By Asaf Matatyaou, Harmonic Inc.
The promise and potential of virtualizing a cable hub has been discussed over the past few years. While the opportunities are limitless, there must be a starting point and manageable steps for operators inmigrating to virtualization.
This paper will focus on translating the theory of virtualization into real-world experiences and recommendations based on deployment. Different aspects of a cable hub will be evaluated for virtualization, including using cloud for telemetry and monitoring, configuration and orchestration, operations and back-office elements, as well as a software-based CCAP solution based on a virtual CMTS (vCMTS) implementation. Virtualization implementation approaches will be compared, such as containerization and virtual machines (VM) for different applications and services. In addition to operationalization considerations, support for maintaining legacy services, such as traditional broadcast video, VOD and out-of-band, as well as existing and future IP services will be considered in the transition to a virtual cable hub.