CRUNCH TIME ON THE CABLE ACCESS NETWORK PRESENTED BY IN PARTNERSHIP WITH 1 CRUNCH TIME ON THE CABLE ACCESS NETWORK PUBLISHERS PAGE CRUNCH TIME ON THE CABLE ACCESS NETWORK FOR CABLE TV PROVIDERS, companies large and small move past the crunch connecting their subscribers to much more capable, scalable, and futureproof with great content is a good access networks. thing. But you can have too much of a good thing: Today This eBook is cosponsored by Cisco, which has MSOs’ networks are being done tremendous work on the causes, challenges overloaded by bandwidth- and solutions associated with moving CCAPs devouring over-the-top (OTT) from the physical headend into distributed and programming. virtualized applications. These Cisco engineers have devised a powerful technological remedy “50-60 percent of U.S. MSOs are running out of RF that is now being adopted by Altice, Comcast and spectrum, thanks to the demands of unmanaged Quickline; among many others. OTT video traffic,” said Todd McCrum, Director of Product Development for Cisco’s Cable Access At the same time, these engineers realize that Business Unit. “Coping by splitting nodes and moving to a distributed/virtualized CCAP reducing homes passed isn’t a long-term solution, environment is a paradigm shift for cable because of the additional demands this puts on companies. This is why they raise the questions the MSOs’ headends.” MSOs need to ask their trusted vendors before investing substantially in this new equipment. To deal with rising bandwidth demands, Some of the questions that need to be asked: CableLabs, MSOs, and vendors such as Cisco are moving to virtualized network solutions to • Can your cable TV equipment vendor outline take the strain off cable TV headends, while the end-to-end installation and functioning of allowing lots of room for traffic growth at their equipment in your plant and network? minimum CAPEX and OPEX. They are doing this • How easily will their equipment integrate by moving the functions of the Converged Cable with your existing facilities, and how much Access Platform (CCAP), which traditionally will it affect day-to-day operations during the resides physically in the headend, deeper into the buildout? network and the cloud as well. • Who is using their equipment today, and can Such changes are vital to cable TV economic they provide MSO customer references that survival, because the old ways of doing things just you can contact for honest assessments of the won’t work. Even if MSOs could technically keep vendor’s equipment? up with growing demands by expanding their We hope this eBook proves truly useful in helping old-style centralized plants, their cost-conscious your company tackle and master the challenges customers would rebel against the rate hikes associated with exploding OTT traffic growth on needed to support this kind of expansion. Yes, your cable access network. Please contact me at subscribers want all the OTT they can watch and [email protected] with feedback or ideas more—but they don’t want to pay for it! for additional coverage in this area. As a result, it truly is Crunch Time on the Cable Access Network. This eBook has been created to Louis Hillelson help MSOs cope with this crunch; both through Vice President/Group Publisher relevant and timely articles taken from the pages Broadcasting & Cable of Multichannel News, and brand new content Multichannel News featuring ideas and analysis from cable industry/ Next TV vendor engineers and managers. The payoff: Ratings Intelligence There are ideas in here that really can help cable 2 CRUNCH TIME ON THE CABLE ACCESS NETWORK By Jeff BAUMGARTNER CABLELABS, CISCO GET REAL ABOUT VIRTUALIZATION CABLELABS AND CISCO “More and more of the telecommunications SYSTEMS have announced the infrastructure is running on open source creation of a new software platforms,” said Ralph Brown, CTO, CableLabs, project aimed at enabling in a statement. “CableLabs has a history of virtualization on cable contributing to and hosting open source projects. networks. The OpenRPD project helps launch CableLabs increased focus on open source projects for the That new software project, cable industry.” labeled “OpenRPD” and originally developed by “This is open source for cable access. Not only Cisco, is targeted at what’s called the Remote does it help move the industry toward the PHY Device (RPD). The RPD, they explained, is future architecture but it also enables a new a physical layer converter commonly located in developer community,” added Dave Ward, CTO of an optical node of the cable network. The open engineering and chief architect, at Cisco. “Open source software will reside in the Remote PHY standards, open source and an open ecosystem Device and will be available to cable operators community for developers is a key trajectory for and RPD vendors around the world, they said. networking. We see the Remote