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The InterOp Insider

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DHCPv6 Protocol Updates: A Glimpse Into the UNH-IOL’s Development Process

By Jilly Sticca - January 28, 2025

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) publishes technical documentation in the form of Request of Comments (RFCs). RFC 8415 defines the latest iteration of the DHCPv6 protocol, which updates and obsoletes many aspects of the previous definitions documented by RFC 3315.

The UNH InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) plays an essential role in facilitating the global adoption and stability of IPv6. As a result, we actively contribute to the development and publication of test specifications based on RFCs that are used...

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Tags: INTACT

IoT Device Testing: A Path to Optimal Connectivity

By Stella La Vallee - December 3, 2024

The “Internet of Things (IoT)” is a phrase to describe any network of devices that utilize connectivity to an internet or other devices to exchange data. These devices appear in an incredibly wide range of environments in our world today, such as in your home, in a hospital, within factories, or on a farm. Due to the fact that IoT devices exist in so many different aspects of our lives, each device has to fulfill different requirements to achieve its...

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Tags: Test Sentinel

The ‘Roaming’ World We Live In

By Nathan Miner - November 6, 2024

Most end users don't need to think about Wi-Fi roaming. They use their devices, and they ‘just work’ even as they move around the home, workplace, campus, or industrial environment. A seamless internet connection is no longer a luxury in today’s on-the-move society; it is necessary. Wi-Fi roaming is the unsung hero of this seamless connection between access points. I will give a brief overview of what roaming is and how it affects the user’s experience with a device. I...

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Tags: Test Sentinel

Enhancing User Experience: The Vital Role of Wireless Device Testing

By Nathan Miner - October 7, 2024

To ensure that a device facilitates as intended for use, two main performance tests are conducted: RvR covers the performance in terms of distance, while Spatial Consistency covers the performance in terms of rotation. While these tests are not exhaustive, they play a significant role in guaranteeing a good user experience.

Wi-Fi is ubiquitous, and its application space is expanding rapidly, with an estimated 29.3 billion networked devices in 2023 1 . As the usage of Wi-Fi products increases,...

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Tags: Test Sentinel

5 Lessons Learned in Hosting a CI Test Lab at IOL For Open Source Projects

By Patrick Robb - September 26, 2024

Today’s open source landscape features an ever-expanding number of mature projects with development activity spanning across multiple organizations. Developers on these projects come from large and small enterprises, educational institutions, and a pool of unaffiliated, open source developers. This diverse group of contributors work together to enable their projects’ core goals or use cases. However, with this diversity of projects, developers, and outcomes, there are challenges. How can we reliably meet the needs of all stakeholders? When setting up a...

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Tags: Hosted Resources

Manual RDMA Testing Using the OFA FSDP Cluster

By Jeremy Spewock - September 17, 2024

A common roadblock RDMA developers face is the need for access to required hardware. With multiple types of RDMA fabrics, each requiring specific kinds of Network Interface Cards (NICs) to support them, a growing “paywall” blocks developers from testing their RDMA software. The Fabric Software Development Platform (FSDP) provided by the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) was created to support RDMA developers struggling with this issue by granting access to a cluster of machines that host RDMA-capable hardware.

Since September 2021,...

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Tags: Hosted Resources

IOL INTACT®: What's New, Coming Soon, and on the Roadmap for IPv6 Testing

By Kyle Ouellette - August 28, 2024

It’s been a while since we last updated you on the current state of the IOL INTACT® software and future plans. We routinely publish release notes for INTACT and the playlists, but we’d like to highlight some key features and upcoming developments we think will pique your interest. If you have feedback on the mentioned features or any feature/improvement requests, please don’t hesitate to share them with us via our support portal.

What’s New

The...

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Tags: INTACT

How PON and Fiberoptics are the Future of Broadband

By Jake Tobin - April 11, 2024

Imagine your internet connection being like a well-orchestrated, optical symphony of speed and reliability. Meet PON, a high-tech communication marvel that uses cutting edge fiberoptics to bring you lightning-fast broadband access. It's not just any network – it's designed to cater to your needs, servicing anywhere from hospitals to high-density residential complexes. PON has revolutionized how we transmit data, enabling high-speed connectivity and efficient delivery of services like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video streaming, ultra-bandwidth for HDTV experiences, and...

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Tags: Fiber Optics, PON

The Evolution of Power for Single Pair Ethernet

By Craig Chabot - November 13, 2023
Don't forget to watch the 'Demystifying the Powers of Single-Pair Ethernet' webinar. Click here.

10 years ago, in IEEE 802.3, a working group of standard specifications for Ethernet, issued a Call for Interest or CFI to propose a new Ethernet powering solution called “Power over Data Lines” (PoDL). This new standard was designed to improve upon 1000BASE-T1, another Ethernet standard that had just been introduced, which offered gigabit speeds over a single copper twisted pair, instead...

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Tags: ethernet-apl

PoDL and SPoE: What it Means for Industrial and Automotive Conformance Testing

By Mara Johnson - September 13, 2023

The latest IEEE 802.3 standard has enhanced power capabilities and data transports for both industrial and automotive markets. With this breakthrough, PoDL and SPoE technologies have been making their way into the market. Learn more about these technologies in this brief overview.

What is PoDL?

PoDL stands for Power over Data Lines (PoDL) and delivers from 0.5 to 50 watts of power from 12, 24 or 48 volts DC power classes. This technology was originally designed...

