AirMagnet First to Provide Complete Visibility into Voice-Over-Wireless LANs

(Product News, 10 Jul 2007)

AirMagnet Inc. has launched the newest version of its AirMagnet VoFi Analyzer, the industry's premier tool for monitoring and troubleshooting voice-over-wireless LAN deployments in the enterprise.

VoFi Analyzer PRO 3.0 provides a dramatic improvement in understanding of voice traffic as it traverses a wireless network, for the first time collecting and integrating connection, device and server data (air, phone and wire) for unprecedented insight into the state of voice deployments. The new version also allows IT managers to identify call problems and generate mean opinion scores (MOS)¡ªeven on encrypted networks¡ªand offers the industry's most comprehensive call roaming analysis.

"AirMagnet is dramatically raising the standard for voice analysis and providing a product that delivers an unparalleled level of insight into voice over wireless LANs," said Chris Roeckl, Vice President of Marketing at AirMagnet. "Our new approach to gathering voice application information, combined with our ability to analyze information on encrypted networks, makes this an extremely powerful tool for ensuring voice over wireless LAN call quality in the enterprise."

VoFi Analyzer 3.0, which received an Interop Best of Show Award in May, introduces a completely new concept for understanding and resolving issues associated with VoWLAN deployment, collecting and integrating voice-related data from three different sources¡ªair, phone and wire¡ªto deliver the only comprehensive view of the entire enterprise connection. VoFi Analyzer directly samples wireless voice traffic, delivering an unbiased, third party perspective on the quality between a given phone and the wireless infrastructure, as well as a simultaneous view into both sides of the call (access point to phone and phone to access point). It also integrates with supported Spectralink phones to collect Syslog messages, giving crucial insight into the connection quality at the device itself. Finally, VoFi Analyzer integrates with leading Cisco's Call Manager and Vocera Servers to provide a "wired" perspective on the connection. This analysis of both end-points and the traffic in between allows users of VoFi Analyzer to quickly understand and correct enterprise VoWLAN connection issues.

Another unique capability of VoFi Analyzer 3.0 is its ability to deliver complete analysis of fully encrypted wireless voice traffic, allowing IT managers to troubleshoot connection issues without exposing enterprise networks. Traditional packet sniffing technologies sacrifice this security, requiring decoding of the full protocol stack to determine call quality scores such as MOS and R-Value.

VoFi Analyzer 3.0 also provides the industry's most comprehensive analysis of call roaming, a common problem area with VoWLAN deployments. Using VoFi Analyzer, IT managers can track all roaming events and see the history of all roams in a given call to quickly determine if a call is frequently "thrashing" between APs or channels. VoFi Analyzer 3.0 also has a new feature called "Follow Phone" that allows the application to lock onto a particular client phone and track that device through any roaming event, no matter where or how often it roams, to accurately troubleshoot a problematic connection.

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