Virtualizing the World of Cable
By Wayne Hickey – When cable operators saw huge demands in linear video, Video-on-Demand (VoD) and high-speed data services, and faced with an aging analog infrastructure, they moved to a Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) to increase capacity and throughput. CCAP combines headend functions into a single architecture by combing Edge Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (EQAM) and Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS).
Back in June 2011, CableLabs created CCAP by blending two competing platforms, a Comcast-backed Converged Multiservice Access Platform (CMAP) and a Time Warner Cable Converged Edge Services Access Router (CESAR) platform. The following year CCAP products were introduced, and deployed the year after.
Fast forward to today, cable operators are looking to implement software-based access platforms, migrate away from commonly deployed centralized, purpose-built CCAP equipment, and virtualize CCAP (vCCAP) — and thus begin the shift to a Distributed Access Architecture (DAA). Developed by CableLabs, vCCAP is the latest cable technologies that combines functions including the CMTS and EQAM.
Virtualizing and distributing MAC and PHY functions enables digital combining, eliminates analog optics with cost effective 10G Ethernet transport, and converts analog fiber nodes to digital optic IP-enabled devices. DAA makes it easier to push fiber deeper into the edge of the network, and along with the ability to support denser wavelengths for each fiber, digital optics greatly improves Carrier-to-Noise-Ratio (CNR), which will enable higher orders of QAM on the coax and higher performance DOCSIS technologies. more> https://goo.gl/EoPwPL
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