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Implementation tailored to your businessCisco services can help you evolve your cable access network to support new customer experiences, simpler and less expensive operations, faster time to market, and more profitable growth. To help you achieve your specific business goals, we deliver innovative solutions, unmatched expertise, and smart service capabilities using a collaborative partner approach.

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OverviewToday, cable operators effectively maintain separate overlay networks to deliver multiple services: linear video, Video-on-Demand (VoD), IP traffic, and more. Each service requires dedicated equipment, management, and operational expertise. Operations are also now split between applications running in a data center and traditional services that rely on intelligence distributed out to legacy equipment. Some cable operators even find themselves managing multiple access networks (HFC, DSL, PON, wireless) at the same time. The result is an overly complex network environment.

These networks are expensive to operate and require time-consuming, manual-intensive processes and substantial operational overhead. OpEx is spiking for power, cooling, and maintenance. And with the constant demand for faster services, costs will continue to grow.

These networks are also difficult to manage, change, or scale. Existing services depend on diverse physical networks, which makes managing, changing, or scaling them an extremely complex task. Service updates and new service roll-outs are slow. Accommodating new business models (managed Wi-Fi, enterprise SD-WAN connectivity, mobile traffic backhaul) can be an unwieldy project. And opportunities to generate revenues in new ways come to market too late or not at all.

Evolve Your Cable Access Network to Unlock Business Transformation

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Solution overviewCisco public

Cable access network evolutionCisco’s comprehensive migration path can help you put in place a long-term, scalable network foundation to support bandwidth growth and multigigabit speeds far into the future. Our solution can push standardization, flexibility, and automation farther out into the cable network. You can evolve at your pace, taking pragmatic steps to evolve your access network today and lay a foundation for the programmable, all-IP, cloud-powered cable networks of tomorrow.

Cisco’s cable access evolution solution incorporates four primary technology areas:

Physical infrastructure

• The Cisco cBR-8 is our next-generation evolved CCAP that converges all broadcast and narrowcast services into a single platform. It can deliver 10 times the bandwidth of legacy CMTS platforms. Built from the ground up for DOCSIS 3.1, it can integrate into your network for the next decade and longer without hardware overhauls.

• Cisco Remote PHY solutions boost capacity and lower costs by centralizing CCAP core functions, while distributing CMTS physical-layer QAM and ODFM modulation functions out closer to subscribers. There are two basic options:

- Remote PHY shelf: Extends cBR-8 features and capacity from larger hubs to smaller sites.

This allows you to remove full-featured CMTS platforms from smaller hubs, freeing up rack space and reducing power and cooling costs. At the same time, you can scale the number of service groups those smaller sites can support well beyond existing CMTS capacity.

- Remote PHY node: Enables the evolution to a fiber-deep architecture by extending digital fiber out closer to subscribers. With Remote PHY node, you replace analog HFC fiber nodes in the last mile with Remote PHY nodes connected to next-generation CMTS platforms at hub sites. Now you can eliminate the analog fiber network connecting hubs to nodes, replacing it with a less-expensive, higher-quality 10-Gbps or 100-Gbps Ethernet network.

Cloud-Native CMTS (cCMTS)

• With Remote PHY in place, your hub sites are much simpler. With Cisco’s cCMTS, you can virtualize CMTS functions and run them from a centralized or distributed data center alongside other virtualized services. The Cisco solution is designed to operate in blended environments, where operators seamlessly mix and match physical and virtual CMTS solutions in different parts of the network. With Cisco, you can bring web-scale reliability, elasticity, scalability, and feature velocity to the cable access network with cCMTS capabilities.

How can cable operators compete and grow?To break the cycle of proliferating bandwidth demand and declining revenues, cable operators need to change their business economics. Services need to come to market more quickly using an efficient network. The underlying technical changes require abstracting away complexity, automating previously manual processes, and delivering services to customers using fewer resources.

This kind of transformation requires consolidating access networks into a single, standards-based end-to-end IP framework, which supports the delivery of any service. This converged infrastructure would support the provisioning and scaling of different types of services all over the same network and free higher-level services from their traditional cable network ties to the complex underlying infrastructures.

Underlying access network resources would need to be virtualized so they can be elastically scaled and positioned where they are needed. Physical and virtual devices would need to become programmable network elements. And the overarching management framework would need to monitor network health proactively and provision new services and devices automatically, in seconds.

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Solution overviewCisco public

Network abstraction

• Cisco provides industry-leading, standards-based network virtualization capabilities to free services from infrastructure dependencies. Using open standards and interfaces, services and applications can be designed at a high level and provisioned the same way: independently of the devices or last-mile networks that will deliver them. Services that once were tied to entirely separate infrastructures—CMTS, metro Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and others—are now just different applications running on the same unified network. The entire heterogeneous environment—physical and virtual devices, equipment from multiple vendors—can be addressed through a single orchestration layer that abstracts away all of the underlying complexity. Network function virtualization and Ssoftware-Defined Networking (SDN) can be used to make the access network more automated, resilient, and elastically scalable. Elements of the access network that once required complex dedicated infrastructures become interchangeable cloud resources, repositioned and scaled up and down as business needs dictate.

Management and automation

• Cisco tools give cable operators end-to-end visibility and proactive maintenance capabilities for their networks. You can centrally monitor the health, utilization, and capacity of your network from one place and collect real-time inventory and telemetry information from the entire infrastructure using open-source SDN. New applications that draw on Cisco network abstraction and orchestration capabilities can be used automate the configuration of thousands of Remote PHY devices across your access network and drive down the time and costs of Remote PHY migration.

