Hello Techplayer,
Re: RiverDelta's new cmts, in comparison to Cisco's
You ask,
"I had posted this on the CSCO thread yesterday in an attempt to draw a comparison to existing CSCO efforts for the cable industry. What is your opinion?"
I don't know what Cisco products to compare this to. What is CSCO doing in pursuit of similar goals? I know that they have numerous initiatives with individual cable operators and MSOs, both here and in Canada, but I don't know of a singular platform definition that they have come up with (except their core products, come to think of it, being their routers) "specifically for multiple ISP access to MSO platforms and subscriber locations" to compare to what RiverDelta or any of the other startups in the article have contrived.
It does cross my mind, however, that the Cisco label might very well be underneath some of those which were mentioned in the article, but I don't know that for sure.
I can draw some initial inferences, but there's not enough in the article to go on to draw a sound opinion. What the article contains is a number of unsubstantiated claims, after all, which we can only accept for their face value.
Carrier class? Does this mean that the unit meets Belcore/NEBS* requirements, and what are the tests that were conducted that led to the "five nines" claim? How does one extrapolate a five nines rating from the chaos of the Internet while keeping a straight face?
[[wrt *, late edit: I see they are NEBS compliant.. which is an amazing feat in itself given their limited time in business]]
* NEBS stands for Network Element-Building Systems, which contains the criteria for various grades of central office equipment certification.
Not very long ago, "carrier class router" would have been an oxymoron. What's a carrier class router, what makes one such? Given the blurring that's taken place among all service providers, I'd have to say that the answer to this question is, Marketecture.
But getting down to the more fundamental issues, I wonder how each of these startups proposes to allow every ISP to take control of DOCSIS end user cablemodem features which are crucial to many of the future attributes that will be associated with integrated services.
There are some general areas of concern that I have where issues need to be spelled out more clearly. Streaming video is relatively simple in comparison to video conferencing, for example. While QoS is a matter between the ISPs and the MSO, what does this portend for end users, if their ISP's ration of bandwidth runs out and the end user cannot access a service satisfactorily? The model still condones, never mind condones, it actually further engenders.. a minimalist attitude towards bandwidth, and it doesn't have to be that way.
Begin rantette: Here is an example where fortunes will be spend on r and d, and were cable operators will in turn spend additional fortunes in engineering and implementation, in order to preserve a model which restricts bandwidth due to the architectural inertia of the cartel. End mini-rantette.
Where do the cable operator's maintenance responsibilities end in a multi-ISP cablemodem model, and where do the ISPs' begin? I don't have much of a clue on this, admittedly, but I'm sure such issues will get worked out. Likewise, security options, device- and IP- address administration, gateway functions for voice and mm, etc. that the cable operator may choose to use at the DOCSIS level could easily conflict with controls in related areas which a remotely situated ISP may choose to employ at Layer 3, depending on what flavor of integrated services framework the ISP or ICP elects to employ.
I'm not saying that these issues will become show stoppers (where there is a will, the principals will fake their way through it and let evolution take its own course, damn the torpedos) or that they will occur in every case, but these issues could (probably are already) areas of contention, in fact we already know that they are. For these are among the issues that all of the hullabaloo has been about, all along.
I'm not a CMTS expert, btw, and if truth were to be told entirely, I'm not too keen on the horizon prospects for many of the existing or announced CMTS platforms, leastwise the ones that I've seen, since none of them have yet to demonstrate any level of posturing for next generation, FTTH design.
Then again, the name "cable modem termination system" would need to be changed in an all fiber FTTH setting, wouldn't it? And some framework for operating in an all digital environment would need to be agreed to.
It would simply be a part of the head end switch-router complex, I suppose, if digital baseband were to be used in lieu of, or as a replacement for, the current flavor of analog Radio Frequency modulation techniques which have been used to support cable tv delivery for roughly a half century.
It would be good to hear from some of the real experts who lurk and sometimes post here, on this topic.
FAC |
