By Scott Cummings, Victor T. Hou
traditional Head End (HE) and current CMTS platforms in the HE. The “loosely coupled, tightly bolted” architecture of the traditional HE is exposed. The issues in adding new services and technologies will become apparent. Then an overview of several current and new technologies entering the next generations of HEs is listed. Each technology is described. Then the Modular CMTS (MCMTS) architecture is applied to the Next Generation Network Architecture (NGNA) for the HEs. The traditional CMTS is subdivided into three modules: CMTS core, Edge QAM, and Upstream Receiver. A new component to the HE is defined: a System Resource Manager (SRM). The incoming technologies are applied to the SRM and M-CMTS. As these technologies are incrementally added to the SRM and MCMTS, the changes to support them are simple. Adding servers, SRM interfaces, and possibly CMTS cores and the system is ready for the new technology or service. The combination of the SRM and MCMTS convert this HE architecture into the unified CMTS, a system for all services.