PHY architecture and RPD evolving to a more generalized and CableLabs president and CEO Phil McKinney virtualized architecture that can be applied to all detailed the initiative at his keynote at this week’s types of access networks.” CableLabs Winter Conference in Orlando, Fla. “Our collaborative industry effort is about helping The effort will build on the original work around cable networks scale,” said John Chapman, Cisco the Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP), Fellow and CTO of the company’s Cable Access a high-density architecture that combines the business. “Remote PHY, OpenRPD and DOCSIS functions of the cable modem termination system 3.1 are playing a pivotal role in expanding the and the edge QAM. The open source software capacity of the HFC plant in a reliable, cost- will help to virtualize those functions as they are effective and scalable way.” distributed toward the edge of the network. THAT NEW SOFTWARE PROJECT, LABELED “OPENRPD” AND ORIGINALLY DEVELOPED BY CISCO, IS TARGETED AT WHAT’S CALLED THE REMOTE PHY DEVICE (RPD). THE RPD, THEY EXPLAINED, IS A PHYSICAL LAYER CONVERTER COMMONLY LOCATED IN AN OPTICAL NODE OF THE CABLE NETWORK. 3 CRUNCH TIME ON THE CABLE ACCESS NETWORK By James CARELESS EASING BROADBAND’S TRAFFIC JAM VIA DISTRIBUTION THE EXPLOSIVE GROWTH In the Remote PHY model, a Remote PHY (Physical of broadband traffic over Layer) Device is installed at each node. Known cable is overwhelming the as an RPD, this device contains PHY electronics industry’s centralized processing such as downstream QAM/OFDM modulators and architecture. “50-60 percent upstream QAM/OFDM demodulators; rather than of U.S. MSOs are running out having them located at the headend. The Remote of RF spectrum, thanks to the MACPHY model adds the DOCSIS MAC (Media demands of unmanaged OTT Access Control) functionality to the node as well. video traffic,” said Todd McCrum, Finally, the Remote CCAP variant of the Remote Director of Product Development MACPHY puts all CCAP functionality in the node, for Cisco’s Cable Access Business Unit. “Coping by rather that the headend. splitting nodes and reducing homes passed isn’t a long-term solution, because of the additional A further wrinkle: Beyond distributing the MAC demands this puts on the MSOs’ headends.” and PHY functions to the node level, Gainspeed’s Virtual CCAP (vCCAP) uses cloud computing In response to OTT traffic growth, CableLabs, and software defined network (SDN) technology MSOs and vendors are pushing aspects of to eliminate equipment in the network. “This broadband control into the network and closer approach completely eliminates the physical to the home. Since this approach essentially CMTS/CCAP and the associated headend space, distributes some of the headend’s CCAP power and cooling demands and expenses,” said (Converged Cable Access Platform) function Jeff White, Gainspeed’s Chief Strategy Officer to hardware located at the network node level and Co-founder. “The architecture transforms (the neighborhood), this approach is known as the HFC network from RF to digital, making the Distributed CCAP Architecture, or DCA. link from the headend all the way to the Ethernet node a 10 Gigabit Ethernet connection.” The upside of DCA is that it offers a real alternative to getting even more out of the Virtualization is not exclusive to Remote MACPHY, strained centralized network model. The observed Asaf Matatyaou, Senior Director of downside is that DCA will require substantial Solutions and Strategy for Harmonic’s Cable investment to implement and a need for MSO Edge Business. “You can have a Remote PHY executives to think differently. distributed solution that supports a virtual implementation or a traditional hardware-based A DCA PRIMER implementation,” he said. A DCA physically divides the equipment/ DCA PROS AND CONS functions found in a traditional headend CCAP. ‘Breaking’ the CCAP into subcomponents allows The case for deploying distributed versions of some of the CCAP’s signal workload to be CCAPs come with pros and cons -- and there isn’t processed at the node level, before those signals a ‘one size fits all’ answer for all MSOs. arrive at the headend. As well, not everyone needs to move to DCA There are three ‘models’ possible for a DCA, quite yet: “MSOs that already have 1GHz plants in terms of what the nod e-located CCAP will not need to move to DAA/DCA for many equipment does before the signal is passed onto years,” said Cisco’s Todd McCrum. “As a result, the headend. These are the Remote PHY, Remote they don’t need to move to the distributed CCAP MACPHY, and Remote CCAP models. model, because their networks already have enough capacity to handle OTT demand growth. 4 CRUNCH TIME ON THE CABLE ACCESS NETWORK They can add over 2 Gigabits of downstream adding and cooling/heating complete CCAPs at capacity to each service group with no changes the headend.