TIA Member Spotlight:
 Spirent Communications (www.spirentcom.com) is a global provider of integrated performance analysis and service assurance systems that enable the development and deployment of next-generation networking technology. Spirent's solutions are used by more than 1500 customers in 30 countries, including the world's largest equipment manufacturers, service providers, enterprises and governments. Spirent Communications CEO Anders Gustafsson spoke with Pulse Online staff about the history of his company, the products and solutions it offers and the value of TIA membership.
- Please give us a brief history of Spirent Communications and tell our readers about your typical clientele.
At Spirent Communications we work behind the scenes to help the world communicate faster, better and more often. We pioneered testing of Ethernet networks, IP Telephony and VoIP, VPNs, TriplePlay, CDMA applications and Location Based Services. Today, we are helping to test the first deployments of the next-generation Ethernet and IMS networks in Asia, Europe and North America.
The world's leading communications companies use Spirent's lab-test solutions to evaluate performance of the latest technologies. As new communication services and applications are introduced in the market, Spirent provides tools for service management and field testing to improve troubleshooting and quality. Spirent also enables large companies and governments to secure and manage their networks.
- Explain how Spirent's test and diagnostic solutions address the increasingly complex challenges service providers face in providing triple-play and carrier Ethernet/business IP services to their customers today.
Service providers are in a race to deliver triple-play services, and subscribers expect perfection from day one. Spirent's lab-based and service management tools enable the service provider to emulate the triple-play device performance and subscriber experience prior to service turnover.
To help ensure performance and reliability of converged networks, Spirent Communications tests the elements that make up the network - or the entire network-end-to-end - by emulating concurrent voice, data and video traffic. Additionally, Spirent solutions test a network's successful delivery of data, signaling and management, as well as voice, video and data applications.
- Tell the readers what steps your company takes toward accelerating the development and deployment of current and next-generation wireless products and technologies. How do Spirent solutions "move customers out of the lab and into the market faster" and ensure top quality wireless communications?
Our solutions characterize the performance of mobile devices and infrastructure equipment for wireless service providers and equipment manufacturers. Spirent works with industry leaders and major standards organizations, such as 3GPP and 3GPP2, to develop industry standard test specifications, and implement them in state-of-the-art test systems.
Through our strong relationships with blue-chip OEMs and service providers, we strive to ensure that our systems always reflect the up-to-the-minute needs of our customers. By integrating industry-leading application knowledge with innovative products, Spirent solutions provide our customers with the competitive advantage of reduced time-to-market and trouble-free deployment.
- Elaborate on Spirent's role in serving the needs of government customers and in supporting the migration of all government systems to IPv6 (Internet protocol version 6) technology.
IPv6 is not a singular entity, but a collection of standards. IPv6 covers data forwarding, routing, transitional services, automatic configuration, multicast data, quality of service, security and many other subtopics. Therefore, IPv6 testing requires a family of test suites that only Spirent Communications delivers. Spirent's solutions allow the testing of advanced functionality, reliability and the performance of advanced IPv6 networks and devices. Spirent has unparalleled experience in the performance of devices as they migrate from software- to hardware-based IPv6 and dual stack implementations.
- Tell us about the Knowledge Center Spirent offers and how it has helped raise the visibility of your company as an information source, as well as build relationships with your customers.
The Knowledge Center is an on-line library built into our website, www.spirent.com. The purpose behind this function is to allow customers, partners, industry analysts and researchers to access the vast amounts of knowledge and information that Spirent Communications has developed about the technologies we support and enable. This function is the one-stop-shop for many people within the industry to find and access the latest on telecommunications developments and preview the test methodologies Spirent recommends to accelerate next-generation devices and applications into deployment.
- Spirent recently announced its participation in Alcatel's IP Video Service Assurance Proof of Concept (PoC) Lab. How will Spirent's contributions to the Alcatel IPTV ecosystem help accelerate IPTV deployment? What do you think the future holds for IPTV?
Spirent Communications' automated diagnostic video assistants and lab-based IPTV test beds provide detailed analysis of video service delivery. These solutions will arm the Alcatel PoC Lab with insight into performance issues and service interruptions, allowing the remote resolution of video delivery problems. Spirent's unique approach to pre-turnup validation reduces provisioning times and devastating turned-up-broke service (TUBS) activation scenarios. Spirent Communications' IPTV testing solutions cover the entire network as well as individual network components, including routers, switches and DSLAMs. To determine how many concurrent active users the infrastructure will support, it's critical to conduct performance, scalability and capacity testing. By providing these capabilities to Alcatel's Lab, we are helping a main industry player evaluate how the network and associated devices will perform when delivering IPTV services.
- Describe the new release of the Spirent TestCenter, which delivers market-leading Layer 2-7 testing capabilities up to 10GbE speeds and how this will allow simultaneous testing of Layer 4-7 devices, routers and switches all on the same module.
Spirent TestCenter supports concurrent testing of routers, switches, access and Layer 4-7 devices on a single Gigabit Ethernet module. Spirent TestCenter tests a broad variety of next-generation devices and networks with the highest scalability in the market and industry-leading accuracy. Spirent TestCenter increases the value of the customer's investment by providing the highest user scalability in the industry, with up to six users per module and more than 20 users per chassis. Spirent TestCenter tests a broad variety of next-generation devices and networks with the highest scalability in the market and industry-leading accuracy.
Next-generation Layer 2-7 networks need to test hundreds of network ports and terabits of data throughput capacity. Spirent TestCenter is designed to cost-effectively meet the performance verification needs of next-generation networking devices without sacrificing accuracy. Spirent TestCenter leads the test and measurement industry by supporting more users per module, higher 10GbE port density, exceptional scalability for Layer 2-7 and superior 10GB latency accuracy with the lowest per port cost.
- Tell us the value you gain from your TIA membership.
Spirent Communications is committed to enabling the development and deployment of next-generation telecommunications technologies. Involvement with industry groups such as TIA enables Spirent to keep our finger on the pulse of the market.
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