OneSight Voice Quality Assurance

OneSight Voice Quality Assurance

Benefits Proactively determine voice quality issues as well as other service impacting issues before users complain Comprehensively monitor communications systems with both passive and active probes Accurately compare and score a received voice clip with a known good reference for more effective measurement of IP packet impairments View lost packets, jitter, and RTT to identify what is causing poor voice quality and narrow the list of possible sources Easily listen to recordings and verify voice quality issues of the actual placed call voice quality scores are no longer meaningless Quickly find the root cause of voice quality problems Predict future problems by understanding when and where voice quality problems are occurring Know the status of network and systems that affect your voice quality Rapidly troubleshoot and reduce the time to find and repair problems Easily assure voice quality for VoIP deployments Features Comprehensive and centralized views of both passive and active voice quality solutions Real-time MOS and PESQ scoring Alerts and actions plans to proactively identify and resolve voice quality problems Pre-defined voice quality reports and dashboards templates with drilldown Voice quality metrics captured for quick, efficient voice quality troubleshooting Call recording for hearing the actual voice quality of monitored calls Voice over IP (VoIP) offers many competitive advantages over traditional circuit-based systems including lower costs, higher productivity, unified communications and greater functionality. However, if voice quality suffers, all the benefits of a VoIP deployment will be lost. VoIP deployments can be complex and determining the source of voice quality problems can be a complicated, tedious task. Only by proactively monitoring voice quality in your VoIP network can you be assured that your communications systems are providing a great user experience. OneSight Voice Quality Assurance Determining when voice quality has degraded below acceptable levels can be difficult. VoIP is subject to the performance and behavior issues of IP networks (varying network traffic, packet delays, etc ). Therefore, voice quality problems can be intermittent making them very difficult to identify and troubleshoot. Often, the problems causing poor voice quality are temporarily corrected before enough complaints are registered to justify the technical resources needed to investigate root cause. Created in conjunction with the OneSight platform, Empirix s active and passive Voice Quality Assurance Solutions are designed for the proactive management of today s complex VoIP deployments in both single-site and multi-site organizations. Active Monitoring: OneSight VQ Probes The OneSight VQ Probes are a key component of a voice quality assurance program, enabling administrators to analyze voice quality in live environments under normal operating conditions. They send real calls along the same path that actual customer or internal user traffic would take to reach its destination. OneSight then monitors those calls for numerous IP telephony metrics that affect voice quality and then reports MOS and PESQ scores. Empirix also records the actual call enabling administrators to hear the sound quality and compare it to baseline recordings to identify voice quality issues that other solutions just cannot detect. Generating monitoring calls that reproduce real-world VoIP traffic is the only way to accurately assess voice quality from the user perspective. For example, a customer call may originate in the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), enter an internal IP network through a voice gateway, navigate an interactive voice response (IVR), pass through a wide area network (WAN) or traverse other communication infrastructure elements before finally reaching another internal IP network and the extension that actually answers the call. To correctly measure the bi-directional voice quality for users on both ends of the call, a monitoring solution must be able to duplicate the actual call path. Solutions that attempt to simulate IP calls by sending packets across a single IP network or simply gather packet metrics from switches and phones miss a significant portion of

the call path. These solutions can give you an indication of how well your network supports IP calls, but they can t actively report the true end-to-end user and customer experience. Figure 1: Sample Dashboards from the OneSight VQ Probe Passive Monitoring: OneSight VQ Inspector Continuous management of enterprise communications services is needed to deliver the reliability and quality that customers and users demand. The OneSight VQ Inspector is a passive, centralized solution for managing, diagnosing and analyzing voice quality performance in the communications network. It allows administrators to effectively monitor and manage service levels for IP telephony to ensure voice quality meets end-user s expectations. Combining Quality of Service (QOS) metrics, Call Detail Records (CDR) and system health metrics in a single view, the OneSight VQ Inspector simplifies problem detection and root cause analysis for poor voice quality. With 24x7 monitoring of network health and performance, the OneSight VQ Inspector helps maximize the performance and availability of the communications infrastructure. It immediately alerts administrators to problems or potential issues in the VoIP environment. Figure 2: Sample Dashboard from the OneSight VQ Inspector

