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www.csimagazine.com June 2015 03

“To have worked on broadband in our time

is comparable to having worked on the

railways in Victorian times. Broadband is

the defining technology of our age.”

So said John Petter, CEO of BT’s consumer

division, at a recent conference, and he is not the

first to make this comparison. Dido Harding, chief

executive of UK ISP Talk Talk, similarly said: “I don’t

think we should be satisfied with the digital world we

have today. I think we could have a country where

every single home and premise has 1Gb, basically

unlimited connectivity. It would be a world where

broadband became much more like electricity.”

And Hannelore Kraft, who is the Premier of

Germany’s State of North Rhine-Westphalia, said at

Anga Com this year that access to fast internet is “as

normal as electricity, gas and water. This is no longer

luxury but essential for society to be successful.”

Putting issues of net neutrality to one side,

broadband networks are regularly called data

highways and operators have for the best part of this

century been engaged in a speed race that is now

reaching something of a crescendo. Cable MSOs

worldwide are going full throttle to make their access

pipes superior to the rest, while telcos are undergoing

their own upgrades in the form of G.fast, VDSL and

vectoring technologies. But it is really fibre that is

raising the bar. The aggressive timescale of the new

DOCSIS 3.1 standard is in direct response to the

threat posed by telco FTTH and, in the US, the likes

of Google Fibre.

The CEO of Cable Labs Phil McKinney told CSI

that the industry is slightly ahead of schedule with

3.1. The third interoperability plugfest has been

completed, certification is expected by

the end of 2015 with the first

commercial rollouts starting from the

middle of next year. Denmark’s TDC

announced this month it was the first

to field test 3.1 end-to-end and aims to

deploy the technology in 2016.

The cable community feels it is

strategically essential to be able to

deploy Gigabit speeds that 3.1

provides. McKinney said Europe will

be the first region along with North America with

3.1-based Gig speed networks, due to demand from

Cable Labs members. Again, this is due to

competitive pressures, and Altice’s Numericable in

France is a classic case in point.

Cable’s box of tricks

But more than just brute speed, 3.1 is also about

bandwidth efficiency. There are certain access

technologies that are unique to the cable business

and cable insiders have long taken pride on the

number of tools they have open to their disposal -

and it is this flexibility that engineers believe give

them an advantage.

CCAP is a key enabler of the 3.1 transition and

while it is not mandatory it is commonly accepted

that there are unlikely to be many, if any, non-CCAP

based 3.1 deployments. Comcast’s Jorge Salinger,

regarded as the ‘Father of CCAP’, has pointed out

that this platform was specifically designed with this

kind of upgrade in mind. CCAP began development

around five years ago (then called CMAP) as a

means of blending video and data services, which

will make headends more efficient and ultimately

pave the way for all-IP.

And things don’t stop there. To gain even more

efficiency, MSOs are exploring the concept of a

remote or distributed PHY, which involves moving

parts of the PHY into the network node. Telenet and

TeliaSonera are among the first operators in Europe

to begin R-PHY rollouts.

Ultimately, the goal is to fulfil requirements amid

demand for increasing capacity as more IP video

makes its way onto broadband networks. Connected

devices are resulting in an explosion of OTT

streaming, and some of the largest cable operators

are known to be preparing for the eventuality that

millennials continue to watch more online video than

traditional/broadcast TV as they get older.

Cisco’s own Visual Networking Index predicts

huge growth ahead for IP traffic and we are now

starting to see the first 4k OTT services from the

likes of Amazon and Netflix, while 8k is already

being touted for 2018, which will put even more

strain on networks. Looking ahead further, 5G and

the associated Internet of Things (IoT) will present

both an opportunity and a challenge for cable.

Editor’s introduction

Broadband access is now deemed as

important as utilities like water, gas and electricity

Goran Nastic CSI editor

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Cable operators are preparing to accelerate

their push towards software defined all-IP

infrastructures by deploying DOCSIS 3.1 and

distributed PHY technologies over the next

two years. They need to move as quickly as

possible to ward off competition from both

telcos and OTT video service providers, while

minimising the associated costs of

infrastructure upgrades.

