Tektronix, Inc., headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, is a supplier of test, measurement, and monitoring products, solutions, and services for the communications, computer, and semiconductor industries. In addition, this firm is active in the military/aerospace, consumer electronics, education, and a broad range of other industries worldwide. Founded in 1946, the company has operations in 19 countries around the globe, and generated $1.1 billion in sales revenues during 2007.
Tektronix’s Communications Business enables the world’s largest network operators, network equipment manufacturers, and cable companies to design, build, deploy, and manage current and advanced communication networks, including fixed, mobile, IP and converged multi-service networks. Their solution suite includes network performance monitoring solutions and services that provide passive monitoring and active testing of an entire communications network, as well as network diagnostics solutions and products that test and measure the signaling protocols in advanced networks and services. This includes support for both current and advanced protocols, applications, and architectures, including the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), VoIP, 3G wireless, WiMAX and IPTV.
Tektronix’s Unified Assurance (UA) network management suite provides integrated, end-to-end performance monitoring solutions that focus on three areas: customers, service providers, and network assurance. UA supports a full range of passive monitoring capabilities across next-generation mobile and IP networks, including active test solutions that provide active troubleshooting, provisioning, and automated service quality monitoring. These quickly identify, localize and quantify service and network problems, giving customers an integrated, end-to-end, next-generation network.
The Beamer product provides an end-to-end, real-time visibility into customer premise environments. This monitoring solution includes a range of on-demand and scheduled reports on service quality, with data aggregated by the hour, week, or month, and reports that can be displayed on a screen or exported to a printer.
The Orion product is designed for service providers, and allows fixed carriers to manage both intra- and inter-network service performance, with real-time, end-to-end visibility. Individual services can be monitored on a per-session basis and include transaction attempts, transaction failures, QoS performance, session performance, and service fault reports.
The GeoProbe product provides network engineers with the information required to solve network and service problems across technologies, applications, and element vendors. Advanced Performance Monitoring (APM) enables engineers to manage network services by associating network events into functional groups for more focused and effective troubleshooting.
Tektronix’s Active Assurance product suite complements its market-leading network monitoring systems for CATV and fixed and mobile network operators. The Active Assurance test solutions for VoIP, voice, video, Internet, fax, and fax-over-IP provide active troubleshooting, provisioning, and automated service quality monitoring that accurately reflects the real subscriber experience. This suite includes a number of elements:
- DirectQuality—Proactive service-level test management for voice, VoIP, fax, video, and Internet over IP, TDM, packet cable, cellular, and WiMAX—enabling the testing and monitoring of the quality of current and upcoming services as perceived by end users.
- PowerProbe 6000—The ISDN/TDM/IP probe houses three analog test modules and two IP/VoIP test modules for true converged network testing.
- PowerProbe 500—The service level test probe is custom designed for dedicated or converged VoIP, analog voice, fax, video, and data over IP service quality and connectivity testing.
- PowerProbe 30—The service level responder is the world’s smallest comprehensive test solution for VoIP / VoCable / VoDSL acceptance testing and troubleshooting.
- PowerProbe 50—The RTP responder provides IP termination for extensive VoIP and media-streaming performance validation.
Tektronix thus offers both active and passive probing capabilities for modern and legacy networks, which enable providers to rapidly identify, localize, and quantify service and network issues at all points from the core to the edge, through the access network and directly to the customer premises.
The company is also active in the protocol analyzer market, offering a similarly broad range of tools for deeper network analysis and fault detection.
- The Spectra provides integrated monitoring and testing for PSTN technologies and Signaling System 7 (SS7) systems, including the testing of high-speed links, signaling gateways, and signaling transfer points (STPs).
- The Spectra2XL is a testing platform that provides monitoring, functional testing, and load generation capabilities for IP, IMS, and legacy networks and supports voice, data, and video media.
- The K12-G35 supports a wide range of interfaces for mobile networks, including packet- and circuit-switched core networks, IMS, and WiMAX.
- The K15 Classic is a multi-technology system that supports a broad range of 2G, 2.5G, and 3G services, including real time video and multimedia services.
- The Network and Service Analyzer (NSA) is a suite of fully automated software applications for troubleshooting and optimizing mobile networks and services, It can trace subscribers’ calls both in real time and offline as they travel across the network through multiple interfaces and network elements.
Further details on the Tektronix architecture and products can be found at www.tektronix.com. Our next tutorial will continue our examination of vendors’ network management architectures.
