Spirent Communications announced that Tiscali Netherlands has selected Spirent TestCenter to ensure interoperability of its multi-vendor equipment in its core and access networks. Spirent TestCenter will enable Tiscali Netherlands to test current and future equipment as it upgrades its network to meet future customer demand and to cater for bandwidth-hungry services such as IPTV.

"Delivering high quality services to our customers is top priority for Tiscali," stated Ben Lammers, senior network development architect at Tiscali. "With the flexible Spirent TestCenter platform we are able to ensure our QoS is thoroughly qualified before any new customer services are launched."

Spirent's TestCenter platform provides analysis of next-generation communication services and devices. Spirent TestCenter simultaneously emulates thousands of clients requesting an IP address using DHCP, thousands of clients requesting multicast video using IGMP and thousands of clients receiving unicast internet traffic completing the Triple Play picture. This capability, combined with MPLS network emulation, provides benchmarks for network performance all from a single testing platform.

"Tiscali Netherlands has a long standing relationship with Spirent Communications," stated David Hill, vice president of EMEA sales, Spirent Communications. "Spirent TestCenter builds upon Spirent's expertise in the data communications market and offers unmatched capability for testing IPTV services."

Spirent TestCenter enables network equipment manufacturers and service providers to accurately measure the performance and scalability of routers and switches. It can be used to create large-scale tests that exceed the capacity of devices under test. Such tests can evaluate key performance parameters under typical and extreme subscriber traffic load conditions, and they can determine whether connection rates can support expanding subscriber bases at various bandwidth levels.