By Li Zhang, Xin Yang, and Lifan Xu, Huawei Technologies Co.,Ltd.
Virtualized CCAP was thought as the best cable access architecture in the future, but now the industry hesitates in what parts of the CCAP functionality should be moved to the cloud and what parts should be kept in the physical hardware. It is not only related with technical feasibility of what can be done by software, but also economic consideration.
We all agree on moving the CCAP configuration and subscribe management modules to the cloud, and remaining the DOCSIS PHY in the physical hardware. But as to the DOCSIS MAC, it is not easy to make that kind of decision because the MAC is part of hardware like Encryption and Framer, and part of software like scheduling.
This paper will look deep into each functionality module of the DOCSIS MAC including data plane, control plane and management plane, then give an analysis of virtualized DOCSIS MAC base on the evaluation of generic computing resource spent by each MAC module.