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Big Thank You to Mu User Group

Dave Kresse — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:08:23 -0700

I was fortunate to be part of Mu's initial Bay Area Mu User Group (MUG) last night in Milpitas.

Testing for the Unexpected (part 2 of 2)

Dave Kresse — Tue, 2 Jun 2009 11:34:08 -0700

I started noticing several interesting trends in our customers about six months ago, and it really hit home when I spoke at the NAB show on IPTV testing a couple of weeks back.

Testing for the Unexpected (part 1 of 2)

Dave Kresse — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:15:25 -0700

With the large increase in converged application and service deployments (VoIP, IPTV, IMS, VPLS data services, etc.), I am on the road talking with Mu’s operator, government and vendor supplier customers on a consistent and frequent basis.

Economic Risks of Not Testing Networked Applications

Adam Stein — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:01:51 -0700

Is this latest bump in the economy a resurgence or just another corner? How can you learn to plan for the unexpected and unknown? Broad topic but very applicable to the growing number of leading network operators and their vendors using Mu to more completely test their networked applications and product development processes (software development life cycle, or SDLC).

Response to Patrick Park's Network World VoIP Security blog

Thomas Maufer — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:34:29 -0700

Patrick wrote an excellent blog posting (http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/community/node/38818) about the way that Protocol Fuzzing could be used to find bugs like the recently disclosed "INVITE of Death." Patrick's blog made me wonder whether he's aware of the multiple commercially available fuzzing solutions that are on the market; of course, Mu has been shipping such a capability for almost 4 years now as part of a comprehensive automated reliability, availability and security testing solution.

Fighting Fire with Fire: Deal with the Top-25 by Adding Teeth to Your SDLC

Thomas Maufer — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:12:05 -0800

The top-25 list certainly stimulated some discussion, but to my mind it placed too much of the blame for bugs on the programmer and didn't have enough appreciation of the role of complexity of networked software systems. The right way to tackle this problem is through thorough testing, using invalid or unexpected traffic based on what the software will be exposed to in the real world

Dealing with Emergent Complexity by Improving Software Engineering Processes

Thomas Maufer — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:03:37 -0800

When faced with complex systems with complex behaviors, software engineering tools and processes deployed throughout the software development life cycle must embrace, not ignore, the complexity in order to eliminate most bugs before the code is deployed in the field. Any tool that only looks at the code (source or binary) without testing the reactions of the code to real (broken) traffic, isn't even scratching the surface.

Complexity Is an Emergent Phenomenon

Thomas Maufer — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:19:43 -0800

Is it really as simple as this: "There appears to be broad agreement on the programming errors," SANS Director Mason Brown said. "Now it is time to fix them. First, we need to make sure every programmer knows how to write code that is free of the Top 25 errors, and then we need to make sure every programming team has processes in place to find, fix or avoid these problems and has the tools needed to verify their code is as free of these errors as automated tools can verify." ?

From MPLS to IPTV -- Lessons Learned

Thomas Maufer — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:22:20 -0800

Mu's had quite a few customer and prospect demonstrations around newer Service Level Traffic variation and related Mu Test Suite automation capabilities during the last month. From 20-31 October, the every 2 year MSF GMI event; from 19-22 October there was MPLS 2008; and on Nov 6, a customer case-study seminar for leading operators and vendors. This week offers IMS-based IPTV demonstrations at TelcoTV in Anaheim.

Turning Network Complexity into a Competitive Advantage

Adam Stein — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:04:21 -0700

Mu's operator and vendor customers are scoring a competitive advantage by taking service complexity head on to ensure their specific service or product offering rises above all others.

Black Hat Iron Chef Event Proclaims Fuzzing First

Kowsik Guruswamy — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:36:57 -0700

The recent Iron Chef event at Black Hat was a +1 for fuzzing where it was more effective than static code analysis (SCA) according to Dark Reading. It's also very interesting to me (and others) that both approaches found different bugs, but fuzzing found the important one (obviously) to do with interaction of the application with the rest of the environment.

Verifying Service Readiness with DoS (part 2 of 2)

Ken Elwell — Tue, 8 Jul 2008 16:14:17 -0700

And now, the exciting conclusion to "Verifying Service Readiness with DoS"...

Verifying Service Readiness with DoS (part 1 of 2)

Ken Elwell — Tue, 8 Jul 2008 14:03:17 -0700

Recently one of my European colleagues fielded a pretty important customer question about our Denial of Service module’s relevancy to the telecom industry. These customers have been using Service Level Traffic Variations pretty successfully for a year or so stateside to find potential points of failure and get them fixed. So what makes the Mu’s Denial of Service module particularly useful to service providers?

Vegas NXT (Mu Dynamics Blog)

Adam Stein — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:12:57 -0700

NXT 2008 had heavy interest in several NGN topics including: # Ensuring real-time VoIP quality for all portions of an operator’s network # Building reliable and available IPTV deployments by eliminating product weaknesses # Figuring out what IP applications would attract the most business – and operator subscribers # Preventing downtime for next-generation network applications like IPTV and VoIP, including deployments based on the IMS Architecture

What Happens When the Telco World & the IP World Collide? (Mu Dynamics blog)

Dave Kresse — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:04:25 -0700

A bigger part of the interest comes from the collision of norms happening right now within these organizations. The collision is between those who grew up in the Telco business and those who grew up in the world of IP, and at the heart of the conflict is the issue of reliability, availability, and security of end user services. This is also precisely where Mu Dynamics adds its value.

What's in a Name? (Mu Dynamics blog)

Dave Kresse — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:45:56 -0700

Mu is updating its company name to “Mu Dynamics” to reflect a growing solution set around the dynamic nature of network services, applications and wide range of end to end network products. Mu continues to address a broader set of problems faced by customers that focus on the challenges posed by service, application, and network downtime.

Mu Takes VoIP Testing on the Road (Mu Dynamics Blog)

Thomas Maufer — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:52:48 -0700

Downtime costs money, and organized testing is one of the only formal ways to manage or reduce downtime. Mu showed it's newest VoIP robustness and service assurance tools in 3 very public locations last week: cisco's Toolapalooza, Software Test & Performance and SIPit-22. This blog posting focuses on SIPit-22.

Where the Network Rubber Meets the Road (Mu Dynamics blog)

Dave Kresse — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:27:52 -0700

The inherent complexity of the products and protocols delivering VoIP, IPTV services and IMS architecture makes it increasingly challenging for carriers and MSO’s to provide service assurance.

Part 2 of 2: Service Assurance: What Happens in Pakistan Stays in Pakistan (Mu Dynamics blog)

Thomas Maufer — Fri, 7 Mar 2008 13:34:24 -0800

A significant IPTV outage happened recently because the Pakistan Telecommunications Agency (PTA) operations group changed its router configuration and told the world (perhaps by accident, perhaps not) that they had an excellent route to part of the IP address space owned by YouTube.

Service Assurance: What Happens in Pakistan Stays in Pakistan (Mu Dynamics blog)

Thomas Maufer — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:36:26 -0800

A significant IPTV outage happened this past weekend because the Pakistan Telecommunications Agency (PTA) operations group changed its router configuration and told the world (perhaps by accident, perhaps not) that they had an excellent route to part of the IP address space owned by YouTube.