Concord Communications Inc., following what its officials claim was a large uptick in voice-over-IP deployments earlier this year, will announce next month its first support for monitoring and reporting on VOIP.

The Marlboro, Mass. maker of performance reporting software will update its eHealth series of reporting tools to provide a version specific to reporting on VOIP traffic.

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The new eHealth version 5.6.5 will receive VOIP data and cost data bundled into the tool's console. It will also include a new agent for IP PBX servers that can simulate calls. The first such agent will work with Cisco's Call Manager Server, and it will be certified by Cisco by mid-November, the company said.

The new VOIP option will combine reporting of VOIP with Quality of Service reporting, and it integrates the telecommunication industry's Mean Opinion Score, which gives a quantitative value on the quality of a voice call. A typical toll call has a MOS value of four.

"You want to at least keep that quality level, so that it doesn't sound like you're talking under water," said Frank Kettenstock, vice president of product strategy for Concord Communications in Marlboro, Mass.

In addition, the software will allow synthetic test calls to be generated and measured to determine how quality is affected by differing bandwidth availability in the network.

"As the CPU of a core router for voice starts to become too hot and the voice Class of Service becomes overloaded, you see the effect on the MOS score. When you add bandwidth, you see MOS scores go back up. You have to look at all three together to really manage a complete VOIP end-to-end delivery system and insure you will have a successful deployment and user adoption of VOIP," Kettenstock added.

For new customers looking to monitor and report on the data network, QOS and VOIP, typical installations will cost at least $150,000. The new VOIP option is due early in November.