By Todd Musat, Shaw Communications Inc.; Chuck Carroll, Lew Rakowsky & Rene Spee, Saras Energy Consulting
As bandwidth capacity continues to grow for existing hybrid fibre coax (HFC), so does the flexibility to utilize new technologies within HFC networks. Establishing practices which support new technology platforms, while fully employing the large investment in the HFC plant is important. As the coaxial cable is capable for shorter distances of carrying high bit rate traffic, MSOs generally implement a fiber deeper approach, where node splits allow fiber penetration further into the network, and closer to the customer. Often, an N+0 approach is considered, which has no active devices on the "last mile" coax between the optical node and the customer premises. However, cost considerations often require compromises, and in many cases, an N+1 (one amplifier between node and customer) or even N+2 approach is implemented — still a vast improvement over the historical N+4 or higher architectures.