Empirix's Hammer Edge -- next generation testing for IP communications

BEDFORD, USA: Empirix Inc., a leader of service quality assurance solutions for new IP communications, announced the immediate availability of Hammer Edge, an intelligent, high performance realistic behavior emulation tool.

With Hammer Edge, network equipment manufacturers, service providers and large enterprises can emulate complex, unpredictable user behavior and multidimensional data traffic during the pre-deployment phase, so that products and services are
optimized for the way IP communications networks work today. Hammer Edge ensures the quality and performance of products and services, while reducing time to market, increases service revenues and improves test productivity.

“We were looking for a comprehensive, multiservice testing tool that would allow us to easily emulate realistic scenarios with limited time and resources,” said David Tipping, vice president, service providers America at Sonus Networks. “Of the solutions we tested, we found Empirix’s Hammer Edge was the best product for our needs. We were able to quickly integrate Hammer Edge into our test methodology, resulting in a more efficient and independent verification of high call rates and large numbers of concurrent calls.”

Based on patent-pending RUB/E technology, Hammer Edge is the only tool in its class that can emulate the realistic behavior of users, devices and network topology configurations; test realistic security scenarios; and predict user experience of data, video and voice applications, as an aggregate, in the pre-deployment phase.

The next generation in quality assurance, Hammer Edge gives organizations the ability to truly assure the quality of their multiservice networks and services.

“In a challenging economic climate, pre-deployment testing is critically important to ensure the successful roll-out of a new service or product. Organizations need to anticipate the realistic impact of complex, all-IP data traffic on real-time services such as voice, video and gaming,” said Bob Hockman, director of product management at Empirix. “Hammer Edge provides an integrated and intelligent solution that tests multiple scenarios typical of next generation networks, ensuring successful
deployments and the highest quality experience for end users.”

Hammer Edge emulates the realistic behavior of users and devices required to test elements at the network edge, including border controllers, firewalls and deep packet inspection devices, as well as security and application level gateways––in both secure and unsecure network topologies.

In addition, Hammer Edge predicts the users’ experience within these realistic environments. By focusing on emulating realistic sessions, Hammer Edge is able to provide L2 to L7 statistics and report errors that impact a system’s quality of service.

Hammer Edge emulates millions of users on a single chassis with high performance and realistic testing of multiservice scenarios. The system can be easily incorporated into existing test plans and automation environments. It is available immediately.