NetAlly Traffic Agents are controlled by the NetAlly test center and are intelligent, distributed software agents used to test the quality of voice (or data) services. The Traffic Agents simulate VoIP calls, monitor service levels and test route quality between any and all endpoints on the network according to a pre-defined schedule. Traffic Agents generate bidirectional RTP streams and emulate commonly used codecs in order to replicate the characteristics of real VoIP traffic on a production network. End-to-end call quality is measured using MOS scoring method and synthetic calls can be mixed with real data traffic during normal production
During the assessment phase, NetAlly Traffic Agents perform a series of traffic generation and troubleshooting operations to assess the readiness of your network for successful voice and data convergence. As Traffic Agents increase the volume of synthetic calls they measure MOS quality and impairment factors (delay, loss and jitter) for each agent pair participating in the assessment. Then NetAlly automatically performs an end to end route quality test whenever MOS degradation is detected. This process identifies problems with network connectivity, capacity or configuration before you roll out production services.
The deployment of NetAlly Traffic Agents is very flexible and supports multiple implementation scenarios. One method is to use a standard PC device operating as a dedicated appliance. Typically installed at network aggregation points, Traffic Agents are capable of performing extensive tests drawn selected from a diagnostic library of predefined and automated test procedures.
