January 9, 2014, GL Communications Inc. has announced its enhanced Protocol Identifier and Traffic Classifier tools to classify traffic and protocols over T1 E1 lines. GL's Protocol Identifier and Traffic Classifier applications can help network engineers understand, analyze, and perform traffic engineering on T1 E1 networks. GL’s Protocol Identifier application is capable of detecting protocols such as ISDN, ATM, HDLC, MTP2, LAPD, SS7, PPP, GSM, GSM Abis, TRAU, and Frame Relay. The Traffic Classifier application can analyze different types of voiceband traffic such as voice, fax, data, and tones (such as dial and ring) carried over T1 E1 lines.
Vijay Kulkarni, CEO of the company, said, “GL's Protocol Identifier and Traffic Classifier applications are ideal tools for network engineers for understanding, analyzing, and performing traffic engineering on T1 E1 networks.”
He added, “GL’s Protocol Identifier application can identify and classify various protocols carried over T1 or E1 lines. It is capable of detecting protocols such as ISDN, ATM, HDLC, MTP2, LAPD, SS7, PPP, GSM, GSM Abis, TRAU, and Frame Relay. The timeslots and/or subchannels within timeslots are also identified, after which a detailed analysis can be carried out by individual protocol analyzers. This application is helpful in identifying traffic types at a concentration point, DSX patch panel, or multiplexed facility.
“A companion product called Traffic Classifier is an application that can analyze different types of voiceband traffic such as voice, fax, data, and tones (dial, ring, etc.) carried over T1 E1 lines. Traffic Classifier uses various identifying schemes depending on the country of selection and classifies the traffic, based on the dialing tones stipulated for that country.”
Kulkarni further added “Both Protocol Identifier and Traffic Classifier applications work on Windows 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. The applications can be accessed either directly or remotely.”
Important features of Protocol Identifier include the ability to nonintrusively characterize the protocols on T1 E1 lines in real-time; it supports classification of HDLC based protocols such as ISDN, SS7, PPP, Frame Relay, and GSM. A graphical view displays the timeslots and subchannels of the identified protocols; a statistical view displays the different protocols with the details of port, timeslots, and subchannels; and a stream statistics view shows the count of total number of timeslots, subchannels, and hyperchannels used by each protocol.
Applications include snapshot (obtain a real-time snapshot of activities over T1 E1 lines), surveillance (monitor all signaling and traffic events on all the timeslots/subchannels simultaneously on multiple T1 E1 lines; you can also do surveillance for extended periods by recording the classification results for days, weeks, or months at a time) and maintenance (technicians can quickly identify any content on the T1 E1 lines). Equipment manufactures and equipment vendors can perform a predeployment analysis of a network so as to provide an optimized solution for customers.