Verifying Multi-Service Ethernet Performance with Y.1564 on the VIAVI MTS-5800
Modern business circuits rarely carry just one type of traffic. This case study details how a managed service provider used ITU-T Y.1564 testing to ensure VoIP, video, and corporate data could coexist seamlessly on a 10G link.
Background
A managed service provider was turning up a 10 G Ethernet access circuit for a large retail chain connecting multiple stores to its head office. Unlike a single dedicated data link, this connection carried multiple VLAN-tagged services—corporate VPN, voice over IP (VoIP), point-of-sale transactions, and security video feeds.
Each service required guaranteed bandwidth and quality levels, defined in the SLA. The provider needed to confirm that the link could handle multiple traffic classes simultaneously, without frame loss, delay, or jitter exceeding limits.
To achieve this, engineers used the VIAVI MTS-5800 to perform an ITU-T Y.1564 Ethernet service activation test, providing complete, standards-based performance validation before hand-over.
[Image of point-to-point fiber network topology diagram]The Challenge
Traditional RFC 2544 testing validates a single stream at a time and doesn’t measure service interaction. The customer’s network carried five different traffic streams, each mapped to a unique QoS level. The challenge was to ensure that all services could coexist and meet their performance commitments under load.
The team needed to:
- Test multiple classes of service (CoS) concurrently.
- Verify CIR (Committed Information Rate) and EIR (Excess Information Rate) for each stream.
- Measure frame loss, latency, and jitter per traffic class.
- Produce an automatically generated acceptance report to meet SLA requirements.
The Solution: Y.1564 Testing with the VIAVI MTS-5800
At both the customer premise and the network hub, engineers deployed MTS-5800 testers. After synchronising over Ethernet, they configured a full Y.1564 test profile comprising all service VLANs.
The test ran in two stages:
- Service Configuration Test – Verified each service individually, ensuring correct bandwidth profiles and that CIR/EIR enforcement matched the design.
- Service Performance Test – Validated all services simultaneously, confirming that aggregate throughput, delay, and jitter remained within specification.
Because the Y.1564 workflow on the MTS-5800 automates frame generation, counters, and threshold checks, the team could complete comprehensive testing in under one hour—less than half the time of older manual methods.
The Results
The final report, uploaded to VIAVI StrataSync®, confirmed:
- All five services delivered full CIR throughput.
- Zero frame loss under sustained load.
- Latency under 1 ms for high-priority voice traffic.
- Jitter <0.5 ms for video and voice streams.
The successful test allowed the provider to hand over the circuit immediately with documented SLA compliance.
[Image of network traffic analysis dashboard]Conclusion
Using Y.1564 testing on the VIAVI MTS-5800 allowed the provider to validate a complex, multi-service Ethernet circuit quickly and confidently.
By proving each service’s performance in both isolation and coexistence, the engineering team ensured a reliable, standards-compliant connection ready for live business traffic—keeping the retailer’s critical systems fully operational from day one.
