By Nasir Ansari, Rogers Communications Inc.; Yassar Abbas, Rogers Communications Inc.
Today’s CCAP/CMTS Platforms’ have been continuously improved over time. Platform redundancy has also been added to increase resiliency. However, all connected Subscribers “home in” to a single Physical location. This paper discusses Containerization and Services Lifecycle Management Models, Architecture and lessons learnt from early field trials of Virtual CCAP Technology and Production Deployments of Wireless Core Services to accomplish distribution of (Network) Functions to multiple Physical locations.
Next Generation Technology Platforms (for both Wireline and Wireless Cores) are evolving. Today’s Monolithic Platforms are being replaced by Distributed Services/Functions running on Docker/Containers. This Journey can be broken up into phases based on Platform and/or Operator readiness.
Currently most implementations use Containers running on “Bare Metal”. Implementation Options include Separation of Services’ Controller and Service Instantiation or running everything on the same “Cluster”. Services/Functions could be amalgamated or broken out into multiple Micro-Services. There could be an instance for each function or multiple instances. There are Configuration, Operational, LoadBalancing and Failover considerations for each of the Models.
This paper will show how Distribution of Access Network Gateway Functions can further improve Service Delivery, Resiliency, Management and Operations.