IIT Delhi Deploys Protocol Testing

The Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT Delhi) has decided to deploy protocol-testing capabilities, to strengthen its telecom signaling testing abilities. It is the first institute in India to do so. 

The new protocol-engineering lab at IIT Delhi will focus on testing different protocols used for network communication. This will provide students with hands-on experience on various protocols, including X.25 frame relay and ATM, said David Mandelstam, president and CEO, Sangoma Technologies.

The Canada-based Sangoma Technologies has bagged an $8,000 contract to deploy its protocol testing kit, WAN EduKit, at IIT Delhi. It is a provider of connectivity hardware and software products for
WANs.

IIT Delhi's electrical engineering department already runs a course on protocol engineering. Without protocol testing, the course was trivialized, as it could not provide the students with hands-on experimentation on live protocol monitoring in controlled network environments. The deployment will also promote IIT Delhi's academic commitment to providing open-source carrier class signaling stacks, with its OpenSTACKS initiative, said Dr Subrat Kar, associate professor at IIT Delhi's electrical engineering department. 

The Sangoma WAN EduKit is a self-contained wide area network (WAN) that simulates the inner workings of WAN protocols, and it is designed to run on a single PC. 

According to Dr Kar, the new testing facility will help demonstrate the operations of SS7 MTP1 layers and in the configuration of packet switches and routers in a multi-protocol inter-networking WAN environment. 

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