Urgency has been increased by the arrival

of cloud technologies in broadcasting,

increasing the pace of innovation around IP

and the Internet, enabling new services to

emerge and gain ground far more quickly

than ever before.

The Cloud evolved in the data centre

world and was initially confined to

processing and storage, but is now

embracing the network through SFN

(Software Defined Networking) and NFV

(Network Function Virtualisation)

technologies. That development has brought

the cloud into the realm of telcos and cable

operators.

“With the emergence of SDN and NFV,

the industry will soon be able to create

innovative new services at a much quicker

pace,” says Chris Donley, Director, SDN,

NFV and Home Networking at CableLabs,

the industry’s standards and R&D body.

“The key is to virtualise the network and

include it in a more comprehensive end-to-

end Cloud architecture. At CableLabs, we

have brought all this together in a wide

ranging Virtualisation and Network

Evolution (VNE) programme spanning the

breadth of CableLabs skill centres.”

Virtualising here means separating higher

level network control from lower level packet

forwarding and switching, which allows

commodity hardware to be used while

making it easier to upgrade the software.

For pay TV this is not just confined to the

network though, but also includes encoding

and other video processing functions, so

that commodity hardware can be introduced

across the whole video ecosystem.

“Virtualisation relates to scaling and

deployment methods,” says David

Whitehead, Senior Director, Sales

Engineering and Solution Architecture,

EMEA at Harmonic. “We’re looking at

virtualising a lot of our video

processing functions

including encoding and

running them on Intel based

blade servers.”

Moving ahead with 3.1

The first priority, though, for most operators

is to establish a clear strategy for IP

migration towards DOCSIS 3.1.

First released in October 2013, DOCSIS

3.1 theoretically supports at least 10 Gbps

downstream and 1 Gbps upstream. By doing

away with the 6 MHz and 8 MHz wide

channel spacing used respectively by

DOCSIS and EuroDOCSIS until now and

replacing them with orthogonal frequency-

division multiplexing (OFDM) instead,

DOCSIS 3.1 finally converges towards a

common worldwide standard.

However there will still be two versions of

the modems for the foreseeable future

because of the need for backwards

compatibility with existing DOCSIS and

EuroDOCSIS infrastructure. DOCSIS 3.1

also improves QoE (Quality of Experience)

through use of active queue management to

reduce network delay by avoiding

unnecessary hold up of packets. It reduces

power consumption substantially and

increases network capacity by up to 50%

through more efficient modulation over

given spectrum.

Meanwhile CCAP (Converged Cable

Access Platform) has been developed

through a joint initiative between CableLabs,

vendors and operators themselves as the

migration vehicle towards DOCSIS 3.1 and

all IP networks, through convergence

between video and DOCSIS IP data.

“CCAP can be considered a transition

architecture onto full cable IP,” says Luis

Martins, Head of Cable Access Sales and

Business Development for EMEA at Cisco.

“With CCAP we get a single network access

Cable embraces a new futureDOCSIS 3.1 and distributed PHY are ready to fi nally bring on IP for cable MSOs, says Philip Hunter

G1GABLAST is the consumer brand of Cox’s gigabit internet service in the US



element which processes both DOCSIS and

video, delivering all services across a single

full-spectrum connector at the CCAP

device. This capability will allow operators

to migrate capacity smoothly from video

channels onto DOCSIS channels at the

CCAP element, as more video traffic moves

to IP and DOCSIS.”

However according to Harmonic’s

Whitehead, migration may not be so smooth

for some operators when they deploy

DOCSIS 3.1 because they could run short

of bandwidth. This sounds paradoxical given

that 3.1 creates more capacity through more

efficient modulation, but at the same time it

will stimulate demand by increasing

broadband speeds and encouraging more

video channels as well as ultra HD. “So

while excited about 3.1 with gigabit services,

some operators have problems freeing up

enough bandwidth on cable networks to

allow that,” thinks Whitehead.

