Tools for testing & monitoring MGCP networks?

Hi,

We're deploying an MGCP network, and we'd like to monitor its health, so we can discover when its not working.

How is that done? I'm thinking that maybe it would be possible to use an opensource MGCP tool (such as

?) to somehow setup a dummy call and see if that goes well.

Ideally, the test will be non-intrusive - so the phone never actually rings in the other end.

A couple of questions:

1) Is it even possible with MGCP to see if the "other end is alive" - without the phone actually ringing in the other end, and without getting an answer from intermediate equipment (e.g. specifying some options that we know the other end doesn't support or something)? A sort of "MGCP ping"? Of course I can do a standard ICMP ping, but I'd like to see that the signalling stack is working too. As close as we can come to actually giving the guy in the other end a real call asking "You there?"... :-D

2) What tools could I use? Has this been done before? Both free and commercial tools are interesting in this context.

3) Basic connectivity is our focus initially, but what other tests are useful? QoS (latency, jitter, loss)? What else? Tool support?

Both tools that will establish a call with and without "the phone actually ringing" are of interest, but in dreamland I'd prefer an open source *NIX command line utility that tests to see if the other end is up without the phone actually ringing....

There was a "Monitoring VOIP" thread about this from 2002,

but it didn't have any answers, so I was hoping maybe something has happened in the meantime...

Sincerely,

Peter