MultiDSLA v4.0.0: Release Notes at 8 February 2011 These Release Notes give you information about MultiDSLA v4.0.0, feature changes, known issues and possible workarounds for those issues. This release introduces a new Results Analyser, improved echo and call progress analysis, DTMF analysis, a new key management system that supports softkeys and dongles and a large number of improvements in both usability and stability of the system. WARNING This installer will upgrade your database engine to SQL Server 2008 and the Microsoft.NET framework to version 4. These changes will most likely require the rebooting of the machine. System Requirements Supported Operating System Minimum Revision Level: Windows XP Professional SP3; Windows Vista Business SP2; Windows 7 Professional; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008. Both 32-bit & 64-bit versions of all Operating Systems. Processor: 2 GHz Pentium processor or equivalent (Minimum); Pentium Duo processor or equivalent (Recommended) RAM: 1024 MB (Minimum); 2048 MB (Recommended) Hard Disk: Up to 1.5 GB of available space may be required Display: 1024 x 768 high colour (Minimum); 1280 x 1024 high colour (Recommended) Installation Notes MultiDSLA v4 is an upgrade from v3 and v2.4.14 If you have downloaded the installation from our website you will find that it is now provided as an ISO file. The ISO file is a copy of the CD-ROM contents and includes all prerequisites for the installation of MultiDSLA. If you had release a MultiDSLA v4 beta version then it should be uninstalled prior to installing this released version. You should uninstall v2.4.14 before installing v4. It should not be necessary to uninstall earlier versions of MultiDSLA v3 prior to installing the released version However if problems occur while installing the released version please uninstall the earlier pre-release versions, restart the PC and try installing the released version again. Installing MultiDSLA v4 If you already have a MultiDSLA v4 CD-ROM please skip the first two steps:
1. Download the ISO file from http://www.malden.co.uk/mdslaupg.htm 2. Burn the ISO file to a CD-ROM or use a third party application to mount the image without burning to a CD (e.g. Virtual CloneDrive). 3. Run the setup.exe program. The setup program prompts you through the installation process. Follow the instructions on the screen. Uninstalling MultiDSLA v4 If required, you can uninstall MultiDSLA by following the steps below: 1. Select Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs. 2. From the list of currently installed programs, select MultiDSLA 4, and click Remove. This process does not remove the user files, database or any licence keys installed on the system. Node Requirements MultiDSLA v4 introduces new features that require additions to the node software. Please upgrade nodes to at least the following versions: DSLAII firmware v6.81 Scalable VN v2.4.0 ISDN PRI v2.3.0 ISDN BRI v2.3.0 MultiDSLA no longer supports the VVT and Virtual Node types. Both client applications have been superseded by Scalable VN which offers equivalent and more functionality. Users of Virtual Node can download and install Scalable VN free of charge. Feature Additions and Changes in v4 Results Analyser Results Analyser has had a major upgrade. The views are optimised to fully use the available screen space. Features which were hidden are now moved to the toolbar to make discovery easier. User settings persist between sessions. Playback of recordings is integrated directly into the views, for example with the 2D Reference/Degraded/Error view when listening to a file, a cursor tracks the play-out position on the view. Help is integrated into the Results Analyser, and is automatically refreshed to describe the selected measurement. Call Progress Analysis has been extended for DSLA phone line tests. If the call progress option is enabled in a configuration (now the default) the first 30 seconds of the call set up from the calling side, or less if the call is answered before this time, are
captured and analysed. In the Results Analyser the recording is presented as a waveform plot with Initial Response and Post Dial Delay marked on the graph. Call Progress Analysis for SIP has been revised. Now presented within the Results Analyser, rather than in a separate Call Analyser, a number of small changes have been made to make the ladder diagram better reflect the actual flow of a call. In addition we have, following a review of typical usage, decided to always show the raw decode of the SIP message and augment this view with selectable highlighters for the main points of interest when analysing SIP messages. To view the call trace, simply open the Results Analyser for a test call by double clicking on the test block in Test Manager, or right-clicking on the test block and selecting View Results. The ISDN Call Progress Analysis did not decode the messages to an appropriate level to be of practical value to an engineer. In the