CableLabs, a nonprofit research and development consortium dedicated to pursuing new cable telecommunications technologies and helping its cable operator members integrate those technical advancements into their business objectives, successfully completed a PacketCable 2.0 SIP call over IPv6 during a two-week IPv6 interoperability event from Oct. 11 to 22.

This was the fourth in a series of semi-annual IPv6 interoperability events. Representatives from 17 companies worked alongside each other to test IPV6 interoperability in a range of products. The products ranged from DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems, DOCSIS 2.0+IPv6 cable modem termination systems PacketCable E-DVAs, e-set-top boxes, provisioning servers, home gateways, large-scale NAT servers, and test tools. Many leading companies attended the Interop (News - Alert) event.

Participants also tested DOCSIS IPv6 provisioning, Internet video streaming, eRouter and standalone home router configuration, and interoperability with PCs running Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OS X, and Linux. In addition, CableLabs (News - Alert) demonstrated NAT444 and Dual-Stack Lite, two important IPv4 and IPv6 coexistence technologies. 

Senior support engineers from all the participating suppliers onsite, worked together as a team and tackled all issues in an expedited and efficient manner.

CableLabs' interoperability events provide vendors with an informal laboratory setting in which they have the opportunity to test their latest products within CableLabs' headends and testing environment, determine compliance with industry specifications and the ability of their products to interoperate with other devices in an end-to-end system. 

“Suppliers have demonstrated significant progress in their support for IPv6. This is a very important technology for cable operators, and it is encouraging to see such a strong commitment from the industry’s supply community,” said Chris Donley, project director for Network Protocols at CableLabs.

“The recent CableLabs IPv6 Interop proved extremely useful for Cox (News - Alert),” said Jason Weil, principal architect of technology architecture at Cox Communications, and added that the CableLabs’ team worked with Cox engineers to mimic theIPv6 dual-stack trial configuration which included a DOCSIS3.0 cable modem, stand-alone home gateway supporting DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation and Windows 7 client as part of the interop.

IPv6 is the next-generation Internet Protocol and offers virtually an unlimited number of IP addresses compared with IPv4, the current version. IPv4 is expected to exhaust all addresses attainable from the central authority, Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, within the next year. This is expected cable operators to deliver innovative communications and entertainment services to IP devices, which are increasing by leaps and bounds, driving up the need for more IP addresses.

CableLabs was successful at the Advanced Advertising Interop event it held in June in proving interoperability, based on the SCTE-130 standard, across a number of advertising interfaces.