Broadband Forum Certification Program

   To view the Certification press release, please click here.

   To view the Certification presentation, please click here.

The Broadband Forum has long been a globally recognized leader in driving broadband and multi-service network architecture and equipment interoperability testing. Through fifteen years of test plan development and interoperability test events, the Forum has helped the industry establish common standards, reduce the burden of service provider testing and expedite network deployments around the world.

To advance the goal of faster and more cost effective service rollouts, the Broadband Forum is launching a groundbreaking certification program designed to verify adherence to critical IP/MPLS, broadband and digital home/business specifications. These technical specifications address areas of vital importance to the networking industry. These newly released as well as future certifications offered through the Broadband Forum Certification Program are driven by market requirements.

Overall the Broadband Forum Certification Program provides:

• Assurance to service providers that different vendor products conform to the Broadband Forum's globally recognized and adopted technology standards
• Cost savings to both equipment vendors and service providers by offering a single industry-approved test and certification process that significantly reduces testing time and resources
• The vehicle to expedite multi-vendor interoperability

The first certifications of the Broadband Forum Certification Program are designed to demonstrate our commitment and dedication to advancing implementations of compliant MPLS based solutions and services. The Broadband Forum defines the requirements for these MPLS based solutions and services. The Forum also develops the test suites for each certification, based on these requirements. This ensures coordination, timeliness and technical alignment with the base technical specifications.

What makes the Broadband Forum MPLS Certifications so important?

• First of its kind - there is no other comprehensive certification program offered today for global standards based MPLS
• MPLS is a widely deployed technology in every Service Provider network around the globe and continues to evolve from the core to the edge to the access
• The MPLS Certifications provide comprehensive testing that verifies conformance to architectures and protocols required to implement MPLS
• The Broadband Forum works very closely with other standards development organizations where complementary work is being developed; i.e. IETF, IEEE, ITU-T and MEF, thus ensuring collaboration and industry alignment
• Last but not least, the Broadband Forum's mission is to develop an end-to-end architecture ensuring critical technologies come together effectively and seamlessly

How will these certifications benefit the industry?

To the Service Provider Community

• The MPLS Certifications are based on international standards aligned with architectures and protocols that reflect real world network requirements
• Provides assurance of protocol compliance allowing service providers to dedicate resources to address their specific requirements
• Streamlines the selection process; helping service providers identify and eliminate non-compliant devices quickly, allowing service providers to come to a short list on an RFP
• Offers a standardized element of RFPs, thereby reducing service provider testing responsibility and expense
• All of these reduce time to market of new services, thereby improving Return On Investment (ROI)

To the Vendor Community

• Test once and reuse results; shortens test cycles and saves testing resources/expense
• Provides ways to establish a strong position in the global market
• Presents a strong quality indication for end customers
• Offers clear and carefully written test cases; better specifications, more efficient developments

What are the current details of the Broadband Forum Certification Program?

As mentioned above the Broadband Forum Certification Program currently includes three MPLS Certifications:

• Circuit Emulation Services (Time Division Multiplexing)
  The Abstract Test Suite for TDM Services over MPLS describes test procedures based on the requirements for encapsulating TDM signals over MPLS networks and distributing timing using pseudo-wires over a MPLS network. Test cases in this specification are defined for T1, E1, T3 and E3 services.
  • The test suite BBF.248 is approved and publicly available
  • The TDMoMPLS pilot started in the IP/MPLS Forum prior to its union with Broadband Forum and is now complete
  • Enrollment is now open to all Broadband Forum member companies

• ATM
  The Abstract Test Suite for ATM over MPLS describes test procedures based on requirements for encapsulating Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) over MPLS networks.
  • The ATM related test suite is in development, and currently includes more than 50 test cases
  • Certification to be available shortly after test suite is completed and approved

• IP & Ethernet
  Coming soon. For more details, please contact the Broadband Forum.

For a full list of currently certified products, visit Broadband Forum Certified Products.

To contact Iometrix, the Broadband Forum authorized certification lab, please visit Iometrix's website.

Disclaimer: The Broadband Forum serves as the primary technical interface to the testing agency. The Broadband Forum is not the test house, nor do we have any legal liability associated with testing, compliance with specifications, certification or marketing of certified products.