short term this feature has been removed while improvements are implemented in the ISDN client. The previous DTMF Analysis view has been replaced by two new views; the DTMF waveform view and the DTMF table. The waveform view allows you to quickly analyse each digit simultaneously in the time and frequency domain. This view includes various features to identify any digits having problems. The table view provides a colour coded spread sheet type view of the results; parameters are coloured red if they cause the digit to be rejected, and orange if they cause the digit to be borderline. New RST file format introduced. RST files allow you to store a task s results into a file and send the results to others to view/analyse. A significant rework of this format means that the file now contains a lot more information, while often being smaller in size. The file also includes the reference and degraded speech recordings which mean that you no longer need to separately find these and include when sending results. An RST file can be viewed with the free Speech Performance Viewer utility available for download from the Malden website and included in the Utilities folder. It is now possible to open RST files directly in the MultiDSLA Results Analyser, rather than needing to open the file always with Speech Performance Viewer. This means you can stay within your MultiDSLA environment when analysing files sent by other users. The Views list in Results Analyser has been reduced by combining some associated views and adding toolbar options to switch between modes. This is to simplify navigation, for example v3 has six signal spectra views, these are now combined into a single Signal Spectra view with toolbar options to change the type (Speech/Noise/Average) and Scale (Linear/Bark). A link for Results Analyser has been added to Tools panel to allow direct access to the tool without needing to open it via a previous test. This is useful when wishing to view RST files received from others. Reports When importing a measure profile into the measure selector the filename is used as the Profile name. This can be changed subsequently if required.
Following a number of requests we have changed the trend graph to be displayed as a line, rather than as bars. Drilldown is still available from the line. Thresholds are now presented visually on graphs, for example on the KPI graph each metric threshold is represented by a triangle marker at the right hand side of the graph. The direction of the triangle indicates the direction of the threshold, for example a downward pointing triangle indicates that a value below the widest part of the triangle will fail the threshold. The threshold value is set in the measure profile. The Connections report reorders the graphs in order of quality, the lowest quality first. Drilldown from the Connections report is now available. MultiDSLA can be configured to access reports on a port other than port 80. The port change needs to be applied manually in the Windows IIS Administration tool, and then the new port should be entered in System Settings > General > External Access Options. When defining a measure profile for exporting results to a CSV file it can be useful to include blank columns. This is possible in version 3 but has been missed by a number of users. To improve visibility of this feature it has been moved from the right-click context menu to the toolbar. Some performance improvements have been implemented across the reports. A bug has been fixed in Measure Selector which was stopping the setting of a custom threshold in a profile. Now supports node and configuration names that include a + character. Exporting to a CSV file which was already open, for example in Excel, would crash MultiDSLA; this is now fixed. Tasklist & Events A new Demonstration folder has been added to your Working Directory s tasklist folder. In here we will include tasklists that demonstrate functionality, such as DTMF analysis and the new Echo Analysis, but which should not necessarily be used when testing a network. Note: the DTMF Analysis tasklist has been moved here and renamed DSLA DTMF Analysis Demo. A new Tone Burst event has been added to MultiDSLA. This measures the true RMS level of a signal during periods of activity, ignoring silence periods. This is useful in analysing levels of tones that include cadence. A new Echo Level + Delay event has been added to MultiDSLA for DSLA nodes. This detects the first three echoes on a connection for example; first the sidetone/local hybrid echo, second the far-end hybrid echo, and third the far-end acoustic echo. The event reports the delay and level of each echo found. The event is currently optimised to work with a band-limited white noise signal and is demonstrated in the DSLA Echo Analysis Demo tasklist which can be found in the new Demonstration tasklist folder. The demonstration tasklist must be run between the two channels of a single DSLA or GPS controlled DSLA channels.
