February 13, 2014. GL Communications Inc. has announced its enhanced MAPS Diameter Protocol Emulator. Jagadish Vadalia, manager of product development at the company, said, “The Diameter protocol is intended to provide a framework for Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) applications such as network access, roaming, and IP mobility. AAA protocols are used to determine whether the user is allowed to connect to the network (Authentication) and use a particular service (Authorization). It is also used to track network resources used by end-user for accurate billing (Accounting).”
He added, “Using MAPS Diameter one can test almost all 4G network elements such as MME (Mobility Management Entity), HSS (Home Subscriber Server), EIR (Equipment Identity Register), AF (Application Function), AS (Application Server), CSCF (Call Session Control Function), PCRF (Policy and Charging Rules Function), PCEF (Policy and Charging Enforcement Function), SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node), and PDN GW (Packet Data Network Gateway).”
Vadalia further added, “As an enhancement to the existing MAPS Diameter Emulator, GL now offers support for emulating Sh interface, multiple transport handlers (SCTP/TCP), and enhanced test beds to handle interfacing to multiple clients/servers. The MAPS Diameter Emulator can now simulate User Data Handling procedures over Sh interface besides existing support for several other procedures over S6a, S6d, S13, Cx/Dx, Gx, and Rx interfaces.”
He added, “The MAPS Diameter Emulator gives the users the unlimited ability to edit messages on supported interfaces to support various procedures. Call handling scripts of the application provide statistical information about total calls, active calls, completed calls, passed calls, and failed calls.“
Features include a user-friendly GUI for generating hundreds of UE signaling load tests over SCTP/TCP layers, support for customization of call flows and message templates, ready-to-use scripts for quick testing, support for scripted call generation and automated call reception, protocol trace with full message decoding and graphical ladder diagrams of call flow with time stamp, a script-based and protocol-independent software architecture, and reports of call statistics and associated captured events and error events during call simulation. Impairments can be applied to messages to simulate error conditions.