Last week we were extremely excited to announce the two very first ground system products to be recognized as DIFI standard-compliant.
This is a major milestone for DIFI that will demonstrate to ground system operators that they can rely upon a given product from a given vendor to meet or exceed functional interoperability expectations matching the standard.
Sometimes standards efforts get undermined because vendors will meet the heart of a standard but adjust the “standard standard” for proprietary benefit, compromising interoperability. That happened to a degree in our own industry with VITA 49 and DVB-S2X over the years. One of our first tasks in moving forward with the DIFI standard was to anchor around a single, stable, accepted form of VITA 49 to build upon.
We’re planning two variations of the compliance process. The first type—silver—is based on self-testing, and the second type—gold—will involve third party validation. We are still defining and enabling the gold process, addressing elements such as approved certifiers, cost structures, etc.
Because the first two verified products, one from Keysight and one from Kratos, were our “test cases” for compliance, we used a hybrid, manual version of the gold process, with members of the DIFI Compliance Working Group validating the self-testing results. We’ll use the same manual model for the next six products that are already in the queue for verification. Ultimately, vendors will be able to choose between the silver and gold types to best meet their customers’ requirements.
I want to give a shout out to the members of the DIFI Certification Working Group, including group chairman Kieth King of Gilat Wavestream, for the hard work and careful thought they have put into developing the process, the important milestone they’ve reached and the continuing effort to evolve processes that advance market confidence and meet market needs.
