Consortia
The UNH-IOL’s consortia represent a collaboration of the industry leaders in network equipment, test equipment, industry forums and service providers to benefit each other by reducing expenses associated with research and development and quality assurance, providing trusted third-party verification, reducing product time to market and driving the industry acceptance of a technology. The UNH-IOL uses this collaborative testing model to distribute the cost of performing trusted, third-party testing and validation through an annual membership in each technology specific consortium. By bringing together the key players of networking technologies, the UNH-IOL provides a service that is critical to driving multi-vendor interoperability.
The UNH-IOL currently administers over twenty consortia and testing services, each involving a different technology:
- 10BASE-T Testing Service
- IEEE 1588
- 10 Gigabit Ethernet
- 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet
- Backplane Ethernet
- Bridge Functions
- Cable Testing
- Data Center Bridging
- Digital Home Networking DLNA ICV
- DSL
- Fast Ethernet
- Fibre Channel
- GPON
- Gigabit Ethernet
- IPv6
- iSCSI
- MIPI
- OpenFabrics Alliance Interoperability Testing
- Power over Ethernet
- Routing
- SAS
- SATA
- TR-069
- VoIP
- Wireless LAN
Over time, as interest in a particular technology fades (such as what happened with ATM and Token Ring), a consortium may be disbanded or converted into a testing service. Likewise, as interest in a new technology grows, a consortium may be founded in order to start testing devices of that type. Testing services are alternatives to consortia. They offer testing à la carte rather than through an annual membership fee.
Read more about this topic: University Of New Hampshire Inter Operability Laboratory