At a recent event, 13 vendors displayed the results of the latest EANTC (European Advanced Networking Test Center) interoperability test event. The vendors tested more than 40 devices at the interoperability event which effectively pave the way for extensive investigations by network operators for advanced solutions in Carrier Ethernet, MPLS, and MPLS-TP packet transport technology with a special focus on IPv6 migration.

In a release, Carsten Rossenhövel, managing director of EANTC, said that, “The industry has adopted new service provider requirements and has standardized even advanced solutions meanwhile. Multi-vendor MPLS and Carrier Ethernet solutions are now used extensively for mobile backhaul and mobile core networks, supporting the huge migration to data-heavy mobile services in evolved 3G and LTE (News - Alert)/4G networks. At the same time, interoperable IPv6 solutions are becoming important as residential, business and mobile services are migrating to IPv6. We observed decent progress in our event, reflecting the rapidly growing need for multi-vendor IPv6 solutions at scale.”

Given the rising focus on IPv6 deployments and the need for migration strategies, IPv6 migration scenarios were also included in the test with respect to two major aspects – multi-vendor IPv6 control protocol deployments and solutions for IPv6 migration. These also included Dual-Stack Lite, IPv6 Rapid Deployment, DHCPv6, and Dual Stack scenarios.

Mobile Backhaul Transport tests were carried out to assess both new and updated implementations featuring both MPLS-TP and Ethernet Ring Protection (ERPS). During the test, realistic interworking scenarios between MPLS-TP and ERPS and between IP/MPLS and ERPS were created by the vendors.

Path Computation Element (PCE) which has the potential to serve as an important aspect of future multi-vendor network management systems was also included within the test scenario for the first time. PCE when included in IP/MPLS aggregation networks offers centralized path computation for MPLS Traffic Engineering LSPs.