US Cable Support > Comcast HSI > Dream Modem - 24x8

reply to SHoTTa35

Re: Dream Modem - 24x8

An article on the Light Reading Cable site today, about new CMTS software releases to support the bonding of large number of channels by these upcoming, higher-speed modems:

Cable Access Goes for Bigger Broadband
By Jeff Baumgartner, Light Reading Cable - September 28, 2012
»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable

i wonder if there is a point to support more than 8 channels since Comcast will probably deploy fiber rather than push through the 300 mb/s barrier with coax.

The Comcast and fiber thing won't last. It was done as a marketing thing for now. The high install price and contract should have given that away.

99% of people can't qualify for it probably and COAX can handle much more bandwidth still. (currently is limited by the frequency range being used).

The future is all TV will go to IP and at that point the entire frequency range on COAX can be dedicated for Internet and when someone is not watching TV that idle bandwidth will be able to feed someone elses Internet or provide more bandwidth.

Works the same way hosting companies do now. They oversell because they know not 100% of customers use 100% resources.

Fiber to the home may be the future but in the US it seems most are not willing to make the change when they can keep pushing existing tech.

Phone companies will have the hard time, cable not as bad as they can do more channel bonding to gain the speed.

reply to JigglyWiggly
Well, as the new DOCSIS 3.0 chipsets can support the bonding of up to 24 downstream channels, the CMTS vendors need to be able to support that too.

Also, as was stated in that Light Reading Cable article (»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable ):

And, according to this statement from Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas, it appears that Comcast will use the fiber-based approach as a placeholder for very high-capacity residential broadband services until it makes business sense for the MSO to make significant changes to its Docsis platform:

"We've demonstrated our Docsis 3.0 infrastructure, which we currently deliver to more than 50 million homes, is capable of delivering 1 Gbps or more. While demand for faster speeds continues to grow, demand for ultrafast speed tiers (of more than 200 Mbps) is still emerging. In the near-term, until there is clear demand to modify the capacity of our existing Docsis infrastructure, we can provide our new residential Extreme 305 service by leveraging the fiber already in our network and our Metro-E product."

reply to AnonMan
And possibly, maybe sometime in late 2014, we may see a new series of modems being released that incorporate the new "DOCSIS 3.1" enhancements: »DOCSIS 3.1 spec to be discussed at Cable-Tec Expo

EDIT: Also this article on the Multichannel News site today:

CableLabs Moves Ahead On DOCSIS 3.1
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - October 4, 2012
»www.multichannel.com/news-articl···1/139611

EDIT2: The SCTE press release about this session: »www.scte.org/cablelabs%c2%ae_sct···o%c2%ae/

And to support these future "dream" modems, ARRIS will be showing off their new, CCAP-capable, model E6000 CMTS at this week's Cable-Tec Expo in Orlando:

Arris Unleashes a Monster CMTS
By Jeff Baumgartner, Light Reading Cable - October 15, 2012
»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable

From the article:

Arris says the decision to use the E6000 as a massively dense Docsis CMTS represents a "middle step" that addresses the near-term needs of cable operators as they continue to increase downstream capacities and bump the amount of bandwidth per subscriber by shrinking service groups.

Running the E6000 in CMTS mode will come in particularly handy when cable operators start to bond as many as 16 downstream channels, says Todd Kessler, the VP of product management for Arris's CMTS platform.

ARRIS will will be displaying their new Intel Puma 6 (»newsroom.intel.com/community/int···ble-show) based gateways at this week's Cable-Tec Expo.

From today's Light Reading Cable's cable news round-up (»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable ):

Arris Group Inc. is the latest cable modem vendor to introduce Docsis 3.0-based gateways that take advantage of the full capabilities of the Puma6, a chipset from Intel Corp. that can bond up to 24 downstream channels and produce speed bursts close to 1 Gbit/s. Arris's new line of gateways also will be outfitted with MaxLinear Corp. tuners and video-optimized Wi-Fi chips from Celeno Communications.

Arris's latest lineup, which will be on display at this week's Cable-Tec Expo in Orlando, includes two gateways that bond 24 downstreams and eight upstreams, and five models that use the Puma6's 16x4 configuration.

Other vendors are sure to follow with 24x8 D3 gear, but Hitron Technologies Inc. was the first to announce a model, and already has plans to submit its new gateway for CableLabs certification next month.

An article about the new ARRIS gateways also on the Multichannel News site today:

Cable-Tec Expo: Arris Pushes DOCSIS Gateways Near 1-Gig Mark
Vendor to Show Off Seven Wi-Fi-Enabled Models With 16- and 24-Channel Bonding
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - October 16, 2012
»www.multichannel.com/broadband/c···k/139834

reply to telcodad
This morning's session at the CTAM conference provided a bit of a sneak peek at the developing DOCSIS 3.1 specs:

Docsis 3.1 to Be Smarter, Faster & Cheaper
By Jeff Baumgartner, Light Reading Cable - October 16, 2012
»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable

How much cheaper? I mean, the extreme tiers now are outrageous, what does 3.1 mean, a little less outrageous?

reply to telcodad
Looks like Comcast will be deploying those new ARRIS E6000 CMTSs:

Comcast Cheers Arris CCAP Plan
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - October 16, 2012
»www.multichannel.com/blogs/bit-r···cap-plan

CommScope is also showing-off their new CCAP-capable CMTS models at the Cable-Tec Expo:

Cable-Tec Expo: CommScope Tips CCAP Hand
Vendor Says High-Density Edge QAM Platform Beats Spec Targets
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - October 17, 2012
»www.multichannel.com/broadband/c···d/139855

reply to RR Conductor

And 3.1 is also about the almighty dollar as broadband usage continues to climb. Getting costs down "is a key part of Docsis 3.1," said Cox Communications Inc. EVP and CTO Kevin Hart.