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Virtual Machines with Bridges on VMware vSphere

By Lincoln Lavoie - March 6, 2023

In a recent project, we decided to explore using the Cisco NX-OS 9000v virtual switch as part of our pre-deployment testing infrastructure. The virtual switch functions identical to our actual NX-OS hardware switches, but with the benefit of running purely as a virtual machine (VM) or appliance on top of our cloud infrastructure. That cloud infrastructure is a multi-node vSphere deployment, that uses distributed vSwitches, each having multiple uplink port groups, to provide high availability across the network domains. Figure...

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The DPDK Community Lab: Reflecting on 2022 and Looking Ahead

By Patrick Robb - February 28, 2023

Hosted by The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL), the DPDK Community Lab exists to provide prompt and reliable continuous integration(CI) testing for all new patches submitted to DPDK by its community of developers. Every time a patch is submitted to DPDK Patchwork, it is automatically applied to the main DPDK branch, or the appropriate next- branch, and run across our test beds. Now entering its 6th year in operation, the Community Lab has progressed beyond its initial goal...

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Tags: DPDK Community CI Lab

Latest Posts

Why I knew HighTech Bound was something I had to be a part of…

By Connor Floyd - April 17, 2019

I found out about the HighTech Bound internship opportunity at the UNH InterOperability Lab through reading other past intern's experiences and projects through blog posts and the IOL website. After spending some time reading through all the cool information, I knew immediately that this was something I had to do. Soon after, I heard more about this opportunity after I took a lab tour with my sister, a current UNH student, and my father.

In my current computer systems...

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Tags: #STEM

My Journey as an IOL Intern, to Programmer, to Working in Industry

By Joel Nkounkou - April 10, 2019

We caught up with UNN-IOL Alumni, Joel Nkounkou, who is originally from Dover, NH. Joel is a former HighTech Bound intern from the summer of 2013 and continued on to work at the lab as a programmer in our SAS, SATA, and PCIe Testing Services. Overall, Joel worked at the lab from 2013-2018 and graduated from UNH last year with his BS in Electrical Engineering. Check out our interview with Joel in this blog!

How did you find...

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My Experience at the Lab's First of Many Hack Days!

By Sean Smith - March 27, 2019

Last week the IOL hosted its first monthly day-long hackathon, aptly titled “Hack Day.” Hack Day will be a recurring event focused on creating a time and place to get started on the IOL’s most pressing projects.

For our first Hack Day we tackled three main projects. One of the challenges being worked on was a revamp of the visitor login system. The goal for this project was to have a digital system where visitors could login and alert...

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2019 Hack New Hampshire

By Stephanie Clark - March 15, 2019

The UNH-InterOperability Lab kicked off 2019 with the Hack New Hampshire event for college students. The teams consisted of three to four students in all majors; from the College of Engineering and Physical Science to the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics. The goal for the 24 hour Hackathon was to create and execute an idea to make the state of New Hampshire safer or more sustainable. The students came up with ideas from implementing a “walking-buddy” system...

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Wuhan Plugfest: The NVMe Testing Service Takes on China

By Carter Snay - February 1, 2019

Hello reader! My name is Carter Snay, and I have been working at the UNH-IOL since March 2017. I was initially working in the iSCSI testing service, but moved to NVMe in August of 2017 where I currently still work. I am an Environmental Science major, which is different than all of my peers who are either IT or CS. Generally I’ll get a confused look when a vendor asks me what I’m studying, but I’m still able to do...

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Pilot Program Open to the Ethernet Alliance Gen-2 Contributors

By Stephanie Clark - January 25, 2019

The UNH-InterOperability Lab is the exclusive 3rd party test house for the Ethernet Alliance (EA) Power over Ethernet (PoE) Certification Program. The PoE Certification Program aims to assure interoperability of products based on IEEE Std 802.3™-2018 PoE standards. Passing products are eligible for listing on the Ethernet Alliance Certified Product Registry. PoE technology grants the ability to deliver power over data communications cabling for IP networks. The Ethernet Alliance is currently developing the Gen-2 PoE Certification Program, which includes an...

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My Experience Exploring Computer Science and the UNH-IOL

By Kate Bacon - August 22, 2018

Hi I’m Kate Bacon, and I was an intern at the UNH InterOperability Lab during the summer of 2018. If you’re reading this you’re probably wondering more about being an intern at the IOL, what you will be doing here, and who you will be working with. You’re probably feeling all of the same emotions I was feeling before I started my internship. I am here to tell you about my experience at the IOL, what I learned, and the...

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Tags: #STEM

2018 Annual IOL Hackathon

By Stephanie Clark - July 2, 2018

Last week concluded the second annual UNH-IOL Hackathon held here at the lab. The UNH-IOL hackathon is an event where programmers get together for a short period of time to collaborate on a project that will benefit the lab in some way or another. The Hackathon is a week long event for UNH student employees to step away from their day-to-day grind and work together to provide long-term solutions for various lab wide projects. Students from all majors were broken...

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Meet the 2018 HighTech Bound Interns

By Sarah Hinzman - June 13, 2018

We are excited to share the big news, we have officially hired 14 interns for the upcoming 13th year of our HighTech Bound Program. Their first day is Monday, July 9, 2018. We couldn't have done anything without the support of our 2018 Sponsors .

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Tags: STEM

How IOL Alum, Andrew Wood, supported the lab during the UNH 603 Challenge!

By Mara Johnson - May 14, 2018

We caught up with IOL Alum, Andrew Wood, who was a donor in the annual UNH 603 Challenge to the IOL Gift Fund. Andrew worked at the lab from 2011-2014 and graduated from UNH in 2015 with his BS in Outdoor Education and went on to receive his Masters in Educational Studies in 2017. I asked Andrew why he donated to the IOL Gift Fund and what it meant to him. and now I turn it over to him (enjoy!):...

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Tags: #alumni