is the Packet Data Network Gateway (PDN GW), this bridging technology provides access to the Internet and much of the content that’s crossing the 4G architecture.

The position of the PDN gateway is also an important aspect for traffic management and deep packet inspection with Service Providers choosing this key node simply based on the logistics of several eNodeB’s accumulated traffic passing through this point.

Service Providers looking to dimension the PDN gateway are currently looking at:

	Busy Hour: Number of PDP contexts
	Busy Hour: Throughput Volumes
	The number of connected eNodeBs

These tests provide limitation performances, however they provide no input at an application layer and how video and audio are impacted by excessive latency during busy hours.

Introducing diversifEye

diversifEye is an emulation and performance analysis test system. The key benefit of diversifEye is the per flow architecture which provides emulation of unique UE devices and associated applications. diversifEye is the only available LTE PDN focused test equipment providing per flow analysis on each and every emulated UE and each associated applications performance.

diversifEye is used to test the user plane bearer traffic or GTP tunnelled interface through to the PDN gateway. diversifEye provides stateful GTP tunnelled applications connecting through the gateway to real 3rd party servers or emulated server applications.

Furthermore, the per flow functionality of diversifEye is used to test management devices such as deep packet inspection systems. Service Providers can see if the emulated flows are classified correctly, with minimum errors in terms of handling and test that no flow is misclassified.

For more information on diversifEye's LTE/4G test functionality download a datasheet now.

In the last year, the growth for personal networked computing devices such as smart phones has pushed the boundaries of most Service Providers address pools. Service Providers are now moving to the IPv6 address space to meet this increasing demand for always on networked devices.

IPv6 is set to overcome a number of limitations and challenges of IPv4 addressing, these advantages include; extended address ranges, lower packet loss and latency, improved QoE performance on delay sensitive applications and greater security. However, deploying IPv6 poses its own set of challenges; lack of experience, network designs, incomplete testing and test methodologies, vendor selection, etc.

Shenick's diversifEye will quickly enable Service Providers overcome these obstacles, diversifEye's per flow architecture is uniquely positioned to enable Service Providers test their IPv6 networks to the highest level of QoS, by focusing on end-point QoE. diversifEye enables testing of IPv6 only networks and combined IPv4/IPv6 networks. In addition, diversifEye delivers a number of unique capabilities for IPv6 including dual stack end-points. diversifEye per flow architecture enables performance measurements on each and every flow, ideal to determine interworking IPv4/IPv6 network performance issues.


diversifEye's IPv6 software features include:

	Support for multiple applications (IPTV, VoD, VoIP, Web, Email, etc) over IPv6
	Stateful traffic emulation with emulated user activity e.g. channel zapping, webpage uploads, email with attachments
	Client and/or Server Emulation, with unique application performance metrics
	Concurrently emulate both IPv4 and IPv6 application flows at high load connection rates
	DHCPv6 (client and server)
	IPv6 client to IPv4 server traffic generation and performance measurements
	IPv4 client to IPv6 server traffic generation and performance measurements
	ICMPv6 for TraceRoute & Ping
	Dual hosted IPv4/IPv6 environments
	Flow Labels & Traffic Classes (ToS <->Traffic class)
	MTU Detection & Reporting (ICMPv6 ‘Packet Too Big’ detect and auto adjust stack MTU)
	Multicast Listener Discovery (MLDv1,2)

diversifEye emulates stateful, real-world IPv6 traffic flows which may be used to test any number of scenarios including transition and scalability testing - create thousands of traffic flows with thousands of unique subscribers, measure overall network QoS and individual QoE, assuring the robustness, reachability and performance of IPv6 networks.

Testing Dual-Stack Lite with diversifEye

Dual-Stack Lite is a popular migration choice as it utilizes both the existing IPv4 address architecture and the new IPv6 addresses to connect to services, which today continue to be accessible on IPv4 enabled end-points.

diversifEye is the only test system available enabling testing of Dual-Stack Lite with real applications and activity.

diversifEye's functionality allows users connect to the tunnel concentrator (AFTR), set up an IPv6 softwire or tunnel session (AFTR <-> B4). Once the tunnel is established, users can emulate traffic sessions over the tunnel connecting to real 3rd party servers or emulated servers.

diversifEye's per flow capabilities allows any number of stateful application traffic flows to be added to a single tunnel, which in turn can be expanded to hundreds of tunnels, testing the scalability and reliability of softwire configurations and the tunnel concentrators in Dual-Stack Lite. For more information on diversifEye's Dual-Stack Lite test functionality download a datasheet now.

