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Empirix (News - Alert) Inc.’s Hammer for IMS testing and monitoring platform reportedly helped facilitate a successful week for the IMS Forum’s (News - Alert) first Plugfest event.

The event took place January 15-19, 2007 and was held at The University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL). Empirix’s platform was used in a variety of scenarios throughout the week to conduct IP phone, infrastructure, and service interoperability tests at the Plugfest.

The Plugfest events aim to evaluate key services supported by the IMS reference architecture. The services include fixed and mobile voice services, instant messaging, hosted IP PBX (News - Alert), and VoIP supplemental services over multiple networks, such as 3G Mobile, WiFi (News - Alert), Wireline and Cable broadband.

Many interoperability scenarios were tested and evaluated during the Plugfest. Empirix’s test and monitoring solutions helped to demonstrate interoperability between a variety of end-user devices through different core infrastructure elements, both to other IMS elements and the PSTN.

The solution also demonstrated that third-party application servers are able to interoperate within the core switching infrastructure as well as the importance of having network-wide monitoring and analysis tools for quickly diagnosing and fixing interoperability issues.

Registrations and de-registrations both with and without authentication and calls without authentication were evaluated with the help of Empirix. The company also helped to evaluate calls from one IMS user element (UE) to another IMS UE, an IMS UE to a standard SIP user agent (UA), and an IMS UE to the PSTN.

Scenarios for future Plugfest events were also identified, including further work needed in the area of IMS SIP authentication.

“With an already strong company-wide focus on developing IMS-enabled solutions, we were happy to participate in the IMS Forum’s first annual Plugfest and test some of the key scenarios required for true IMS implementation,” said Gordon Beith, senior product manager at Empirix, and an active contributor to the IMS Forum, in a press release.

He continued: “Not only was the event a great way to identify, and address, IMS adoption challenges, but it also helped lay the groundwork for future Plugfest events, which we're looking forward to.”

Michael Khalilian, president of the IMS Forum, said that they were able to execute on more testing and monitoring scenarios with the participation of Empirix in their first Plugfest event.

“We appreciate the hard work put in by all of our contributing companies and are confident we'll be able to accomplish even more at the next Plugfest,” he said.

Empirix combines the industry’s deepest knowledge of telecommunications and self-service applications with award-winning testing and monitoring solutions to ensure their customers realize the promise of their technology investments.

The IMS Forum is a global, non-profit industry association devoted to interoperable IP Multimedia Subsystems services and solutions. The Forum’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of IMS through discussion and resolution of interoperability issues, and the development of standards-based IMS services residing in the IMS application layer.

The UNH-IOL is a vendor neutral testing center associated with the University of New Hampshire.

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering call centers, CRM and information technology. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.