New testing standard helps enhance Carrier Ethernet service launches

CEN Feature (Jun 21 2011)

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   Ratified in March 2011, the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) Y.1564 Services Activation Test Methodology provides Carrier Ethernet industry players enhanced capability and increased assurance when launching services on newly deployed equipment.

    

   “Carriers wanted to know that services would work well for their customers before giving them the go ahead, but they had no way to do that before this standard was created,” explains Matt Squire, CTO for Overture Networks.

    

   Previously, carriers had only Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFC 2544 to rely on, adds Bruno Giguère,. Advisor, CTO Office for EXFO, and editor of  ITU Y.1564. The older standard was created to benchmark and verify the operation of network equipment and routing protocols. While carriers and test and measurement suppliers used the older standard, they also performed their own versions of service activation testing.

    

   This lack of a unified method and means for performing service activation testing was creating a “huge hole” in the market, he adds.

    

   The new recommendation provides carriers and equipment providers with a uniform methodology for verifying the delivery of different classes of service and support for bursty traffic, he notes.  ITU Y.1564 defines guidelines for measuring, in a manner that is repeatable, a Carrier Ethernet network’s jitter, latency, loss, and throughput when sending different sized sets of packets at various speeds.

    

   According to Giguère, though only recently ratified, the new standard has been in development since 2008 when he began working on it. The methodology truly started coming to life following a presentation to the ITU in 2009. Due to industry recognition that a new standard was needed and would in fact be ratified, ITU Y.1564 was implemented by most major test equipment suppliers prior to its formal ratification in March.

    

   In support of service activation testing, equipment suppliers got on board early with the standard in an attempt to alleviate problems at the start up of new services and to streamline the launch process for customers.  Some of the leading Carrier Ethernet equipment providers have even integrated the ITU Y.1564 remote packet generation and testing capabilities in their equipment.   Overture has long recoginized the need for simplifying service turn-up and was among the first to implement these capabilities in their product portfolio. 

    

   ITU Y.1564 enables service providers to obtain a "birth certificate" of sorts for new networks, says Giguère. The measurements resulting from the service activation testing provide all interested parties with a permanent record of how a network performs as it comes online. 

    

   “At any point in the future you can look back and know how it worked at the beginning,” says Squire. “The record can help make troubleshooting easier and point carriers in the direction of problems being caused by applications or equipment installed on the network," he adds.

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