By Bhanu Krishnamurthy & Gregory Medders, Comcast
For more than two decades, cable internet has provided the means to access the internet for hundreds of millions of people. The traditional cable modem termination system (CMTS) has played a key role in facilitating this access. The advent of cloud computing and containerization has caused a shift in access network solutions, with proposals to replace the traditional “integrated” CMTS (iCMTS) with a virtual CMTS (vCMTS), where the hardware-based iCMTS is replaced with an cloud native architecture that delivers the same functionality. By decoupling the CMTS implementation from the underlying hardware, vCMTS was proposed as a way of providing a modern, more flexible alternative to traditional models. For example, when deployed in a distributed access architecture, where the digital nodes can be placed closer to the homes they serve instead of in the headend, vCMTS can provide improved service with significantly increased density while also reducing headend infrastructure costs.