GHENT, BELGIUM -- Excentis, independent expert centre for DOCSIS® technology, hosted a successful DOCSIS 3.1 and Remote PHY interoperability testing event last week. A group of the world’s most renowned network vendors – Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP™), Remote PHY device (RPD), Remote MAC-PHY device (RMD), PTP grandmaster clock, chip and modem vendors – travelled to the Excentis labs in Ghent to test their products and demonstrate interoperability with other equipment.

Vendor-independent testing environment
DOCSIS 3.1 is the latest version of the DOCSIS specification, which delivers gigabit speeds to the home, and Remote PHY and MAC-PHY provide flexible deployment options. These specifications are crucial for smoothly functioning high-speed infrastructure networks, in which multiple devices and technologies must interact to enable high service quality.

Testing was performed in the test lab infrastructure of Excentis, supported by its traffic generator/analyser ByteBlower and its DOCSIS 3.1 protocol analyser XRA-31. The full interop process was coordinated by Excentis test experts.

“This annual interoperability event offers important insights to the industry, as it allows all actors to test the implemented DOCSIS 3.1 and R-PHY features in a vendor-independent environment with easy access to Excentis DOCSIS 3.1 and R-PHY experts,” explains Wim De Ketelaere, CTO of Excentis.

In a private one-day event during the interoperability testing week, participating vendors also had the opportunity to demonstrate the status of their products to European cable operators.

Firms BKtel, Casa Systems, Cisco, Commscope, DCT-DELTA, DEV Systemtechnik, Harmonic, Huawei, Nokia, Teleste, Vecima Networks and Vector Technologies participated in the CCAP-Core/RPD/RMD category. PTP Grandmaster Clock solutions were provided by Meinberg Funkuhren, Microsemi and Oscilloquartz. Chip and modem vendors AVM, Broadcom, Hitron, Sagemcom, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive completed the ecosystem.

Excentis