With Cisco’s cable evolution path, the access changes you make today lay the foundation for delivering a range of new consumer and business services over a network that’s all-digital, all-IP, end to end. Whether providing business WAN connectivity, managed Wi-Fi, mobile backhaul, or other new revenue-generating services, you can provision everything over the same IP infrastructure. And, when you partner with Cisco, your network foundation is ready for cable innovations of the future, including full-duplex DOCSIS, segment routing, and more.

Figure 1. Cisco cBR-8 platform

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Solution overviewCisco public

Benefits• Designed from the ground up to support

DOCSIS 3.1, the Cisco® cBR-8 Converged Broadband Router supports multigigabit broadband services at a much lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) than Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) solutions built on legacy DOCSIS 3.0 designs.

• Cisco Remote PHY solutions (Remote PHY shelf and Remote PHY node) boost capacity and lower costs. CCAP core functions can be easily centralized, and CMTS physical-layer Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) and ODFM functions can be placed closer to subscribers.

• The Cisco Cloud-Native CMTS (cCMTS) solution lets you mix and match physical and virtual CMTS solutions in different parts of the network, bringing web-scale reliability,

elasticity, and feature velocity to the cable access network.

• Industry-leading, standards-based network virtualization capabilities free services from infrastructure dependencies. Design services and applications at a high level and provision them in the same way: independently of the devices or last-mile networks that will deliver them.

• Easily monitor the health, utilization, and capacity of your network and efficiently collect real-time inventory and telemetry information from across the cable plant. Automate the configuration of thousands of Remote PHY devices across your network and drive down the time and costs of Remote PHY migration using Cisco’s abstraction and orchestration technology.

Cisco innovation: Remote PHYWith so much buzz in the marketplace around Remote PHY, it’s easy to forget how it came about in the first place. But we remember, because the person who invented it, John T. Chapman, is the chief technology officer of our Cable Business Unit.

Chapman played a central role in the creation and ongoing development of the DOCSIS standard and invented the primary technologies that are the foundation for DOCSIS 3.0 and DOCSIS 3.1. He was inducted into the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Hall of Fame for this work. And the Remote PHY architecture that’s now standardized by CableLabs, as well as the open-source Remote PHY Software program, were his creations.

It’s no stretch to say that the reason why standardized Remote PHY solutions are now possible is largely due to Chapman’s work. His commitment to open-source development and industry standards continues to drive Cisco’s efforts to fuel cable industry innovation.

© 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Solution overviewCisco public

Figure 2. Cisco cable access solution

MetroE & WDMBackbone

Data Center

Fiber nodeCoax

Home/Offices

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DigitalFiber

Small HubRemote PHY Shelf

CCAP

HubFDX Tap

Small HubRemote PHY Shelf

vCCAPCore

Converge Your Cable Access with the CCAP

Achieve higher capacity and reduce operational and capital expenses by integrating the functions of CMTS, QAM, and video with the Cisco cBR-8 to enable DOCSIS 3.1 and begin the evolution to NFV and SDN.

Build the Foundation for Automation & Virtualization Deploy Remote PHY (Remote PHY shelves & Remote PHY nodes) throughout your infrastructure for distributing DOCSIS PHY and transform your analog fiber into digital fiber.

Go Cloud NativeTransform your head-ends with a data center centric architecture. Enable new capabilities such as elastic capacity, high availability and cost advantages with services no longer being tied to dedicated hardware resources and physical locations.

The Future -- Infinite Broadband

Fully utilize the capacity of HFC. Enable symmetrical services with full duplex DOCSIS, automated provisioning, and economical capacity growth.

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Cisco Infinite Broadband SolutionSpeedDeliver gigabit and multigigabit speeds to compete with any pure fiber competitor and drive new capacity and experiences over existing HFC access networks.

SimplicityAbstract away the complexities of siloed physical and virtual infrastructures and operate all services and infrastructures in the same way, more easily, and at a much lower cost.

FlexibilityIntroduce new revenue-generating services and expand into new markets efficiently across a flat, all-IP access network that connects every household and business customer.

© 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Solution overviewCisco public

The Cisco advantageCisco’s cable access solution provides cable operators with a platform for business transformation. The most scalable CMTS platform in the industry, it enables multigigabit broadband services at a much lower TCO. Remote PHY technology allows you to delivers fiber-level capacity and service tiers, without the radical physical replacement of your existing HFC plant. And new access technologies support a fully virtualized, orchestrated, and cloud-scale operating model. Together, these products and technologies provide the cloud-scale flexibility and economics you need to differentiate and grow your business, allowing you to deliver any service, anywhere, quickly and automatically.

Cisco CapitalCisco Capital® can help you acquire the technology you need to achieve your objectives and stay competitive. We can help you reduce CapEx. Accelerate your growth. Optimize your investment dollars and ROI. Cisco Capital financing gives you flexibility in acquiring hardware, software, services, and complementary third-party equipment. And there’s just one predictable payment. Cisco Capital is available in more than 100 countries. Learn more.

Take the next stepAre you ready to drive down network complexity and reduce your operating costs? Find out how Cisco’s cable access evolution strategy can transform your business. To learn more, contact your Cisco account representative or visit https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/service-provider/cable-access-solutions/index.html.

AutomationDesign innovative new services and experiences without worrying about dependencies on the underlying infrastructure. Provision services as virtualized, elastically scalable applications that can be automatically reconfigured and repositioned spontaneously in response to changing business and customer demands.

StandardizationCisco is committed to open APIs, open standards, and open-source collaboration to preserve full flexibility and introduce new multivendor innovations in the future.

© 2017 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: https://www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R) C22-739303-00 07/17