Home Networking Alliance Touts Progress

SOURCE: BROADCASTING & CABLE
04.03.06

A group of companies that wants to use existing coaxial cable installed in cable subscribers' homes as a home-networking standard announced it has successfully completed early interoperability testing. The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) says it has completed its “first certification wave” to ensure interoperability among products using the MoCA standard. After a three-day test period at Verizon Labs in Waltham, Mass., last month, the alliance awarded MoCA certification to technology vendors Actiontec, Entropic, Linksys, Mototech, Motorola, Panasonic, 2Wire and Westell. Those eight companies participated in MoCA's first “plugfest” last November.

The certification wave sees vendors submit products with MoCA interfaces to verify their interoperability, functionality and performance according to a range of certification tests. Successful devices are awarded MoCA certification, which allows a vendor to use the MoCA logo and claim standard compliance on products for the certified interface. MoCA anticipates periodic plugfests and certification waves in the future, with vendors also able to run the certification test suite at third-party labs. The next certification wave is slated for later this month.