The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) is an independent test organization that provides

interoperability Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader de ...

and standards

conformance testing Conformance testing and also known as compliance testing or type testing, is testing or other activities that determine whether a process, product, or service complies with the requirements of a specification, technical standard, contract, or reg ...

for networking, telecommunications, data storage, and consumer technology products. Founded in 1988, it employs approximately 25 full-time staff members and over 100 part-time undergraduate and graduate students, and counts over 150 companies as members.

History

The UNH-IOL began as a project of the University's Research Computing Center (RCC). In 1988 the RCC was testing

Fiber Distributed Data Interface Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) is a standard for data transmission in a local area network. It uses optical fiber as its standard underlying physical medium. It was also later specified to use copper cable, in which case it may be c ...

(FDDI) equipment with the intention of deploying it in its network. The RCC found that equipment from two vendors did not work together and contacted the vendors to find a solution. The two vendors cooperated with the RCC to solve the problem which was caused by differences between the draft and final FDDI specification. During this same time period the RCC was testing 10BASE-T Ethernet interfaces for another project. The University recognized the need for interoperability testing of networking equipment and also the opportunity to provide students with hands-on experience in emerging technologies. With the idea of providing testing services to companies in a vendor-neutral environment the first UNH-IOL consortium (10BASE-T Ethernet) was founded in 1990. Over the next decade the UNH-IOL grew to twelve consortia with over 100 member companies. In 2002, having outgrown several smaller locations, the UNH-IOL moved to a 32,000 square foot facility on the outskirts of the UNH campus. One area in which the UNH-IOL has been influential is IPv6 standardization and deployment. Between 2003 and 2007 the UNH-IOL organized the Moonv6 project, which was a multi-site, IPv6 based network designed to test the interoperability of IPv6 implementations. At the time the Moonv6 project was the largest permanently deployed multi-vendor IPv6 network in the world. The UNH-IOL is also the only North American laboratory offering ISO/IEC 17025 accredited testing designed specifically for the USGv6 Test Program. The UNH-IOL is also known for organizing and hosting plugfests for a number of industry trade organizations. The lab has hosted plugfests for the

Broadband Forum The Broadband Forum is a non-profit industry consortium dedicated to developing broadband network specifications. Members include telecommunications networking and service provider companies, broadband device and equipment vendors, consultants and ...

NVM Express NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface functional specification, specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via th ...

, SCSI Trade Association, Ethernet Alliance, and the

Open Compute Project The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that facilitates the sharing of data center product designs and industry best practices among companies. Founded in 2011, OCP has significantly influenced the design and operation of large-scale co ...

, among others. In 2013 the UNH-IOL was awarded the IEEE-SA Corporate Award "for outstanding corporate leadership and contribution to IEEE-SA". In January 2016 the lab moved to a new 28,000 square foot location adjacent to the main UNH campus in Durham, NH.

Consortia

The UNH-IOL operates testing programs on an annual membership basis called consortia. Each consortium is a collaboration between equipment vendors, test equipment manufacturers, industry forums, and the UNH-IOL in a particular technology. The collaborative testing model is intended to distribute the costs associated with maintaining a high-quality testing program among the consortium members. The UNH-IOL currently administers consortia in over 20 different technologies, including: * Internetworking Protocols:

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communication protocol, communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic ...

Routing Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a Network theory, network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched ...

and SDN, RTC and

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

, DLNA, RVU,

TR-069 Technical Report 069 (TR-069) is a document by the Broadband Forum that specifies the CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP). CWMP is a SOAP-based protocol for communication between an internet service provider auto configuration server (ACS) and ...

* Data Center:

testing,

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...

NVMe NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via the PCI Express bus. The in ...

Data center bridging Data center bridging (DCB) is a set of enhancements to the Ethernet local area network communication protocol for use in data center environments, in particular for use with clustering and storage area networks. Motivation Ethernet is the prima ...

, OpenFabrics Alliance * Embedded Systems: AVnu,

Precision Time Protocol The Precision Time Protocol (PTP) is a protocol for clock synchronization throughout a computer network with relatively high precision and therefore ''potentially'' high accuracy. In a local area network (LAN), accuracy can be sub-microsecon ...

, BroadR-Reach (Automotive Ethernet) * Broadband Systems:

DSL Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric di ...

G.fast G.fast is a digital subscriber line (DSL) protocol standard for local loops shorter than 500 meters, with performance targets between 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s, depending on loop length. High speeds are only achieved over very short ...

Power over Ethernet Power over Ethernet (PoE) describes any of several technical standard, standards or ad hoc systems that pass electric power along with data on twisted-pair Ethernet cabling. This allows a single cable to provide both a data connection and en ...

Wireless LAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...

, Open Platform for NFV * Baseband Systems: MIPI,

Serial ATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host adapter, host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PAT ...

Serial attached SCSI In computing, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a point-to-point serial Communications protocol, protocol that moves data to and from Computer storage, computer-storage devices such as hard disk drives, solid-state drives and tape drives. SAS replac ...

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...

, 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet,

10 Gigabit Ethernet 10 Gigabit Ethernet (abbreviated 10GE, 10GbE, or 10 GigE) is a group of computer networking technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of 10 gigabits per second. It was first defined by the IEEE 802.3ae-2002 standard. Unlik ...

, Backplane Ethernet,

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use in ...

Fast Ethernet In computer networking, Fast Ethernet Ethernet physical layer, physical layers carry traffic at the nominal rate of . The Classic Ethernet, prior Ethernet speed was . Of the Fast Ethernet physical layers, 100BASE-TX is by far the most common. ...

References

{{University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Interoperability