‘Infinite Broadband’ Remote PHY from Cisco
May 30, 2017
Colin Mann @ ANGA COM
Noting that today’s cable hybrid fibre coax (HFC) plant has grown from primarily a residential video network to a wireline aggregation network for all types of access markets, including small-medium businesses, Wi-Fi and LTE backhaul, and IoT and M2M, and that cable operators are looking to meet the broadband needs of their residential and small business customers including support for new applications like OTT streaming video and 5G mobile, Cisco has confirmed the availability of its ‘Infinite Broadband’ Remote PHY solution (RPHY) for Cable Access networks.
Remote PHY and DOCSIS 3.1, two CableLabs standards, work together to expand capacity of the cable HFC plants. Building on the Cisco cBR-8 converged broadband router and GS7000 node platforms, RPHY allows for a reduction of power, cooling and hub site sizing, providing significant total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits. It is the foundation for Cisco’s virtualisation and Full Duplex DOCSIS strategy.
Cisco’s RPHY solution is based on open, standardised software that was contributed to Cable Labs OpenRPD forum in 2016. This open source initiative creates an eco-system of Remote PHY device (RPD) vendors allowing operators to select an RPD vendor who best meets their needs, without being locked into a single vendor’s proprietary solution.
RPHY has been shipping since April 2017 with deployments at a number of customers.
Cisco is also planning to provide for interop testing between these OpenRPD vendors using a third-party testing facility. Among the companies planning to participate in the interoperability test are Teleste and Kathrein.
Also available is Cisco’s RPHY deployment automation software based on model-driven network configuration protocol (NETCONF) and YANG technology. Cisco’s cable automation software ensures that the new Remote PHY devices can be easily and automatically provisioned, resulting in significant savings over existing manual provisioning solutions.
“Evolving our access network is part of our long-term strategy to build the next generation of cable access converged networks based on open standards,” said Colin Buechner, managing director, Access Network, Liberty Global plc. “Remote PHY will allow Liberty Global to continue providing the best customer experience, based on the highest bandwidth, cutting-edge technology and interoperable eco-system.”
“We’ve seen huge success with our cBR-8 platform after just two years,” said Sean Welch, vice president and general manager, Service Provider Infrastructure Group, Cisco. “R-PHY is the next step in the evolution to an all-IP network that is faster, more scalable, and simpler to operate. R-PHY provides a foundation for further network evolution, such as Infinite DOCSIS and Cloud Native technologies, allowing our customers to reduce the total cost of ownership, while keeping their cable networks competitive for the future.”