GL Unveils New Network Monitoring Software

By Meenakshi Shankar
TMCnet Contributor

GL Communications (News - Alert), a company specializing in PC-based and laptop-based telecommunications testing and measurement products and consulting services, announced the availability of Voice Band Analyzer, its software for network monitoring of hybrid echo and voice quality.

In VoIP networks, gateways and ATAs usually contain echo cancellers (EC) to cancel the echo generated by the landline 2/4 wire hybrids. To effectively test ECs in such elements, access to 2-wire, T1, E1 and IP sides of these elements are necessary. GL’s test tools provide access to all these interfaces for performance testing and G.168 compliance testing of ECs in such VoIP network elements.

GL’s Voice Band Analyzer (VBA) is one such analysis tool developed for monitoring the quality of voice band Traffic for Voice Quality Analysis over VoIP, TDM and Wireless Networks.

In his statement, Vijay Kulkarni, chief executive officer at GL, clarified that VBA can instantly detect voice file captures, and with appropriately installed analysis modules, it can monitor speech levels, noise levels and hybrid echo.

Other analysis modules such as ITU-T P.561, P.562, P.563, fax and modem analysis, and many others can be hosted as plug-ins.

VBA is designed to work with GL's TDM, Packet, and wireless non-intrusive capture products such as T1 and E1 Call Capture and Analysis, VoIP PacketScan, and GSM, CDMA and 3G Call Capture Products. It also works well with products of other vendors if their file-naming conventions allow grouping of files into sets and associate files with algorithm inputs.

Kulkarni also mentioned that the VBA application can operate on pre-captured files. It is said to support A-Law, µ-Law, 16-bit PCM, 16-bit PCM and MS Wave file formats.

The program can also record its output into two files, the first containing overall channel measurements, and the second containing event records. It can even produce summary measurements of the captured signals, including active speech levels, noise level, percent time active, DC offset and the like.

GL Communications has the broadest range of testing solutions for echo cancellers (EC). The company recently released its enhanced HDLC Link Impairment Utility (HLIU) application and other HDLC Testing Tools as well.

Edited by Braden Becker