May 27th, 2019 — 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 – chip, modem, Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP™), Remote PHY device (RPD), Remote MAC-PHY device (RMD) and PTP grandmaster clock 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. 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.

Objective interoperability demonstrations

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.

“It was an ideal occasion for operators to observe the status of DOCSIS 3.1, Remote PHY, Remote MAC-PHY and PTP grandmaster clock products,” asserts Luc Martens, CEO of Excentis. “Furthermore, by hosting this event, Excentis demonstrates its commitment to leadership in testing, training and technical consulting services and test products for DOCSIS 3.1, Remote PHY and MAC-PHY.”

Diverse roster of participating vendors

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.

For more information, contact:

Luc Martens, Excentis CEO
Belgium: Gildestraat 8, 9000 Ghent, Belgium | T +32 9 269 22 91
United States: 1177 Avenue of the Americas, 7^th floor, New York City, NY 10036 | T +1 347 720 6896
E-mail: info@excentis.com

About Excentis

Established in May 2000, Excentis (www.excentis.com) offers testing and consulting services, specialised training and test products for the telecom and ICT industry. Strongly held company values of integrity and vendor independence combined with a well-equipped lab and proven expertise in IP, VoIP, SIP, interactive digital TV, network security, HFC networks, (Euro)DOCSIS™ and (Euro)PacketCable™ standards, Wi-Fi and LTE interference make Excentis the ideal European competence centre. Cable operators, telecom operators and service providers rely on Excentis for unbiased technical support. Excentis also develops and sells test and monitoring products, such as the ByteBlower TCP/IP traffic generator and analyser , the DOCSIS 3.1 protocol analyser  XRA. Excentis is headquartered in Ghent, Belgium.

CableLabs®, CCAP™, DOCSIS®, EuroDOCSIS™ and EuroPacketCable™ are trademarks of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.