By Rajiv Asati & Alon Bernstein, Cisco Systems
The mobile industry has popularized and has already started embracing the concept of Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC). Clearly, the same concept can be applied to cable networks to benefit wide range of use-cases, especially the ones that are latency or bandwidth sensitive. This concept drives placing time sensitive applications e.g. IoT and/or bandwidth hungry applications e.g. CDN/cache at the network edge or Hub sites, closer to the customer. There is a tremendous opportunity for Cable MSOs in transforming their Hub sites into Next Gen Application-Centric Cloud sites.
This paper defines the notion of Cable Edge Compute (CEC) along with ‘Edge POD’ and explores how it could be organized to serve a range of use-cases (e.g. what functions could be placed). The paper outlines the Architectural building blocks (suitable for CEC), their key attributes and captures unique opportunities, challenges and recommendations for Cable Operators.