Spectrum extension is one solution, but

Whitehead argues that operators are better

off increasing capacity by making more

efficient use of what they have and at least

delaying major infrastructure upgrades. “Our

next generation encoders we’re working on,

our Electra X, reduces bandwidth by 25% to

40% by freeing up dedicated video channels

for DOCSIS 3.1 channels.”

Whitehead claims that Harmonic had

developed algorithms for improving legacy

H.264 and even MPEG2 compression

systems, avoiding the need for operators to

upgrade set top populations to the latest

HEVC codec. “We’re using more advanced

encoders on Intel platforms, exploiting the

extra CPU power and tools now available.

So there’s no need to move to HEVC, which

would mean a complete and expensive swap

out in the home.”

Teleste notes that, depending on an

MSO’s individual network topology, the

typical operator will require most actives to

be upgraded and some passives too in order

to fully benefit from the gains on offer from

DOCSIS 3.1

Cisco agrees that operators are keen to

avoid hardware upgrades where possible.

“As part of this effort to move to DOCSIS

3.1, special attention has been paid by our

customers to the selection of CCAP

platforms that can scale smoothly to

DOCSIS 3.1 without major hardware

upgrades and swaps, such as our cBR-8, and

so optimising the long-term TCO (Total

Cost of Ownership) of these new DOCSIS

3.1 CCAP platforms,” says Martins.

Distributed CCAP and Remote-PHY

Cost considerations are also governing the

choice of architecture for CCAP, with

two principle variants. One is Distributed

CCAP, where full CCAP devices are

deployed deeper in the network towards the

subscribers. Another approach is Remote

IP traffic growth

The average fixed broadband speed will

double to 42.5Mbps over the next four

years as operators look to facilitate

growing demand. According to Cisco’s

latest Visual Networking Index, the

average global fixed broadband speed grew

26% year-on-year to 20.3Mbps in 2014,

compared to 16Mbps a year previously. By

the end of 2019, 33% of all global fixed

broadband connections will be faster than

25Mbps, compared to 29% today.

Total global IP traffic will reach 168

exabytes per month by 2019, up from 59.9

exabytes per month in 2014. By the end of

the decade, nearly as much traffic will

traverse global IP networks than all prior

“Internet years” combined (from 1984 to

the end of 2013). We are not enetering the

zetabyte era, the company says.

By 2019, more than 14% of monthly IP

traffic will derive from cellular

connections, and 53% of monthly IP

traffic will come from WiFi connections

globally,. Cellular, meanwhile, will grow

from to 14% of total monthly IP traffic.

There will be about 3.9 billion internet

users, or just over half of the world’s

projected population of 7.6 billion. There

will be 24 billion networked devices

expected online by 2019, compared with

14 billion in 2014, including wearables.

This means there will be over nine

networked devices per person by 2019, up

from five devices per person in 2014.

Cisco has IoT accounting for a 2.7% of

global IP traffic by 2019, up from about

half a per cent in 2014, with connections

expected to more than triple to 2019.

So service providers need to adapt and

plan for a network upgrade path.

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The number of DOCSIS channels shipped globally is expected to nearly triple from 2013 to 2015

Num

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(Mill

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)

©Infonetics Research, CCAP, CMTS and Edge QAM Hardware and Subscribers,Quarterly Market Share, Size, and Forecasts, May 2014

20130

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PHY, which pushes the physical modulation

of the DOCSIS and video signals deeper in

the network onto specific PHY elements

based on a chassis shelf or on a HFC node,

while keeping DOCSIS, IP and intelligent

video processing on a central CCAP core

element that connects by IP over Ethernet

or PON with the remote PHY element.

“The last approach is the one with

stronger traction from the cable industry

and is under standardisation by Cable Labs,

allowing interoperability between CCAP

Core and remote PHY elements from

different vendors,” says Martins.

Remote PHY is winning the argument

partly because it is less disruptive to existing

DOCSIS and video services, which can

continue to run at the CCAP core element.

