Empirix Tests IMS Readiness at IMS Forum Plugfest

Empirix ® Inc., which helps organizations adopt complex communications solutions with confidence, announced today that its Hammer for IMS testing and monitoring platform has helped facilitate a successful week for the IMS Forum's first Plugfest event, which took place January 15-19, 2007. Hammer for IMS was used in a variety of scenarios throughout the week to conduct IP phone, infrastructure, and service interoperability tests at the Plugfest, which was held at The University of New Hampshire's Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL). The goal of the Plugfest events is to evaluate key services supported by the IMS reference architecture, including fixed and mobile voice services, instant messaging, hosted IP PBX, and VoIP supplemental services over multiple networks, such as 3G Mobile, WiFi, Wireline and Cable broadband.

During the Plugfest, many interoperability scenarios were tested and evaluated. Specifically, Empirix's test and monitoring solutions helped to demonstrate:

--  Interoperability between a variety of end-user devices through
    different core infrastructure elements, both to other IMS elements and the
    PSTN;
--  Third-party application servers are able to interoperate within the
    core switching infrastructure; and
--  The importance of having network-wide monitoring and analysis tools
    for quickly diagnosing and fixing interoperability issues.

Empirix helped evaluate registrations and de-registrations both with and without authentication and calls without authentication, as well as calls from one IMS user element (UE) to another IMS UE, an IMS UE to a standard SIP user agent (UA), and an IMS UE to the PSTN.

In addition, scenarios for future Plugfest events were also identified, including further work needed in the area of IMS SIP authentication.

"With an already strong company-wide focus on developing IMS-enabled solutions, we were happy to participate in the IMS Forum's first annual Plugfest and test some of the key scenarios required for true IMS implementation," said Gordon Beith, Senior Product Manager at Empirix, and an active contributor to the IMS Forum. "Not only was the event a great way to identify, and address, IMS adoption challenges, but it also helped lay the groundwork for future Plugfest events, which we're looking forward to."

"With Empirix participating in our first Plugfest event, we were able to execute on more testing and monitoring scenarios, which made for a much more productive, and interesting, week," said Michael Khalilian, President of the IMS Forum. "We appreciate the hard work put in by all of our contributing companies and are confident we'll be able to accomplish even more at the next Plugfest."

Hammer for IMS includes a variety of test solutions to meet the unique testing needs of any device, including feature, system, load, isolation, regression, negative, and media quality testing.

For 15 years, Empirix's hallmark with the Hammer test and monitoring solutions have helped Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEMs), Service Providers and Enterprises successfully transition to new technologies, spanning TDM/PSTN, VoIP, NGN, and now IMS-based networks spanning the 3GPP architecture and ETSI TISPAN.

To date, all of the world's Top 10 NEMs and virtually all of the top service providers use Empirix's Hammer solutions. As part of its mission to help enable the adoption of complex new technology waves, Empirix is a member of several quality-focused organizations, including the Multi-Service Forum, the recently launched Voice & Video over IP Quality Alliance (V2oIPQA) and the IMS Forum.

About Empirix

Empirix helps organizations adopt complex communications solutions with confidence. We combine the industry's deepest knowledge of telecommunications and self-service applications with award-winning testing and monitoring solutions to ensure our customers realize the promise of their technology investments. Empirix is the only company with expertise that spans the evolution of these advanced technologies across multiple markets -- from testing in R&D labs through monitoring the end-user experience. For over a decade, thousands of quality-conscious network equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprises worldwide have trusted Empirix to reduce the time and cost of integrating new technologies into existing environments. Visit www.empirix.com .

About The IMS Forum

The IMS Forum(TM) is a global, non-profit industry association devoted to interoperable IP Multimedia Subsystems services and solutions. The Forum's mission is to accelerate the adoption of IMS through discussion and resolution of interoperability issues, and the development of standards-based IMS services residing in the IMS application layer. The IMS Forum provides consultancy to industry service providers and vendors on best practices and approaches for IMS rollouts and interconnectivity. The IMS Plugfest(TM) facilitates the industry-wide certification of applications and services interoperability. More information is available at www.imsforum.org .