DSL Forum, a consortium of nearly 200 companies, and the University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Laboratory, sponsored a multi-vendor ADSL2 “plugfest” interoperability event earlier this month.
ADSL2 (ITU G.992.3), is a new DSL standard approved in August 2002 by the ITU. It provides line diagnostics, power management, and faster speeds. The industry standard setting bodies are currently finalizing ADSL2+, which builds upon ADSL2 by expanding the bandwidth to approximately 2 MHz and increasing achievable data rates to more than 20 Mbps. ADSL2 and ADSL2+ gear will interoperate with existing ADSL equipment.
Seven ADSL silicon vendors participated in the DSL Forum-sponsored interoperability plugfest, which was based on the DSL Forum’s internal Proposed Draft 013, a test suite designed to ensure interoperability.
A second plugfest for ADSL2 chipsets is scheduled for the week of June 23, 2003 at UNH-IOL. Future plugfests are planned this summer to test extensions to ADSL2, such as ADSL2+ which should provide downstream data rates of 25M bit/sec on phone lines as long as 5,000 feet.
Equipment supporting ADSL2 and ADSL2+ is expected to become available this year.
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