“Also as the remote PHY element is simpler,

it becomes easier to push it deeper into the

access network in the form factor of a fibre

node, which tend to be located in places

where power supply and space are

constrained,” points out Martins.

This points to cost savings at a time when

power consumption is rising as efficiencies

fail to keep pace with bandwidth

proliferation. In addition, because the

remote PHY is simpler than a fully specified

distributed CCAP device, the number of

faults should be lower with reduced truck

rolls and maintenance costs. “The Remote

PHY architecture supports both DOCSIS

and video, and so it fulfils the goals of

CCAP for convergence of DOCSIS and

video, and in that respect achieved the

aims of the Distributed CCAP approach,”

says Martins.

It also crucially dovetails with the

demands of virtualisation, since CCAP

enables migration to IP/Ethernet within the

core. “As the CCAP devices migrate to

CCAP Core elements without coax

connectivity and just have IP/Ethernet ports

to connect with remote PHY elements

located deeper in the network serving the

coax customers, the next step is to migrate

DOCSIS 3.1: evolution, not revolution

Looking inside the standard, DOCSIS 3.1

supports 1.2 GHz downstream capacity

and defines support for up to 10 Gbps

downstream and up to 1 Gbps upstream

network capabilities, writes Goran Nastic.

Also significant is an increase in network

capacity with the ability to transmit up to

50% more data over the same spectrum,

on existing HFC networks.

Many of these gains are achieved

through the combination of FEC

technologies and, especially, OFDM

technologies, which together enable

higher QAM modulations (up to 4096)

on the cable plant.

It is expected that generally the

migration to 3.1 should be smoother than

the transition to 3.0 because much of the

hard work in terms of getting the plant

ready was done at that stage. So it’s a

case of evolution, not revolution.

Nevertheless, Cox Communications

warned fellow operators at last year’s

Cable Congress that the migration will

only be smooth if the cable plant is

readied first. “Going from 256 QAM to

get the extra bits per hertz means more

power and headroom and work to do on

plant so that plant has to be very robust.

It’s hard work. For Docsis 3.1 to avoid

the mistakes of 2.0 and S-CDMA, train

your field personnel first,” said Jeff

Finkelstein, executive director of strategic

architecture. “A lot of this work needs to

be done in the maintenance window,

which for us is 2am-5am.”

Indeed, several vendors are working

with operators to quantify the level of

readiness of their existing networks for

3.1 deployments. On top of that, they are

working together to assess the gain they

would get from deploying 3.1.

“We’re in the last stretch right now

trying to define how the technology will

be deployed, and also how the monitoring

systems around that will be working

because there are some fundamental

changes that will happen,” says Cornel

Ciocirlan of Arris.

There are implementations and

changes needed in the modems, the

CCAPs and monitoring systems, the last

of which are an important but often

overlooked part of the equation. Ciocirlan

points to the concept of capacity

planning having to change significantly

because of the introduction of multiple

modulation profiles with 3.1. MSO will

now have to evaluate whether the network

is capable of satisfying the service tier

they have sold to the subscriber.

In terms of rollout, CPEs will come

first early next year (after certification

towards the end of 2015), but they will

initially operate as 3.0 modems until

some level of scale is achieved and

operators then introduce a 3.1 carrier.

This is why channel bonding between 3.0

single carrier QAMs and 3.1 OFDM has

also been demonstrated, which is

significant because that is an enabler for

seamless co-existence between the two

technologies. The point here is that it

enables operators to start small and

gradually grow 3.1 once a critical mass of

3.1 CPEs appears.



the software of hardware-purposed CCAP

Core devices onto server blades in a data

centre, which will allow operators to build a

virtual CCAP architecture on a long-term

basis,” says Martins.

