Codima Technologies’ AutoVoIP accurately provided analysis and troubleshooting assistance for most of the 24 network problems and impairments we induced, with the exception of a few tests that depended on very stringent voice-quality thresholds.
We tested three tools in Codima Technologies’ Toolbox 5.1 set: autoVoIP, which monitors and troubleshoots VoIP networks; Traffic Simulator, which simulates traffic and generates stress tests for VoIP networks; and autoMAP, a network-visualization tool that provides a clear network layout of IP equipment, including IP phones, IP-PBX equipment and SIP servers.
The system came with excellent start-up and installation documents, and very good technical bulletins that showed tips and traps for deploying it. We experienced no significant problems installing the Codima product set, but because the product offers no installation prompts, IT personnel encountering problems are relegated to reading the manual.
The autoMap discovery tool integrates directly with Microsoft Office Visio, which does not come prepackaged by Codima, to provide graphical topology maps and asset reports of the network layout. It has a helpful Historical Change feature that automatically identifies topology changes. AutoMap is an effective tool for network discovery.
However, the fact that Codima’s VoIP analysis capability relies on the autoVoIP discovery feature may limit troubleshooting in some cases, because it sees only VoIP traffic flowing between discovered devices. For example, we had trouble analyzing our SIP calls emulated by the test and measurement equipment, because the simulated endpoints would not populate in Codima’s device map.
The autoVoIP tool uses passive analysis of VoIP traffic flows and provides live views of the activity and related service-level-agreement graphs. Information gathered by autoVoIP centers on data that feeds into QoS parameters, including delay, packet loss and jitter. MOS scores and R-factor values are then calculated automatically based on those parameters. SIP server performance is continuously tracked for response time and error patterns.
AutoVoIP accurately provided analysis and troubleshooting assistance for most of the 24 network problems and impairments we induced, with the exception of a few tests that depended on very stringent voice-quality thresholds. AutoVoIP could clearly assess voice quality and identify problem calls during the testing, but the accuracy we required for the analysis in the network-problems tests exceeded what we observed the tool could measure, so it did not trigger all the alarms for degraded VoIP call-quality.
AutoVoIP’s MOS was 0.5 points off what it should have been for the VoIP calls sent over an impaired network when the VoIP traffic did not use RTCP. Codima explained that the discrepancy probably occurred because the product uses RTCP as its first choice to measure QoS, but falls back to RTP analysis when RTCP is not available.
AutoVoIP’s grid-style GUI overview, referred to as the Troubleshooting Grid, visually represents the information running across the VoIP network. The simple interface eventually allowed us to reach detailed statistics for specific calls, but only after we had to jump between unlinked areas to get statistics, for example, on network jitter. We are concerned about the scalability of Codima’s simplistic front end for very large IP phone deployments, because you would have to scroll down to review thousands of phone icons in a larger network.
We also ran into a few glitches in the interface. For example, the highlighted item on the navigation tree would not remain on the item of interest when selected. It repeatedly jumped back to the script editor, a bug that made it difficult to keep track of our whereabouts. Codima acknowledged this problem and reported that it is addressed in the next software release.
For troubleshooting, autoVoIP reports on 26 VoIP-specific network events and can issue alerts on them all. We found these network events to be accurately triggered, except for the MOS discrepancy previously mentioned.
We liked the way we could see in real time who was calling whom — from the calling-line-ID standpoint. We also give a thumbs-up to the package’s Automatic Correlation Engine (ACE), which combines relevant network functions and presents the results for easy problem-solving. For example, in one of our tests, we caused a slow initiation of a SIP call — an annoying condition in which you pick up the phone and can’t dial and connect immediately. The ACE observed and reported this anomaly and made the connection that the condition could be related to the high call-setup volume in progress during this test.
Codima’s autoVoIP was smart enough not only to tell us there was a problem, but also, by measuring other criteria intelligently, to suggest what the problem could be. Further, this logical connection led to suggested remedies, for example, that the server might need additional memory or other resources. Other alerts would produce automatic correlation between VoIP impairment factors, such as excess network packet loss causing a lower voice-quality MOS score. So, Codima gets kudos for providing excellent expert advice for our troubled network.
Reporting is also a strength for Codima — particularly because autoVoIP does trend analysis and did well at mapping and providing a network-overview diagram.