Testing 6rd or 6to4 transition deployments with diversifEye

6rd (IPv6 Rapid Deployment) is a successful transition technology to native IPv6, the value of 6rd to a Service Provider is the ability to continue to expand the number of end-points (overcoming the worries of IPv4 address depletion) while subscribers continue to access the majority of content being delivered over IPv4 enabled networks. End-users are sold devices and packages, they expect a high level of reliability and performance, most are oblivious to the fact the content is delivered over v4, v6 or a transition technology like 6rd or 6to4.

The key benefit to testing these transition strategies with diversifEye is the ability to test and measure performance on each and every unique flow in a 6rd or 6to4 tunnel. diversifEye's per flow architecture enables Service Providers, add any number of real or stateful applications to the tunnel and test application QoE performance; such as voice, video and data on each and every tunnel and application.

Shenick's key test functionality for 6rd or 6to4 includes:

	Functional verification an IPv4 tunnel can be terminated and IPv6 client traffic can be de-capsulated and routed appropriately
	Latency introduced by the above de-capsulation
	Ability to handle fragmentation caused by the network (IPv6 & IPv4 level)
	Tunnel Scalability ....     - number of IPv4 tunnels the device handle     - number of IPv4 tunnels the device can handle with X number of clients within each tunnel

diversifEye is the only solution available today enabling testing with such granular functionality. diversifEye's per flow architecture enables emulation of not one but many stateful, fully interactive end-points which are network and application aware.

For more information on diversifEye's 6rd/6to4 test functionality download a datasheet now.

Included in diversifEye's Telepresence test functionality is the industry's first Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) testing suite. diversifEye's enhanced product line offers multivendor Telepresence customer end point emulation and quality of experience analysis.

Shenick's software offers the first opportunity to test TIP, covering signaling and media for HD/SD video, voice and data. Shenick diversifEye measures performance and quality of experience (QoE) on each and every TIP client in real time.

A successful Telepresence meeting is reliant on zero media faults and zero network interruptions. Telepresence utilizes high quality audio and video flows, the multiple flow approach per end-point is a key aspect to Telepresence.

When selecting Telepresence infrastructure the selection of the management system, the end-point codec type and network link performance are crictical to the success of the deployment.

Meetings begin when a multiple of individual end-points connect to a central meeting management server. These servers manage many aspects of the call including the video and audio distribution. However, prior to commencing a call the unique remote end-points need to authenticate usually through a SIP registration server. Other components in a Telepresence deployment include meeting schedulers. The following is a sample of the test functionality required when testing Telepresence:

	Stateful: Test end-points must communicate with 3rd party servers
	TCP/UDP Aware: Capable of negotiating network control signals and requests
	SIP Aware: Respond to SIP protocol requests
	Application Aware: Test end-points should receive and transmit video and audio i.e. (4 x media flows)
	Per flow Aware: Measure performance on each of the associated voice and video flows
	Codec Independent: Test end-points can use a number of different codecs
	Multiple Clients: The number of test points needs to be scalable

diversifEye is the only solution available today enabling testing with such granular functionality. diversifEye's per flow architecture enables emulation of not one but many stateful, fully interactive Telepresence end-points which are network and application aware.

A critical feature to testing Telepresence (provided as standard in diversifEye); is the ability to measure performance on each and every one of the 4 unique media flows associated with each and every emulated test or end-point.

diversifEye's emulated Telepresence end-points can join real or live meetings and measure performance on all available media flows. In addition, diversifEye may be utilized to inject traffic into the system in a bid to disrupt the meeting, further testing the security and reliability of the deployment.

For more information on diversifEye's Telepresence test functionality download a datasheet now.

An effective method of testing IPTV and Triple Play is to build, test & measure on a ‘Per Client / Per flow’ basis with several unique individual voice, video & application data clients behind each residential gateway.

Some key steps in testing IPTV with diversifEye are outlined here:

As per the real world, diversifEye provides emulation and test with unique MAC & IP addresses per client (critical to validate security in many environments).  In some networks part of the overall security will include authentication such as establishing DHCP sessions on a per client basis with external DCHP servers.

An effective test in diversifEye for IPTV over triple play environments includes emulating multiple individual clients inside multiple individual VLANs (with priority bits enabled), in addition diversifEye has the ability of double VLAN tagging.

diversifEye emulates client and server side. Users may test individual voice, video & application data clients against diversifEye voice, video & application data servers. But more importantly users may run the individual voice, video & application data clients against actual deployed servers through the network. This demonstrates real world performance & QoS as the clients are interacting with the real thing.

diversifEye enables scale testing, as a further step in understanding individual client QoE emulate surges in usage by adding individual clients into the environment in real time, without stopping the test. Ultimately measure the effect of one client on another client on the same Residential Gateway / across multiple Residential Gateways.