Opening up to MDUs... and telcos

This separation between the remote PHY on

coax and the central CCAP core is opening

new opportunities for operators to deliver

multiplay or even just broadband services to

the many buildings around the world already

cabled with coax, especially in the US. This

is often MDUs (Multi Dwelling Units),

which have sometimes been served by cable

operators using earlier DOCSIS versions, as

well as by telcos with Ethernet over Cable

(EoC). Both approaches have lacked the

scalability to deliver the high bandwidth to

each dwelling with sufficient capacity for

multichannel HD services while meeting fast

rising consumer expectations over bit rate.

The combination of remote PHY and

remote Docsis now enables operators to

deliver compelling multi play services to

MDUs. “Our cable customers are very

excited to use Remote PHY to move from

analog HFC optics to digital fibre, which

brings them operational benefits, converges

different digital services over the same fibre

and scales to higher speeds with their

DOCSIS 3.1 rollouts,” says Martins.

One interesting twist is that even some

telcos are considering adoption of cable

remote PHY technologies to buildings with

coax, in preference either to re-wiring for

DSL or deploying EoC. “They can use

remote PHY to build a similar access

architecture to what they are familiar with

for PON (Passive Optical Network) access,”

argues Martins. “We are seeing this where

some telcos want to build their own access

network, reducing costs as it eliminates the

vertical FTTH cabling inside the building by

re-using the existing coax.”

Harmonic is also noticing some demand

from telcos for distributed cable products in

buildings. “We’re now looking at all

locations such as hotels and holiday

parks where there may be coax

distribution, examining how we can

utilise that,” adds Whitehead.

The Telco market though is a bit of a

side show that is of relatively little

interest to CableLabs, other than to

demonstrate the appeal of virtual PHY.

The big challenge is to smooth the path

to virtualisation, whose key lies in the

platform controlling or orchestrating the

network, according to Don Clarke its

Principal Architect for Network

Technologies.

“Today’s networks are provisioned and

managed on a per-device basis,” Clarke

notes. “Tomorrow’s will be service-based.

In order to accomplish the transition,

the controller will need to support

legacy protocols to communicate with

existing physical devices and newer

protocols for interacting with virtual

devices.”

OpenDaylight eases NFV/SDN migration

CableLabs has been working on this

with OpenDaylight, an open source

software project announced by the Linux

Foundation in April 2013 to promote

adoption of SDN and NFV in IP

networking, with founding members

including Cisco, Ericsson, HP, IBM,

Juniper Networks and Microsoft.

“We have software developers in-house

and we developed a PacketCable

Multimedia plugin that allows Open

Daylight to control existing CMTSs,”

says Clarke.

“At the same time, we are using Open

Daylight’s OVSDB (Open Virtual Switch

Database) plugin to provision Metro

Ethernet services in our Virtual Business

CPE project,” he adds.

CableLabs sees Open Daylight as an

important tool supporting virtualisation and

taking the industry beyond cable specific

technologies like DOCSIS itself. “This

approach will allow operators to deploy

SDN and NFV as it makes sense for specific

use cases,” says Clarke.

Comcast is one operator that has already

deployed OpenDaylight as a key plank in its

IP migration strategy, motivated by the

desire to move towards standard open

source products, according to the operator’s

Senior Principal Engineer and OpenDaylight

Advisory Group Member Chris Luke.

In a recent blog, Luke wrote: “When

Open Daylight was launched we were

excited to see that the industry was moving

to a supportable open source model for

SDN. There were a growing number of

proprietary SDN controllers at the time and

that had service providers like us

questioning the direction of the market and

whether it made sense to us. We were

pleased to see an open source platform

come forward aiming to provide a neutral

playing field with support for more than just

OpenFlow.” OpenFlow is the protocol for

communicating between the controlling and

forwarding parts of an SFN network.

With CableLabs now squarely behind

OpenDaylight and around 15 vendors now

offering compliant products, it looks like

OpenDaylight will become a key part of the

evolving virtualised distributed cable

ecosystem.

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UK’s Virgin Media is embarking on the £3bn Project Lightning to extend its HFC network



CCAP is evolving

CSI first saw an early engineering unit of the

cBR-8 (Converged Broadband Router, with

the 8 standing for the number of DOCSIS

line card slots) behind closed doors at the

Anga show two years ago and it was obvious

then that the chassis would pack a punch.

