The Remote PHY architecture disaggregates the PHY from the physical CCAP (Converged Cable Access Platform). This enables CCAP to be virtualized. Virtual Cable Access Platform (vCAP) is the virtualized instance of CCAP (Converged Cable Access Platform) core software. vCAP has two disaggregated software components, vDOCSIS and vEQAM. These provide DOCSIS and MPEG video services respectively. Together with a RPD (remote PHY device) vCAP provides CCAP services. vCAP is realized via NFV (Network Function Virtualization) virtual machines (VM). vCAP will be deployed in data centers.
One of the key functions of CCAP is high availability (HA). vCAP presents unique opportunities to design and implement redundancy and high availability that are not possible with custom hardware based CCAP. This paper and accompanying presentation examine the unique aspects of redundancy in a virtualized environment, discuss their pros and cons and weigh them against the relative cost to deploy and maintain them.