Some specific reasoning behind the need to test such tests include :
-        What happens when two IPTV STB are on the same channel and one IPTV STB changes channel? Is there any effect on the IPTV STB that does not change channel?
-         What happens when you have both IGMP V2 and IGMP V3 STB in the same household? What is the performance difference between these IPTV STB?

diversifEye measures IPTV STB’s; leave, join latency, zap rate & other performance metrics on a per client basis for each set top box (STB), plus scales to realistic home scenarios of multiple IPTV STB per residential gateway / household.

Use diversifEye to determine the maximum channel zap loads in relation to the IPTV STB and IP network, this test scenario includes emulating IPTV STBs leaving the IPTV channel immediately after the join.

After establishing the effective IPTV performance QoE results on a per flow basis, use diversifEye to create client variability to match real world use of voice, video & application data services.

Further advance IPTV performance by mitigating against security attacks, use diversifEye to run both regular (HTTP, IGMP, POP3, SMTP etc) application flows and disruptive flows (P2P, DDOS, spam, viruses). Include real documents for email, URLs, attachments for realistic, per client web traffic flows, spam, viruses etc.

To future proof the network and technology advance testing by mixing IPv4 and IPv6 application flows.

diversifEye per-flow architecture has been certified by video-on-demand (VoD) Server Vendors as the only test product to provide a uniquely flexible platform to emulate and measure each individual VoD client behind residential gateways.

Some key steps in testing VoD with diversifEye are outlined here:

As per the real world, diversifEye provides emulation and test with unique MAC & IP addresses on a per VoD client (critical to validate security in many environments).  

diversifEye enables RTSP based VoD sessions over DHCP/PPPoE/VLAN Tagging.

diversifEye enables customers perform stateful, functional and scalability testing of both the control plane and media plane architecture of the VoD solution.

diversifEye tests VoD performance measuring characteristics such as rewind, pause times and buffer control on an idividual and aggregate level.

Assess unicast RTSP deployments versus multicast deployments, using diversifEye measure performance of true ‘on demand’ controls.

Use diversifEye to quantify the quality of the video offering on preload and download, on each available movie.

Utilize diversifEye to quantify the effect of mixed traffic environments on the quality of video flows right up to thousands of users at 10Gigabit Ethernet levels.

diversifEye enables Service Providers and Equipment Vendors to test end-to-end network SIP enabled VoIP system performances. Ultimately VoIP quality is assessed on actual voice or conversational performance, however quality of experience includes the call setup timing and the time to register on the network play a key role in the overall experience.

diversifEye's flexible VoIP test strategies offer normal behavioral tests with in-depth performance metrics on individual emulated VoIP User Agents (UA) to large scale aggregate tests with a large number of UAs and high volume call rates.

diversifEye’s award winning ‘Per flow’ architecture enables users comb through the large number of emulated UAs and high volume call rates, isolate an individual call flow and measure the performance of the call setup response times to the actual voice quality metrics.

Some of diversifEye’s key VoIP functionality includes:

UAC call functionality with Register, Initiate and Accept Calls. The UAC also supports Authentication (Registration, Invite, Bye).  

Choice of codec implementations, plus the flexibility of a custom codec template.

Voice call analysis in real-time, no need to wait and/or stop a test. diversifEye supports quality analysis on all flows. View live performance metrics while tests are running.

Dynamically bring emulated UA in and out of service while tests are running.

Emulate and determine performance of device initiation, measure DHCP and/or PPPoE performance metrics.

Implement DTMF tests, with returned media performance analysis.

Adjustable Jitter Buffer sizes on a per individual emulated UA basis.

Determine performance limitations of SIP registration servers, implement SIP only call data for larger volume registration testing.

SIP IPv6 transition test strategies, dual IPv4/IPv6 stack functionality on emulated UAs.

diversifEye emulates real network VoIP calling activity with traffic profiling, such as busy hour calling attempts.

Implement Multimedia calls, with no reference performance analysis or MOS scores on the received media.

B2BUA (RFC3261) implementation for NAT boundary traversal.

diversifEye tests include determining the number of call attempts capable during peak hours, determining root cause and affect on quality when integrating different call origin devices or codecs.

diversifEye™ comprehensively tests converged IP network architectures for weaknesses in security and importantly provides a unique ability to determine the effects of attacks on both overall network quality of service and quality of individual experience. diversifEye™ unique per flow architecture not only enables emulation of regular client side and server side applications, but also provides for the insertion of malicious attack content onto the network and into IP traffic streams.

diversifEye™ generates a real world traffic mix of genuine and malicious content containing IPTV streams, VoD requests, VoIP calls, web or mail downloads in unfavorable conditions along with email virus/worm attacks, real spam generation, DDoS attacks on servers, malicious exploitation of protocols e.g. IGMP weaknesses, channel change requests and membership reports.