Cisco has in that time been working on

the maturity of the product. The cBR-8

underwent extensive testing, especially on

the software side, to ensure it is shipped to

customers with the right reliability as part of

Cisco’s standard product development

process. The cBR-8 is by the company’s own

admission somewhat late to market, even if

CCAP (converged cable access platform) is

only now beginning to find its feet.

The company is one of half a dozen or so

vendors active in this space. Arris (with the

E6000 solution) and Casa (C100G) are the

main competitors. To a lesser extent from a

strategic standpoint, Harmonic (NSG Pro)

and commScope (CSP) are among those

bidding to take a slice of the growing CCAP

pie (see charts, below).

Yet, Cisco’s executives also argue that the

early bird does not always catch the worm.

“If you’re late to a market that is evolving

you actually might have the opportunity to

capture that transition and be first with

ability to offer the technology required. That

is exactly what we do with the cBR. Yes,

we’re late from a DOCSIS 3.0 perspective.

However, if you look at it from a DOCSIS

3.1 perspective we are actually first to

market,” says Daniel Etman, director

product management, Cable Access, Cisco.

The point is that the cBR was built with

3.1 in mind and while competitors might

have 3.0 CCAP systems in place they are

lagging behind in the 3.1 transition,

according to Etman, who adds that the cBR

is the only CMTS out there that can offer

3.1 services without forklift upgrades. “We

were able to develop into a 3.1 platform

from an architectural

perspective.”

Line cards are designed in

such a way that they are

modular and utilising n+1

redundancy. Any line card

shipping from July will have

a 3.1 downstream hardware

PHY embedded, while the

software will come later depending on

market requirements.

And this goes well beyond just line cards.

From an OpEx perspective, operators want

to be able to use CCAP (or indeed any other

platform) for as long as possible without

expensive upgrades and the cBR8 is

positioned to meet this long term need by

leveraging full 3.1 capabilities of the

network. Consequently, Etman cites

investment protection and total cost of

ownership as key differentiators.

In terms of DOCSIS channel density and

scalability, the cBR-8 supports from 96 to

128 channels per service group. While

current-generation CCAP solutions from

rivals support 24-32 channels per service

group, and will eventually scale to support

up to 96 channels/service group, the cBR-8

starts at 96 channels. The cBR was designed

with 200Gig per slot (see cBR-8 factsheet),

compared to 10Gig of rival solutions which

Cisco took time developing and coming out with its CCAP-based cBR-8, but is confi dent the platform has set the bar high and will be the front-runner in the embryonic market for the long-term

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Global CMTS revenue rapidly declining,making way for CCAP growth

©Infonetics Research, CMTS, CCAP, and Edge QAM Hardware and Subscribers,Quarterly Market Share, Size, and Forecasts, May 2014

20152013 2017

CCAP RevenueCMTS Revenue

Glo

bal R

even

ue in

$U

S B

illio

ns

$2B

$1.5B

$1B

$0.5B

02013 2018

Infonetics Research forcasts the global CMTS, CCAP,and edge QAM market to reach $1.7 billion in 2018

©Infonetics Research, CMTS, CCAP, and Edge QAM Hardware and Subscribers, Quarterly Market Share, Size, and Forecasts, Feb 2014


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are based on an ATCA architecture. In other

words, the cBR8 offers up to 20 times the

capacity of current-generation, ATCA-based

CCAP solutions. Indeed, Etman claims the

kind of capacity that Cisco offers now won’t

be supported from an ATCA perspective

until at least 2020.

“You could put the cBR in and grow with

licences with full downstream 3.1 spectrum

capability; that’s a chassis that is designed to

stay in customer networks for more than ten

years,” he says.

So while the first response Cisco usually

gets from customers is always “You’re too

late”, when the discussion moves onto 3.1

then “the light goes on,” according to

Etman. “We have a lot of customer traction

right now. We’re in a comfortable position

with the cBR,” he says.

