subscribe to Peeks | newsletter archives | April 2010 | Volume 2 Issue 4

Letter from the Editor | Focus on Voice | Hot Topic: Latency | Telepresence Webcast
Video Demo | Product News | Upcoming Events

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Just in time for nice weather, we’ve completed our spring cleaning! As promised in February, we've been hard at work updating our newsletter subscriptions. Anyone who didn’t open a newsletter in the past six months has been unsubscribed. We don’t like spam anymore than you do and figure if you’re not reading Peeks, you don’t need it in your inbox. If we made an error, for example you have a co-worker who received Peeks and now doesn’t, please let them know that they’ll need to re-subscribe so that we know they want Peeks. Also please add wpnews@wildpackets.com to your whitelist so that our newsletter doesn’t end up in your Spam folder.

The last webinar this Spring, “Wireless Campus Networks,” will be April 21st. (We’re taking a break in May and coming back June 16th with “The Need for Speed – Analyzing and Troubleshooting 10Gig Networks.”) This month, Jay Botelho will tackle the tangled web of campus-wide and multi-campus wireless deployments. Gone are the days when you could walk around with a portable wireless network analyzer searching for the source of a problem. Jay will bring you into the future, addressing new network analysis techniques for 802.11n and helping you prepare for expanded wireless services. Virtual seats are still available; register today. Remember that we’re now playing the audio over VoIP, so be sure your computer speakers work.

This month, we’re focusing on Voice – specifically VoFi – and one of the factors affecting QoS: Latency. We hope you find it informative.

Sincerely,

Eden Hensley
Director of Marketing Communication

FOCUS ON VOICE

Online mobile VoIP (or VoFi) is coming. In-Stat anticipates 171.3 million users by 2013, with annual revenues projected at $10.8 billion (“Mobile VoIP – Transforming the Future of Wireless Voice; In-Stat In-Depth Analysis,” Frank Dickson, Sept. 2009). Previously on our blog we’ve talked about why VoFi and why now, specifically the benefits of VoFi. Now we want to focus on what you need to do to analyze VoIP over Wireless (VoFi).

Last week in Toronto, Joe Habib, Director of Global Services, presented “QoS of IP Telephony: Slaying the Three-Headed Beast of Jitter, Latency, and Packet Loss” at IT360 (his slide deck (PDF) is available online). He was quick to point out that for the most part, VoIP and VoFi are the same. The differences involve: wireless segments instead of wired segments; signal interference; and wireless roaming.

When troubleshooting either a VoIP or VoFi call, you begin with the call itself. Read about VoFi troubleshooting.

HOT TOPIC: Latency

Let’s take a closer look at one of the heads of IP Telephony’s nemesis: Latency. The ITU recommends a maximum one-way delay of 150 ms for VoIP applications. This delay or latency is affected by several factors including distance latency (unavoidable, a fact of physics); queue latency; decision latency; encryption/decryption; CODEC operations; wireless roaming; and more. Whether these factors are attributed to the network or the application struck a nerve with readers of our February blog post, “Three tips for determining whether latency is caused by the network or application.”

Disagreement surfaced in regards to whether certain factors that contribute to latency should be attributed to the network or the application. For example, it was argued when a receiver handset queues 3 frames to handle out-of-order packets and jitter, the delay is network latency and not application latency.

What do you attribute to the network? To the application? Do people in your organization disagree?

Everyone, however, agreed it was important to monitor and measure latency. If you’ve got a current maintenance agreement, be sure to check out our Latency Monitor, a free add-on application for OmniPeek Network Analyzer, today. (Version 3.0.10 was released 11/12/2009.) With the Latency Monitor, you can view network and application latency side by side to determine the culprit.

ONDEMAND WEBCAST: Monitoring and Analyzing Your Telepresence Deployment

As travel budgets remain tight and increased airport security scares off even the most ardent road warriors, the market for conference rooms equipped with telepresence technology is likely to accelerate. As with most new technologies, the need to analyze and troubleshoot failures is always greater for the early adopters. Are you prepared to monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot your telepresence deployment? Can you rely on the utilities provided by your vendor, or is independent analysis and verification required? And how about mixed mode deployments? Register to watch this FREE webcast to prepare yourself for a successful video conferencing deployment.

Specifically, this OnDemand Webcast addresses the following topics:

• Current trends in telepresence
• Anatomy of a telepresence system
• Telepresence: a complicated marriage of VoIP and Video over IP
• Typical voice and video technologies used in telepresence
• Monitoring and analyzing telepresence performance on your network

You will also learn how to:

1. Establish requirements for monitoring and analyzing telepresence deployments
2. Determine which metrics to use for monitoring and analyzing telepresence deployments
3. Size network analysis solutions for telepresence deployments
4. Adapt existing network analysis solutions for telepresence deployments

Tune in and enjoy!