Cable Forum - DOCSIS 3.1 Arris SB8200

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrimUpNorth (Post 35833835)

(Probably showing my ignorance here...)

Assuming both ends of the connection had 3.1 kit, how much of the current network could do 32x8,and would VM deploy that many?

How much further could VM go with the existing 3.0 kit?

In terms of capacity, would it be more cost effective to sweat the current assets to the limit or bite the bullet and upgrade to 3.1 as soon as possible to future proof things (not necessarily upping speeds, though we all know what would happen if the PR Dept got a sniff of say 500Mbps)

Cheers

Grim

Hi :)

The existing 24x8 kit, the SH3, would be fine for 500Mb+. If VM make use of 4 upstreams 500/50 is perfectly possible.

The parts of the network that can't support 32x8 with room to spare for DOCSIS 3.1 are being rebuilt to do so. The stuff in Middleton is ready to go now, as is all the other HFC new build.

As far as headend support for 3.1 goes, the Arris and new Cisco kit are both ready to go, albeit with new line cards, I think, for the Arris. The architecture that VM are moving the hubsites to, CCAP, offers tons of flexibility.

The major business case is probably to ask what the point is in VM going past DOCSIS 3.0 speeds. BT are hardly rolling out scintillating speeds to most, 300Mb for the foreseeable, and aren't in a hurry to do that.

Even the 500Mb that BT are 'eventually' rolling out, and we're talking about 2020 or later on current plans, VM can be exceeded with the Superhub 3.

---------- Post added at 12:04 ---------- Previous post was at 12:01 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by ianch99 (Post 35833852)

To move to 3.1, is it just the headend and local equipment (modem) that has to change or are there infrastructure changes as well e.g. fibre node sites, street cabs, etc.

You can put 3.1 down existing networks as long as they have the RF bandwidth free.

To make best use of it you will be wanting to do what VM are doing and rebuild the networks to 1.2GHz.

3.1 can slot into existing networks, even capacity limited ones, without problems though. It was conceived to do that, and it's just RF as far as the kit in cabinets goes.