prpl Foundation, CableLabs partner to improve Wi-Fi experience

The prpl Foundation, an open-source community dedicated to carrier-grade software for broadband consumer premise equipment has announced that CableLabs has joined the foundation to collaborate on the implementation of Mobile Wi-Fi technology to provide seamless Wi-Fi connectivity for mobile devices.

The collaboration brings CableLabs’ Mobile Wi-Fi technology one step closer to full adoption as an open-source implementation in the prplMesh Wi-Fi software stack. The prplMesh software stack is a compliant open-source implementation of the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi CERTIFIED EasyMesh® open industry standard protocol for Wi-Fi mesh networks.

Wi-Fi users often encounter poor performance when their smartphones and other mobile devices connect to a suboptimal Wi-Fi access point when better access points are available. As a result, users experience poor connections and often abandon their Wi-Fi connection in favor of their cellular service.

To address this problem, CableLabs has developed Mobile Wi-Fi, which manages a collection of Wi-Fi access points that allows the roaming of a mobile device to the best access point available. The result is a collection of otherwise independent access points acting as a single contiguous network, much like a cellular network, with devices being handed off seamlessly from one access point to another.

“With the latest Mobile Wi-Fi technology, there is no longer a need for a mobile device to form a new Wi-Fi connection when it moves from one access point to another,” said Steve Arendt of CableLabs. “Instead, a device will keep the same Wi-Fi connection to its own unique virtual network, which will follow the user as they move about a house, street or neighborhood.”

The prpl Foundation is a collaborative open-source community dedicated to open APIs and open industry standards, focusing on carrier-grade software for broadband customer premise equipment as specified by operator members.

The prpl Foundation brings together service providers, original equipment manufacturers, system integrators, chip vendors and application developers to harmonize home network architecture, then commonizes a reference implementation of standardized open-source infrastructure built atop open APIs and open industry standards.

prpl enables a service delivery ecosystem including innovative third-party applications that can be quickly and easily deployed across different CPE platforms.