By Defu Li, Richard Grivalsky, Robert Gaydos, Ashok Ramasamy, Eric Stonfer, Gianni DiGregorio; Comcast Cable
The distributed access architecture (DAA) specification, or modular head-end architecture version 2 (MHAv2), was introduced to address cable headend space and power limitations. The traditional integrated CMTS (iCMTS) or cable converged access platform (CCAP) functions were split into two: the physical (PHY) function, and the core function. The remote PHY device (RPD) provides the PHY function, while the core functions consist of CMTS and CCAP operating on the MAC or IP layers.
The split allows the core functions to run on a cloud computing platform. The virtualized CMTS/CCAP (vCMTS/vCCAP) is a collection of software applications, built upon the microservice architecture pattern and targeted for cloud computing platforms. Comcast Cable has built its own private cloud in order to host these vCMTS software applications