Cisco has already participated in one

Cable Labs 3.1 interoperability test and will

take part in another plugfest scheduled for

late June. While the company Cisco won’t

divulge the full list of operators it is actively

engaged with for the cBR, it is known to be

deploying the platform with Comcast,

Altice’s Numericable in France and Swiss

cablenet Quickline.

Cisco has a large installed base of its

uBR1000 series CMTS product in Europe

and promises a smooth transition for

customers going with the cBR because of

features compatibility and the way the new

platform is configured is similar from an

operations perspective (more on this later).

“The integration with the management

platform is very straightforward. These are

the kinds of things that will be very

important in the transition of our customer

base to the cBR product,” says Luis Martins,

head of cable access sales and business

development for Cisco’s EMEA region.

There is a certain density that comes with

the cBR, which limits its deployment in hub

sites but the solution is as relevant to

smaller network operators as Tier 1s.

Martins says Cisco has Tier 2 and 3

customers interested in the product and, in

fact, the first deals struck for the cBR were

with smaller cable operators.

“We see most of customers evolving into

at least 16 downstreams per segment, and

that’s the starting sweet-spot of the cBR

from a density perspective. Obviously if a

customer has specific Hub Sites with less

than 16 segments, it will be a problem for all

CCAP platform in the market that are built

for bigger sites. In the end, Tier 1, 2 and 3s

are all going through the same transition

and moving to at least 16 DOCSIS channels

per segment to support 16x4 and eventually

24x8 modems,” says Martins.

Remote-PHY and distributed architectures

The cBR is capable of supporting

Distributed CCAP architectures based on

Remote PHY, which may expand the

number of segments served by the chassis to

double or more. Remote PHY pushes less

intelligence deeper into the access network

on RPHY devices, while maintaining the

need for a central CCAP platform that

performs the higher layer processing and

MAC management, facilitating a future

Virtualisation of the central CCAP platform.

Distributed CCAP based on Remote

MAC-PHY would perform both PHY and

MAC functions remotely, but this approach

seems to pose too much of a leap of faith

for MSOs at present. There is reluctance on

the operator side to make optical nodes so

smart and have that much active equipment

in the field, a sentiment echoed by Etman,

who notes operational, maintenance and

management reasons, such as exposure to

software upgrade cycles. The added

complexity also brings some power and

reliability concerns.

Etman argues that the increased

complexities in a distributed device means

an increase in OpEx for customers, which is

paradoxical to CCAP’s purpose of lowering

these costs by combining discrete EdgeQAM

and CMTS cable headend technologies into

a single solution. To this end, Cisco favours

the RPHY approach, according to Etman,

especially in Europe where the form factors

for nodes and amps are small.

This makes R-PHY an intermediate

option, a technical ‘sweetspot’ in terms of

trade-offs and efficiency as Comcast’s Jorge

Sallinger, who is regarded as the father of

CCAP, has put it. While not all operators

have networks that lend themselves well to

cBR-8 key facts

• Supports both DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1-

based connectivity

• The cBR-8 platform features an

integrated CCAP (I-CCAP) design

• Supports 96 to 128 channels per

service group

• Backplane capacity scales from 240

Gbps to 1.6 Tbps

• Supports up to 768 unique DOCSIS

3.0 QAMs/line card (and 6,144 per

chassis)

• Upstream capacity of 96 channels/line

card

• Support 4 Gbps to either 56 service

groups or 64 service groups (56

service groups with n+1 redundancy)

• Support distributed CCAP

architectures and remote PHY

• Support for DOCSIS Provisioning of

EPON (DPoE) implementations

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R-PHY deployment, the technology is now

being standardised, but products compliant

with the spec are expected to take time to

become available.

Cable all-IP

By then, cable should be further along the

path towards all-IP. CCAP is regarded by

cable MSOs as a key piece of technology

facilitating the move to all-IP networks,

something that has been talked about for a

while but is gaining ground with the wider

move of IP-based CPE devices and the

transition of the broadcast industry as a

whole to more generic IP-based mechanisms

and workflows.