Utilizing one of those [200MHz-wide] blocks would enable cable to produce a data path in the neighborhood of 1Gbit/s. Cable [companies could] later bond together 200MHz-wide channels together to create multi-gigabit capacities and give cable the ability to keep up with fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) speeds without having to pull fiber all the way to the home.

reply to telcodad
FYI -Some early reports on that DOCSIS 3.1 session today at the Cable-Tec Expo:

Cable-Tec Expo: DOCSIS 3.1 to Blaze Trail Toward 10 Gig Speeds
CableLabs: Spec Won’t Require Plant Upgrades, Will Be Backward-Compatible With 3.0
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - October 18, 2012
»www.multichannel.com/cable-opera···s/139883

and:

Diving Into Docsis 3.1
By Jeff Baumgartner, Light Reading Cable - October 18, 2012
»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable

EDIT: And also:

Cable-Tec Expo: SCTE Forms Working Group for DOCSIS 3.1
Motorola Technical Fellow Jack Moran Named Chair
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - October 18, 2012
»www.multichannel.com/broadband/c···1/139880

EDIT 2: And now:

Docsis 3.1 Targets 10-Gig Downstream
By Jeff Baumgartner, Light Reading Cable - October 18, 2012
»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable

Today's news items on the new DOCSIS 3.1 spec:

Cable ops reveal game plan for DOCSIS 3.1
With FTTH threat diminished, MSOs can wring more from HFC
By Jim Barthold, FierceIPTV - October 19, 2012
»www.fierceiptv.com/story/cable-o···12-10-19

and:

DOCSIS 3.1: Engineers finding a way to continue using HFC
Improved technology, gateway device promise big bandwidth to home
By Jim Barthold, FierceIPTV - October 19, 2012
»www.fierceiptv.com/story/docsis-···12-10-19

Well, they did say things will move faster with DOCSIS 3.1 than with 3.0:

Docsis 3.1 Set for a Spring Fling
By Jeff Baumgartner, Light Reading Cable - October 29, 2012
»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable

From the article:

The first iteration of hardware specs for Docsis 3.1 could emerge as soon as next March or April to help cable modem and cable modem termination system (CMTS) vendors get a jump on product development for the new, speedier CableLabs platform, multiple industry sources tell Light Reading Cable.
:
According to the information presented by CableLabs at this month's Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Cable-Tec Expo in Orlando, the plan is to have the Docsis 3.1 specs "substantially complete in 2013," setting the stage for the first wave of Docsis 3.1 products to appear sometime in 2014.

This item »www.lightreading.com/blog.asp?bl···d=227176 on the Light Reading Cable site concisely lists the main areas in which DOCSIS 3.1 signaling will be significantly different from earlier versions:

•Using a higher order of modulation, for greater spectral efficiency, could conceivably add at least 25 percent more capacity and up to 50 percent more over the same HFC network. Note that the proposed DVB-C2 specification in Europe has been tested to support 4096 QAM downstream within existing cable networks.

•A new modulation format, Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM), that takes efficiency and robustness to new levels. OFDM enables sub-carriers to be squeezed directly against one another, eliminating the need to use valuable RF spectrum as guard bands. At the same time, the longer symbol durations of the sub-carriers make OFDM more capable of dealing with impulse and burst noise than are SC-QAM guard bands.

•The use of Low Density [Parity] Check (LDPC) coding to improve noise immunity by several dB over current Reed-Solomon encoding at similar channel efficiency, or to provide greater channel efficiency at the same MER (modulation error ratio).

An article about technology developed by Javelin (f/k/a Vyyo), that can help cable companies extend their operations above the current 1GHz limit, and enable new DOCSIS 3.1 features:

Ex-Moto Execs Hope to Revive Javelin
By Jeff Baumgartner, Light Reading Cable - December 3, 2012
»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable

reply to telcodad
Some more CCAP news today:

Cisco Extends Bridge to CCAP
By Jeff Baumgartner, Light Reading Cable - December 12, 2012
»www.lightreading.com/document.as···lr_cable

On Wednesday, the company launched two capacity-boosting cards -- the Performance Routing Engine (PRE5) and the 3-Gigabit Shared Port Adapter (3GSPA) -- made to snap into its widely deployed flagship CMTS, the uBR10K. They'll act as an intermediate step toward CCAP, an architecture meant to help cable unify all services, including video, under IP.
:
Cisco says trials are planned with "several major" cable operators in the U.S. and abroad starting in the first quarter of 2013. Cisco didn't name them, but Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc., two of Cisco's key customers, are expected to be among the first MSOs to test and deploy CCAP.

Comcast has already issued a CCAP request for proposal (RFP) and has said it will begin some initial deployments this year. More details about that could emerge today at noon E.T. during a Light Reading Cable webinar sponsored by Cisco that will feature John Mattson, Cisco's senior director of strategic marketing, and Jorge Salinger, Comcast's VP of access architecture.