Australia's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence, NICTA, has spun out its fourth technology company in less than six years of operation, following the founding of network monitoring company, Monitoring Division.

To be headquartered in the United States, Monitoring Division' will maintain its research base in Melbourne.

The company arose from the Managing and Monitoring the Internet (MAMI) Project, which was based out of NICTA's Victoria Research Laboratory.

The MAMI Project developed technologies for measuring the performance of the Internet at both the physical transport and the protocol layers.

It will kick off its business with one commercial license agreement already under its belt.

NICTA signed its first technology licence agreement exploiting research in the MAMI Project in December with Optium, a leading supplier of high performance optical subsystems.

The commercial license agreement was for a new generation optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) monitoring technology that is compatible with next generation high-speed optical networks.

OSNR is a key performance metric used to measure signal degradation. With this technology operators can substantially improve their ability to manage telecommunications networks.

NICTA CEO Dr David Skellern said the team behind Monitoring Division has toiled long and hard for many years to produce the outstanding research behind the technology which has already been successful in the marketplace.

Monitoring Division has just completed its first round of funding with Australian venture capital firm, Starfish Ventures. NICTA has participated in this round.

NICTA will also provide intellectual property and world-class research services and facilities to Monitoring Division.

"NICTA is committed to getting it's research out of the labs into the marketplace," Dr Skellern said.

Monitoring Division CEO, David Wright anticipates by the end of the year over 20 staff will be employed by the start-up.

It is in discussions with a substantial number of telecommunications carriers and network equipment manufacturers.

"NICTA provided the environment and opportunity for the research team to develop this ground-breaking technology, and with it Monitoring Division will be able to fundamentally change the intelligence available to network operators and vendors," Wright said.

Monitoring Division was founded in December 2007, and provides telecommunications system and sub-system vendors with technology that provides new generation monitoring software solutions.