Global home networking standards group UPnP Forum has launched its new official certification test tool, UCTT 2.0.

Developed by Comarch, the new tool is expected to strengthen the confidence in UPnP technology and extend the scope and relevance of the Forum’s certification program.

UPnP Forum is an industry initiative of over 950 companies in computing, printing and networking; consumer electronics; home appliances, automation, control and security; and mobile products.

 As a member of UPnP forum, Comarch (News - Alert) has been sharing its expert knowledge in the domain of advanced network protocols and certification tools for several years. Recently, the company successfully released the 2.0 version of UPnP Compliance Test Tool (UCTT2.0). The introduction is seen as a major step for UPnP ecosystem on the path to becoming fully interoperable and vendor agnostic.

“The build-from-scratch UCTT2.0 is considerably stricter in validating UPnP communication between devices under test, supporting deeper test penetration and leading to more credible results,” Grzegorz Kafel, a specialist of UPnP and who was also involved with the project as a project manager.

Kafel said that consequently, the compliancy assurance level is significantly higher and certification much tougher to achieve, but potential IOP issues are detected and addressed all the way faster.

Together with greatly improved ergonomics of the tool, all these led to a new definition of user experience and enriched suitability of the tool for the whole certification process, Kafel said.

Thanks to the entirely refactored architecture of UCTT2.0, it is now possible to certificate both UPnP devices and control points within one tool. Company officials said that the active and run-time dynamic environment enables to simulate various UPnP network elements, and on-the-fly analysis of intercommunication of both class devices, rather than post-processed parsing used by the previous version of the tool.

UCTT2.0 is compatible with Comarch Remote Access Framework, which makes it possible to perform precertification consultancy or actual certification remotely and securely over the cloud, with no need for network configuration or additional investments in infrastructure.

Last month, UPnP Forum UPnP Forum announced that its certification program is rapidly expanding with a record 900 plus devices having achieved the UPnP standards compliant certification to date.