Testing DPI and WAN optimization devices requires individual, real world and stateful traffic flows.

Per flow application flow emulation with mixed P2P, VoIP, IPTV, VoD and security attack traffic (DDoS, SPAM, Virus) ensures performance and quality of experience for each application processed by a DPI or WAN optimisation device.

diversifEye is utilized to test and verify Data Loss Prevention (DLP) systems and algorithms through emulating thousands of “good” users with real or stateful TCP and UDP based applications and a small number of “bad” users.

diversifEye's Per Flow metrics can rapidly determine if the "bad" users activities are properly identified and blocked.

Shenick’s Complete TWAMP capabilities give equipment vendors the tools to verify the functionality of their TWAMP implementations prior to customer acceptance testing. For service providers, Shenick’s TWAMP capabilities provide a means for conducting vendor interoperability and large scale system testing prior to TWAMP network deployment.

DOCSIS® 3.0 is enhancing Cable Operator’s service offerings through increased bandwidth for applications; IPv6 enabled Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) and new service offerings through multicast applications. In addition, Cable Providers are now in the position to prioritize traffic through Quality of Service settings. This ensures the highest quality delivery performance for delay sensitive traffic such as voice or multicast multimedia applications.

These new services will deliver real-world applications or fully stateful two-way flows. As an example a telephone call is between two people, web users request pages from a server, to obtain Multicast Multimedia users submit leave and join requests, in social networking users now upload vast quantities of data while reading their friend’s profile. For DOCSIS 3.0 this means both the Upstream and Downstream channels are now always in use.

To ensure the highest quality of service, DOCSIS 3.0 performance testing should include stateful two-way interactive flows.  DOCSIS 3.0 Quality of Experience or service satisfaction requires a ‘Per flow’ test approach in which stateful CPE traffic is presented on the Cable Modem to CPE Interface (CMCI). These stateful flows enable Cable Operators and DOCSIS 3.0 compliant vendors test performance on an end-to-end basis from CMCI to CMTS-NSI.

DOCSIS 3.0 high quality bandwidth services require an intimate knowledge of channel bonding, load balancing and QoS prioritization mechanisms. Testing the efficacy and effectiveness of these features requires a large volume of stateful CPE traffic, in which each flow can be uniquely identified and measured for its application type e.g. voice, video, data, originating CPE address and overall quality.

diversifEye’s award winning ‘Per flow’ architecture is the only platform that delivers stateful application emulation and performance analysis on a per individual CPE, per application flow basis for DOCSIS 3.0. diversifEye is a flexible and scalable solution enabling Cable Providers emulate anything from a single flow to several thousand CPEs and flows, providing real-world usage test scenarios. diversifEye’s functionality includes both CPE and server side application emulation, providing the complete test structure for CMCI to CMTS-NSI.  

Defining the performance limitations of Next Generation Networks and Equipment requires the ability to test and measure on a Per Client ‘Per flow’ basis. Emulate stateful secure end points with multiple unique individual applications such as voice, video and data. Emulate and measure performance of real world user scenarios with meaningful end point activity over secure connections using the protocols TLS/SSL.

diversifEye’s emulated end points have the same attributes as real world end points, in a secure communication. The diversifEye client end point may negotiate the TLS/SSL cipher suites, with other emulated end points or with real world devices. These include ciphers, key exchange and authentication.

diversifEye supports the use of X509 digital certificates. The certificates are used by the end points to verify that the entity presenting the certificate is who they claim to be. diversifEye is capable of generating and signing certificates/keys for test entities or end points.

Key benefits of diversifEye’s TLS/SSL enabled flows in testing:

	Large scalability of RTP/SRTP sessions, while measuring in real time per each and every end point.
	Measure voice quality metrics (MOS) and other layer 7 voice statistics in real time per each individual end point.
	Measuring video quality metrics (VQM) and other layer 7 video statistics in real time per each individual end point.
	Test and measure per end point video and voice quality metrics (e.g. measuring JPEG, MPEG, H.261, H.263, H.263+, H.264, MPEG-4, VC-1 etc).

A sample usage scenario is to emulate real IP Phones as end points running a TLS session with Call Manager/firewall and traversing RTP using SRTP. diversifEye may emulate many individual unique end points and measures in real time per MAC, DHCP V6/V4 session establishment, individual TFTP registration with Call Manager, individual parsing of TFTP information per emulated VoIP end point model, SIP/TLS session, RTP/SRTP session with Call Manager.

diversifEye is used extensively in testing enterprise call management devices, firewalls, IMS Session Border Controllers and layer 4-7 application scalability. The key strength is diversifEye's ability not to do one secure session but thousands of sessions and applications with live performance measurements on a per session per application basis. Giving real world QoE measurements.