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ClearSight Networks this week is making available an updated version of its ClearSight Analyzer probe technology that now includes more support for VoIP applications and IPTV.

The company, formerly AppDancer, updated its traffic analysis tool to provide comprehensive analysis of VoIP performance issues by monitoring live network traffic. ClearSight packages its software on an appliance and says its ClearSight Analyzer 6.0 (for both the stand-alone and distributed deployment models) includes improved reporting to help customers better understand what is going on with applications up to Layer 7. The company is adding support for VoIP applications including MSN and Skype as well as enhancing support for IPTV through video playback, video quality and channel zapping analysis.

"It has been really exciting for us as a company to see IPTV and video-on-demand services increasing in popularity. Such high bandwidth transactions and applications are ideal for our software's capabilities," says John Kenney, vice president of marketing at ClearSight.

The ClearSight analyzer's core component is software. As customers advance, the software is packaged on a portable hardware test tool. The company says it’s not an appliance in the standard sense, because it does not require rack mounting. ClearSight Analyzer can be deployed on any PC system with Windows 2000, using most standard network interface cards. In the future, ClearSight Analyzer will also be deployable on common network management platforms, such as Solaris.

With this release, ClearSight says it improved the drill down capabilities to help customers pinpoint problems more quickly. For example, in a distributed model, ClearSight analyzers can now display activity for an application, then pinpoint it down to a particular server, further drill into a particular flow, and then isolate the media content of that flow, the company says.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.