ATLANTA — Communications test companies discovered at the recent Supercomm that a two-pronged strategy is key to surviving the telecom slump of 2001. A strong hand must be played in physical-layer test, particularly in gigabit-per-second services for Sonet and Gigabit/10-Gbit Ethernet. At the same time, companies must aim for diversity by moving up the packet-switched protocol stack, offering test of circuit-switched and time-division services or moving into tangential software services, such as operation support systems (OSS).

On the RF and wireless front, test companies like Tektronix Inc. and Anritsu Inc. already have pushed the diversity angle, moving into broadband wireline services even as they shore up wireless test for third generation (3G). Two strong players in broadband wireline, Spirent Communications Inc. and Agilent Technologies Inc., face inroads not only from Tektronix and Anritsu but from startups concentrating on specialized broadband test. The latter include Ixia Communications Inc. and Gnubi Inc.

Agilent chief executive Ned Barnholt made a high-profile visit to the communications show earlier this month to stress to analysts that telecommunications will continue to be the target market for the test spin-off from Hewlett-Packard Co., regardless of the temporary softness stemming from the demise of alternative carriers.

"The telecommunications market is still fairly immature, and we will see many of these cycles in the midst of overall growth," Barnholt said.

The test-platform stars of Agilent's Supercomm show were the 2.5-Gbit and 10-Gbit bit error rate testers, small portable systems that can monitor up to 192 network paths inside a Sonet transport signal. Tom White, senior vice president of communication solutions at Agilent, said the company had taken $30 million in advance orders for 10-Gbit bit error rate testers in a six-week period — an indication, he said, that carriers are ready to deploy 10-Gbit networks.

While booth traffic focused on demonstrations of physical-layer test for Sonet and Ethernet, Agilent also rolled the first software products stemming from its March acquisition of Objective Systems Integrators Inc., developers of a unified management architecture (UMA) for operation support systems software. Agilent has brought in Keith Miller, a veteran of TCSI Inc. and British Telecom, to run a new communications management business unit under White's group.

Miller said Agilent will adopt a "best of breed" strategy in operation systems support, combining elements of the UMA product suite from Objective Systems Integrators and the NetExpert intelligent bus software modules developed at Agilent. Over the next year, Agilent will introduce an OSS suite allowing the direct management of service-level agreements, quality-of-service parameters, service provisioning, fiber-plant management and wireless roaming agreements.

At Spirent Communications, the WAN-centric executives from the Honolulu Adtech group are beginning to pull in expertise from the Ethernet and LAN-test divisions formerly with Netcom Systems/SmartBits, as well as the telecommunication-centric developers from Hekimian. Spirent Communications, the operating arm of Spirent plc, was formed last year by British conglomerate Bowman plc, which acquired Adtech, Netcom, GSS, Zarak, Hekimian and other companies to form a global communication-test powerhouse.

Adtech already had been capturing high-end Sonet business with its 2000 debut of the AX/4000 broadband tester, combining bit error rate and packet-level testing. At Supercomm, Spirent's Adtech group showed a very short-reach optical interface for the AX/4000 that meets the VSR-1 specs of the Optical Internetworking Forum. Spirent also did a joint demonstration with router manufacturer Pluris Inc. on the use of logical port bonding for Internet Protocol traffic to provide the equivalent of OC-768 (40-Gbit) links.

Capabilities vs. expertise

Alan Sguigna, vice president of marketing for the Adtech division of Spirent, said that bit error rate test expertise is one of several requirements for handling test capabilities for terarouters and switches at the network core. Spirent may have to compete with a variety of test systems that focus exclusively on bit error rate test, he said, but the company will emphasize the capability of testing at several layers in the Open Systems Interconnect protocol stack.

The synergy between the Adtech and SmartBits groups at Spirent had been obvious since the intrusion of Ethernet framing into carrier networks. Both groups focus on packet-layer testing of high-speed Internet Protocol systems. But Spirent is finding new ways of working with the circuit-switched development groups at the former Zarak Systems responsible for the Abacus platform, a centralized tester aimed at TDM DS-1 systems. At Supercomm, the follow-on Abacus2 was introduced, adding support for DS-3 (45-Mbit) TDM services.