UNH-IOL Holds Second Plugfest to Support Open Networking Solutions Acceleration
Just like railroad tracks and highways were critical infrastructures in the 20th century, networks are equally important in the 21st century. Even if you don’t have a smartphone, computer or a television, many of the services you depend on use networks for delivery. With so much traffic pushing the limitation of existing infrastructures, public and private organizations are looking for an intelligent solution to manage the problem.
The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), provides independent, broad-based interoperability and standards conformance testing for data, telecommunications and storage networking products and technologies. And its second Open Networking Interoperability Plugfest was held to support the acceleration of Open Networking Solutions, as well as preparing the community for a certification program.
Founded in 1988, the UNH-IOL helps companies with cost-effective delivery of their products to the marketplace with an independent, vendor-neutral testing focusing on quality assurance. The second Plugfest, just like the first one, was produced to validate the compatibility of optical transceivers and cables with bare-metal open switches running varying Networking Operating Systems (NOS) software from different vendors.
According to UNH-IOL, one of the goals of this event was to move the Open Networking Certification program forward. The organization announced additional validations on top of the ones announced at the February 2015 Plugfest. They included baseline analysis of optical transceivers, Active Optical Cables, Direct Attach Cables and host-side electrical analysis.
“These tests were performed to provide further insight should an interoperability issue arise between a host and a module. In addition, tests were added to enable interoperability testing between two unique bare-metal open switch-NOS systems through a variety of transceivers and cables,” stated UNH-IOL.
The companies that participated in the event include: 3M, Amphenol, Avago, Cumulus Networks, Finisar, JDSU, and Mellanox. They provided the necessary products to carry out the test and verify they were operating in the open network as expected with respect to the optical transceivers and cables. The UNH-IOL used bare-metal switches, 10Gb and 40Gb optical transceivers, 10Gb and 40Gb active optical cables, and Direct Attach Cables (DAC) to carry out the testing process.
Eventually, the UNH-IOL wants to have alternative networking systems to traditional closed solutions.
Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