A conservative approach has slowed

operators down until this point, as has

legacy infrastructure such as MPEG set top

boxes and traditional DVB-C backend

servers. Things are now finally falling into

place to move to all-IP, a migration that will

be accelerated by DOCSIS 3.0/3.1 and

CCAP. “We have customers telling us their

migration to 3.0 and 3.1 will be connected

with the migration to all-IP. It’s the right

time for converged services instead of

having separate data and video,” says

Martins, who sees CCAP as a ‘bridging’

technology for all-IP.

In the case of the cBR, Martins says

customers will in the first phase use the

same platform to deliver DVB + DOCSIS

and then over the years move to all-IP once

CPEs have made the switch to IP.

Ultimately, the CCAP and 3.1 adoption

curves have to be towards the maturity stage

for IP video to happen in a big way and that

will take another three or four years.

While CCAP is the future, no one

expects legacy CMTS to go away any time

soon. Because this equipment will be

around for a good few years, if not even

decades, there are improvements happening

on this front too. Cisco’s own uBR10k

CMTS still has room to grow and the

company sees the cBR being deployed in

parallel to the uBR10k for future service

expansions.


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Virtual CCAP and NFV/SDN

DOCSIS 3.1 brings with it the concept

of multiple modulation profiles, where

for example some modems operate at

256QAM while others do at 4096QAM.

Moving these calculations into data

centres is one of the first features that

come up when discussing virtual CCAP

(vCCAP) functions.

In all, Comcast has come up with 17

features that can be virtualised in order

of complexity. Jorge Salinger, VP of

Access Architecture at Comcast, used

this year’s Cable Congress to outline the

case for virtualising as much CCAP

functionality as possible, starting with

modulation management. Virtualising

this makes performing changes more

dynamic, according to Salinger. “We can

develop a strategy to configure and

change them dynamically. You can have

multiple modulation profiles per service

group. This is a powerful concept but

requires ‘exercising’ with the CMTS.”

The concept of virtualising that

functionality is allowing an external

system to make decisions for the CCAP.

Instead of building intelligence into the

CCAP cable operators can externalise

the management of those profiles.

According to Etman, complexities of

virtualisation lie not in the specific

product but the end-to-end architecture.

For starters, he notes that DOCSIS is a

complex piece and it’s very difficult to

separate the data and control plane. It’s

something the industry will transition

towards but Etman warns that just

virtualising for the sake of virtualisation

is not a wise move, adding that the

CapEx benefits are not that clear.

“In the end it’s not the CCAP you will

virtualise. Virtualisation allows you to

pull apart different functions. It’s

interesting that CCAP was about

converging functions into a box and

virtualisation will see that diverge again

into different environments,” he notes.

On a wider level, Cisco sees

virtualisation as taking software that

resides on hardware platforms like the

CMTS and migrating them into a server

that resides in a data centre, then

applying IT technologies to manage

resources.

A second and closely coupled concept

is more connected to software defined

networking (SDN), which is about trying

to do some of the functions that reside

on a hardware platform on an

applications layer that, in this case,

speaks to the CMTS through open APIs.

It’s not virtualisation as such, but more

about using an applications layer to do

some of the functions on behalf of the

CMTS.

“We are working on both directions;

from the SDN perspective taking

intelligence of the management of the

CMTS out of the CMTS. We are already

showing some examples of these

applications to customers,” adds Martins.


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Internet of EverythingW E L C O M E T O T H E

©2015

Cisco

and/oritsaffiliates.Allrights

reserved.

TOMORROW starts here.

Every day, the Internet of Everything grows exponentially. Mill ions of devices and people areconnecting, developing ideas and solutions that are the first of their kind. But these firsts areonly truly interesting for the lasts they create. The last traffic jam. The last product recall. Thelast blackout. These are what motivate us, because we know big things are never achieved by

thinking small. And those big things start here and now.

cisco.com/tomorrowstartshere


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