Service providers worldwide are actively turning up new services based on carrier Ethernet technology in a fierce competition to attract premium subscribers. The need for quality services has never been more important, making comprehensive Ethernet testing immediately at service turn-up vital to ensuring service quality and increasing customer satisfaction.
Customer service-level agreements (SLAs) dictate certain performance criteria that must be met, with the majority documenting network availability and mean-time-to-repair values which are easily verified. However, Ethernet performance criteria are more difficult to prove, and demonstrating performance availability, transmission delay, link burstability and service integrity cannot be accomplished accurately by a mere PING command alone.
Portable RFC 2544 test equipment enables field technicians, installers and contractors to immediately capture test results and demonstrate that the Ethernet service meets the customer SLA. These tests can also serve as a performance baseline for future reference.