When starting MultiDSLA, the Node View toolbar will now remember the last selected tasklist folder and restore this selection rather than returning to the default folder. In DTMF Analysis, when a digit is determined to be in a Must Reject state the detected digit is now skipped when comparing to the expected sequence because this is more representative of how a system under test would behave. Test Management In Test Manager a new navigation button has been added to the toolbar next to the Duration drop down list. Clicking on this button will take you to the last completed test call. Subsequent clicking will take you to the next block of time that contains completed test calls. 16-bit linear PCM (L16) codec option has been added for SIP testing with Scalable Virtual Node for 8k, 16k and 32k. It is possible to add the same physical device multiple times into MultiDSLA; sometimes this is done to organise testing. If a device was represented by two nodes and the first node was being used in a test, when you tried to use the second node in a test (which is actually the same device as the first node) the system would mark the node as unavailable. We now recognise this condition specifically and rather than mark the node as unavailable we report in the event log that the node is already being used in another test. For tests which repeat it is now possible to terminate the test (current and future test calls), as well as end the current test call from the node in Node View. Right-click on the node and select Terminate Test while a test call is in progress. When deleting tests from Test Manager, previously the associated history files would be left in the system. These are also now removed. If using Custom Call Control playlists previous versions of MultiDSLA required you to specify a playlist for all call stages. Now it uses the default if a playlist is not specified for a particular stage. Fix to dial string creation for Virtual Node. If All Numbers option was selected in Number Building it would still omit the country and area codes. This is now fixed. Editing a configuration on a node that was running a test could lead to an exception and the test being terminated. Editing configurations on nodes running tests no longer causes this problem. While streaming to/from a DSLA, the application could crash if the connection was externally terminated. This situation is now handled and the crash avoided. In some cases, scheduled tests would be terminated on restarting the application after MultiDSLA had been closed. This problem has been fixed. The scheduled tests are now restarted. The use of a taskset in a tasklist could cause a call to be dropped; this problem is resolved. Post Dial Delay measurements on DSLA could be erratic, we have improved this measurement.
Mouse-click utility would click twice at the end of the call to hang-up the connection. Now it correctly clicks only once. Remote Access General It is now possible to delete a configuration via remote access using the command deleteconfig. Previously, to terminate all tests via remote access required looping round all running tests and terminating each individually; a terminate-all-tests function has been added to simplify this process. Note: terminate stops current and any future, test calls. ExecuteScenarioAt command added to Remote Access to allow you to specify a future time in the format DD-MMM-YYYY HH:MM:SS. Added two commands, GetNodeVersion and UpgradeFirmware, to be able to check and update a DSLA s firmware. Support for Python 3.1 added PerformAdvancedAnalysis now returns the new RST file format. Added GetSystemTime and GetSystemUtcTime functions. A new DSLA configurator application, located in Start>All Programs>Malden Electronics>Malden Tools, has been added to manage multiple DSLAs, allow direct setting of a DSLA s gateway and mask, perform a soft reboot, format its file system as well as providing a clearer presentation of all node information. A new key manager sub-system has been added. This supports a new dongle key, as well as the existing software key. In addition to allowing a dongle key, a number of changes have been added to the key subsystem to simplify the process. If the dongle is removed, you are given 30 seconds in which to replace the dongle before the application is closed. Application start-up is up to 65% faster, depending on system. The online Help has been restructured to make navigation quicker. A number of localisation issues have been resolved, resulting in improved stability of the application. Creation of Working Directory at a user-defined location during first run could create a folder in a place other than that specified by the user; this is now fixed. Performing handset to handset testing on older DSLAIIs with serial numbers below 4859 could result in a slight drop of speech quality due to a missing filter setting. This setting is now applied. Now possible to reset E-model configuration settings to default. Known Issues The packet capture feature is being extended to allow packet capture of all MultiDSLA control communications and also allow captures to be associated with the test on which it ran. The capture association and access features are still in
development and for this release you must read the event log to determine where a capture is stored. Sound Relay Assistant buffer reset option Auto does not do anything. Event log warning that P.311 test requires 32k sample rate for Out of Band measurements is not clear. Wait for Call State event in DSLA not working. Adding Phantom or Uncontrolled nodes in Add Node dialog is blocked with demand for base name and address. For these node types no address is actually required. To work around the problem, before selecting a Phantom node, or changing the Communications Mode to No direct communication, enter a single letter or number in the Direct communication using address: box. Installation Issues and Workarounds On Windows XP (x64) & Server 2003 if you wish to use the Remote Access command PERFORMADVANCEDANALYSIS you need to make the following changes to IIS to be able to download the RST files. 1. In IIS Manager, right-click on Default Web Site, and click Properties. 2. Click the HTTP Headers tab. 3. Click Mime Types. 4. Click New. 5. In the Extension box, type.rst. 6. In the MIME type box, type application/x-malden-application. 7. Click OK.