By Craig Coogan, CommScope, Inc.; Jamie Brown, Shaw Communications, Inc.; Zoran Maricevic, Ph. D., CommScope, Inc.
The paper will present a unique cross-industry view of a cable operator who is actively deploying high split as well as a vendor who is providing most of the elements to enable this type of migration. The paper will explore the considerations for three of the most popular HFC access architectures today, including Integrated CCAP (I-CCAP) as a Centralized Access Architecture (CAA) as well as the two leading Distributed Access Architectures (DAAs): Remote PHY (R-PHY) and Remote MACPHY (R-MACPHY). There is value in deploying high split in all three of these architectures, and the technology is available today. The paper will explore the main issues which must be addressed in preparation for deployment, as well as key lessons learned from both the preparations and deployments. This paper will position high split as an important steppingstone to DOCSIS 4.0 and explore an HFC network’s evolution through this lens.