The Multi-service Switching Forum last week presented the results of its latest and largest global interoperability testing event at the VON conference in Boston and came away with 23 implementation agreements

Two weeks of 24-hour testing by 28 companies worldwide ended with members of the MSF feeling more confident in the viability of a global, interoperable IP telephony network.

“This was more than just testing standards. Getting 23 implementation agreements was much more important,” said Roger Ward, president of the MSF and a member of BT's technical staff.

The testing event, called Global MSF Interoperability (GMI) 2004, was held simultaneously in North America, Europe and Asia from Oct. 4-15. The test's objective was to demonstrate a deployable and operationally ready IP telephony network with network management, enhanced quality of service (QOS) and security features. GMI 2004 also demonstrated a service layer with application server, media server and service broker functionality.

After 18 to 24 months of preparation, Ward said, GMI 2004 ultimately demonstrated global and interoperable service such as IP conferencing, origination and termination screening, emergency connections, video telephony, number translation and voice mail media processing, among other capabilities.

Participants in the testing focused on QOS mechanisms for MPLS and DiffServ traffic engineering. They had to guarantee specific call volumes while preventing bandwidth overloads and ensuring priority calling such as E911.

“Even our own engineers were surprised with how well the tests went,” said Chris Daniel, senior director of business development for Leapstone.

The test was conducted using four interconnected host networks from BT, Korea Telecom, NTT Communications and Qwest Communications as well as hardware, software and testing gear from 24 vendors. It tested application servers, media servers, service brokers, session border controllers, call agents, bandwidth managers and other control and management systems against the specific protocols defined in MSF Interoperability Agreement specifications. The testing also was used to validate the second release of the MSF framework. The MSF will issue formal test results in the coming weeks.

Ward said BT will incorporate the lessons learned from the event into the company's 21st Century Network initiative.

Final Participant List

• Acme Packet
• Agilent
• Alcatel
• BT
• Cisco
• Convedia
• Empirix
• Ericsson
• ETRI
• FeelingK
• Fujitsu
• Hitachi
• IP Unity
• KT
• Leapstone
• Marconi
• MetaSwitch
• Navtel
• NCS
• Nortel
• NTT
• Operax
• Qwest
• Siemens
• SoftFront
• Sonus Networks
• Spirent
• Teledata Networks