Convenient and comprehensive at-a-glance summaries:

• VoIP Traffic Summary
• Call Summary
• Voice Quality Scoring
• Precedence (QoS)
• Summary Graphs.

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VoIP Traffic Summary

Detailed views with in-depth Call Detail Records:

• Addresses
• Status (Open, closed, fail)
• Number of packets, packet bytes, packet loss
• Start time, initial setup duration, duration
• Current jitter, maximum jitter
• MOS, R-factor
• QoS for each call
• Number of packets that arrive out of order
• Detailed analysis for packet loss and delay
• Gap density, average gap duration

VoIP Expert Events with over 50 Expert items:

Observer offers over 50 event-based and threshold-based VoIP Experts to immediately flag problems for faster problem resolution. Examples include:

• Alarms for above or below active jitter rates
• Lost packets
• Alterations in the QoS stream

Connection Dynamics

Drill down further with Observer’s Connection Dynamics to view call bounce showing packet-by-packet commands and delays.

Could total network bandwidth affect jitter and delay? Observer’s VoIP
Expert charts jitter in each direction of a VoIP call and compares it to total
bandwidth utilization. Use this information to determine if network load is affecting VoIP call quality.

Observer offers complete VoIP and video decodes, including H.323, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), MGCP, and SCCP (Cisco "skinny"). Reconstruct streams into a .WAV or .AVI file for replay.

Other VoIP Expert Features:

VoIP Quality Scoring

Observer displays the individual Mean Opinion Score (MOS) and R-factor for every call and as an average for all calls. Quality scoring is conducted using the ITU E-Model. During VoIP Setup, you may customize the impairment factors of the E-model depending on your VoIP equipment and network characteristics. For example, VoIP quality on calls made from the factory floor over multiple hops may be scored differently to calls made within a small office setting.

VoIP Quality of Service

Observer’s VoIP Expert reports QoS levels by call, packet, and protocol. VoIP Expert also shows percentage of VoIP utilization as compared to the rest of network traffic allowing you to plan network upgrades. Sort TCP sub-protocols by the TCP Precedence bit—a mechanism for prioritizing traffic for applications like VoIP.

Observer supports QoS standards such as:

• Default: RFC 1349, 1195, 1123, 791
• OSPF V2: RFC 1248, 1247
• DSCP: RFC 2474

VoWLAN

With the Network Instruments Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA) architecture, all of Observer’s VoIP enhancements are automatically available across multiple topologies. For example, Observer’s VoIP Expert has the capability to monitor VoIP traffic even over wireless networks.

Jitter

Observer’s VoIP Expert displays the statistical variance of packet arrival times, also known as jitter, measured in timestamp units or RTP time units.

VoIP Decodes

Observer offers complete decode of voice and video protocols, including H.323, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), MGCP, and SCCP (Cisco "skinny").

VoIP Conversation Graphs

The VoIP Expert displays H.323/SIP conversational data in three separate graphs. Each display is designed to help identify why a connection may be experiencing problems, or at what level of network load are H.323 conversations exhibiting acceptable quality behavior. Displays include jitter and lost packets (%) for each direction of the conversation, total RTP/RTCP bandwidth utilization, total utilization and each conversation's percentage of total utilization.