In October, while attending Broadband World Forum 2013 at the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre in Amsterdam, Netherlands, I gained appreciation of the broadband industries desire for product interoperability. The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) was one of sixteen members that participated in the Broadband Forum's, 'Interoperability: Opening the Door to Innovation'. As the Pavilion theme specifies, Interoperability was the big buzz for the show.
The Broadband Forum pavilion was the showcase for a first of its kind VDSL2 G.vector Interoperability demonstration. This demonstration was sponsored by the UNH-IOL and showed the interoperability of three different G.vector DSLAM vendors: ADTRAN, Alcatel-Lucent, and Ikanos working with G.vector CPE from ADB, AVM and Technicolor. Each DSLAM was connected to a mix of sixteen CPE devices from the three companies to simulate three live neighborhoods. All DSLAMs were running the same profiles for consistency, with the Telebyte crosstalk simulators being used to simulate 1000 foot loops to each CPE in the demonstration setup.
On average, there was a 25% gain in performance seen when the G.vectoring was enabled on the CPE bundles and 40% on the line with worst FEXT. Each DSLAM to CPE connection easily established targeted 100Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream rates. The demonstration was a huge success and generated a lot of foot traffic and conversations at the pavilion. Interoperability of different vendor products gives Service Providers a real choice in their purchasing decisions.
The next big step for G.vector comes from the Broadband Forum in the form of the TR-249 testing framework. This document is currently going through final balloting in the forum and will emerge as the first version of the official Broadband Forum G.vector test plan.
One of the most exciting news events during the show was the announcement of the opening of a groundbreaking G.vector laboratory, co-located at the UNH-IOL, which will utilize Telebytes VDSL2 Vectoring test equipment and the UNH-IOL’s expertise in 3rd party DSL testing. This new testing Laboratory will provide the power of Telebyte test equipment and UNH-IOL expertise in testing, to company’s who require access to such equipment to perform comprehensive G.vector testing or to augment their in-house G.vector testing. Read more about the G.vector laboratory.
If you missed the Broadband World Forum 2013, you missed a great show that demonstrated new technologies, such as the BBF G.vector Interoperability demo, and announced new programs such as the new G.vector laboratory created by Telebyte and co-located at the UNH-IOL. But you don’t have to worry; you can still access information on these items given the links in this blog.
For more information on Broadband Technologies at the UNH-IOL contact, Contact Us.
Timothy Sheehan, Operations Manager, Broadband Technologies