Assessing interoperability of access equipment for broadband networks

The wide diffusion of services on telecommunication broadband networks led to the production of low-cost access equipment, called residential gateways, to interface different networks of the private customers. The users of such equipment are often identified as Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) customers. They need to connect their own network to the Service Provider (SP) network. This paper deals with the problem of ensuring residential gateway interoperability with different SOHO customers and SP networks, also when the manufacturer's and SP's test benches are different. In particular, a remote testing system is proposed enabling the manufacturer to test its equipment inside the SP network. The proposed solution consists of a remote testing board to be connected to the gateway under test within the SP laboratory and managed by the manufacturer. The solution has been implemented and validated for the Gateway ADapter/Gateway ADapter Mixed (GAD/GADM), which are produced by Telsey Telecommunications.