The interoperability tests were conducted using MPLS routers and switches, emulators, as well as customer premises equipment from various vendors, during a hot stage event in January 2006. Through several rounds of testing and refining the methodology, a final network of interoperable devices was successfully constructed.

A couple of new test scenarios were designed specifically for this showcase. In addition, previously used test plans were employed for regression testing since we intended to test converged network services:

• 99.999% carrier-grade high availability is one of the cornerstones of MPLS benefits. The Fast Reroute mechanism uses automatic pre-established backup paths to realize fast switchover in case of link or node failure, claimed to be sub-50 milliseconds. We had run Fast Reroute tests with a small number of vendors in 2004, and wanted to expend on these tests this time.
• Differentiated services have been available over MPLS in a simple IP quality-like fashion for a while. Now, new standards are on their way to enhance the integration of traffic engineering and application-specific differentiation. We were set to verify the multi-vendor readiness of implementations.
• Multi-vendor layer 3 (IP) VPNs can be considered mature by now. Except for carrier-carrier interworking protocols, multicast and IPv6 traffic forwarding, they are proven to be interoperable regarding functionality and scalability, as shown, for example, during the MPLS World Congress 2004 and 2005 interoperability events.
• The standards for Ethernet and ATM pseudo-wires have been around a long time. Previous tests showed there are a lot of mature and stable implementations. We see a growing number of vendors implementing pseudowires and out of the 15 participants in the event most vendors were interested in verifying interoperability of their pseudo-wires implementations.
• Multipoint Ethernet services (Virtual Private LAN Service, VPLS) are offered by a growing number of carriers. The hierarchical part of the protocol (H-VPLS) enables service providers to scale the number of customers and endpoints per customer offered using VPLS, without stressing the backbone network.
  Our regression test verified that previous years' results were still valid. We tested scalability of hierarchical VPLS provider edge routers (PE-RS) and multi-tenant units (MTUs) in 2005. This time a total of six PE-RS and two MTU implementations were checked.
• A major topic of the test program was supposed to be multicast traffic forwarding in Ethernet and IP VPNs. There were quite a few hurdles in testing multicast in the context of MPLS.
• Evaluation of relevant access solutions for IP/MPLS core networks, specifically carrier-class Ethernet access solutions and pseudo-wire access to support Layer 1 (TDM) and Layer 2 (ATM) services.