Troubleshooting IP Telephony Issues Once IP telephony voice quality problems are reported, finding the cause of the problems can be a challenge. The OneSight Voice Quality Assurance Solution monitors network traffic conditions that affect voice quality such as jitter, packet loss, and out-of-sequence packets to pinpoint the source of voice quality problems. By placing active and passive monitoring probes inside the IP telephony network, administrators are alerted to issues enabling them to quickly identify any potential degradation in bi-directional voice quality. To further assure voice quality, OneSight monitors abnormal conditions throughout the network infrastructure including the associated servers, IP telephony platforms, unified communications solutions, contact center products and other applications that provide voice services. OneSight includes Intellisearch, a unique root cause identification engine, giving administrators the ability to set thresholds for unacceptable voice quality. If that threshold is reached, Intellisearch provides additional information regarding the likely cause of the issue for faster, more reliable troubleshooting. OneSight also provides alert notifications of voice quality problems through dashboard views, emails, pagers, or SNMP traps. OneSight includes action plans that can escalate issues or automatically initiate tasks such as restarting application services to correct system issues and failures. No matter how accurate the methods of determining voice quality and how complete the associated call metrics, nothing is more effective for identifying voice quality issues than listening to it. One- Sight records a copy of each monitoring call it places allowing administrators to hear the quality by simply clicking on the file. It can also be compared to baseline recordings for indepth voice Figure 3: Voice Quality Metrics quality analysis. Proactive Prevention of Voice Quality Issues Identifying voice quality problems and determining root cause issues is important to any enterprise. Finding recurring voice quality problems and discovering trends that can predict future voice quality problems is even more important. OneSight reports are ideal for predicting trends and tracking recurring problems. OneSight compares critical voice metrics and shows their effect on voice quality. Flexible reporting intervals simplify the identification of recurring problems. Transaction reports clearly show the impact of network and system metrics on voice quality. OneSight can also associate critical network and system components with voice quality metrics. By proactively identifying issues, administrators can correct problems before they affect customers and users. Figure 4: Voice Quality Metric Comparison

OneSight Voice Quality Assurance Solution Components OneSight Empirix OneSight software is designed to identify and resolve the problems found in the complex technology of today s IP-based enterprises and contact centers. By continuously monitoring the user experience, OneSight can verify that enterprise communications solutions are functioning properly. OneSight detects performance impacting problems rapidly, often before they impact the customer. Application and infrastructure monitoring combined with extensive trouble shooting capabilities reduce the time to find and repair problems when they occur. OneSight performance reports help proactively identify trends and recurring problems to help prevent voice quality issues from affecting service in the future. OneSight VQ Probe The Empirix OneSight VQ Probe provides active monitoring of voice quality in unified communications, contact center, mobility and other enterprise communications solutions. By sending real calls via specified paths and monitoring their metrics, Empirix helps organizations understand voice quality from the user s perspective. The OneSight VQ Probe is based on Empirix Hammer G5 technology, the de-facto industry standard for load testing IP communications systems. When installed on a server or workstation, the OneSight VQ Probe registers as a phone extension within the IP-PBX. It can place monitoring calls to any other probe in the worldwide dial network, with no limitations. It sends real voice calls, not simulations. Therefore, OneSight can measure the actual, bi-directional voice quality using industry standard voice quality scoring algorithms such as PESQ (ITU P.862). Additionally, the OneSight VQ Probe measures IP-related call metrics such as jitter, round trip delay, lost packets, and out of sequence packets. www.empirix.com For a complete list of offices worldwide, or to find an authorized distributor in your area, please visit www.empirix.com/contactus. 2011 Empirix. All rights reserved. All descriptions, specifications and prices are intended for general information only and are subject to change without notice. Some mentioned features are optional. All names, products, services, trademarks are used for identification purposes only and are the property of their respective organizations. OneSight VQ Inspector The OneSight VQ Inspector is a passive, centralized solution for managing, diagnosing and analyzing voice quality performance in the communications network. It allows administrators to effectively monitor and manage service levels for IP telephony to ensure voice quality meets end-user s expectations. The OneSight VQ Inspector is an easy to use and install solution that correlates and centralizes voice quality metrics, call detail records, PBX health information and other infrastructure data. Administrators can view all calls for a particular extension or extension range to understand if voice quality issues are systemic or isolated to particular extensions or times of day. When issues are detected, OneSight gives administrators the ability to drill down into individual call details with trace route information to rapidly correct issues. CC:DS:OVQAS:0311