Momentum, baselines key to first IMS Forum plugfest

Thirteen vendors and sponsors completed a plugfest for IMS services and applications at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab on Jan. 19 and in doing so set a baseline for testing in future events that will run through 2008.

Ditech, Empirix, Ixia, Reef Point Systems, NE Technologies, Starent Networks, Tektronix, Tekelec, Sonus and Valid8 collaborated on the event and were sponsored by Empirix, Ditech, Sonus, GlobalTouch Telecom, Trendium and VOX.

During the event--which Manuel Vexler, vice president of the IMS Forum said took the pulse of the industry for IMS--participants built about nine different network configurations using fifteen carrier-grade platforms valued at more than $3 million.

“Nine different networks coming together and completing voice calls over fives days tells you IMS is kicking,” said Michael Khalilian, chairman and president of the IMS Forum and CTO at Pervasip. He added that having this first IMS Forum Plugfest at the start of 2007 is a good indicator that IMS is closer to becoming a mainstream technology.

The multi-vendor plugfest demonstrated end-to-end, multi-vendor interoperability in an IMS environment and developed a methodology to accelerate IMS testing.

IMS is applications running on platforms and given this was the first plugfest we had to make sure the platform was solid and that’s what we did,” said Pierre Lynch, director of wireless and IMS at Ixia. “We had to get all the Lego blocks to work together with other company’s Lego blocks, Now we can go on to sexier applications like fixed-mobile convergence, conferencing and presence.”

With the baseline established for testing IMS interoperability, the IMS Forum wants to attract a larger crowd to its next event to start testing services and applications. Ixia, which supplied terminal equipment end-user emulators and emulated the HSS as well, collaborated with the other vendors to establish and build the test plan.

Participants were able to identify areas for development in multi-vendor 3GPP IMS Release 6 networks. They tested multi-domain VoIP calls, integrated SIP Application Servers with multiple IMS cores and the Home Subscriber Server (HSS) serviced by Diameter interfaces. They also demonstrated voice services, including fixed-mobile services, IP Centrex and PSTN gateway using dual-mode mobile phones and VoIP, WiFi and other user equipment simulators.

Lynch said there were no show-stopper issues found during the plugfest, but, as expected, companies displayed varying degrees of readiness for implementing 3GPP IMS and identified misunderstandings interpreting certain aspects of the specification. “Our role was to support the activity so they could finds these things easily then adapt,” he said.

This is the first in what will be a series of open IMS Forum Plugfests, to be hosted by the IMS Forum at the UNH IOL. It is hoped they will ultimately certification for IMS products and services regarding interoperability. The next event is planned for the second quarter of 2007.