Cable-Tec EXPO, Philadelphia, PA + San Jose, CA - May 12, 2003 - Cisco Systems, Inc. today unveiled market-leading innovations for its Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) routers for Multiple System Operators (MSOs) to capitalize on the full potential of the cable spectrum and the opportunity provided by advanced data and voice services. The new Cisco cable product offerings include the Broadband Processing Engine (BPE) for the uBR7246VXR, delivering increased performance and advanced Radio Frequency (RF) management, as well as innovative, integrated tools for sophisticated content, traffic and network management. Cable operators can now efficiently deploy tiered services while effectively managing peer-to-peer traffic, evolving the CMTS into the Intelligent Broadband Edge capable of delivering highly competitive service bundles to both the consumer and business marketplaces.
The new 2x8 Universal BPE future-proofs the more than 17,000 CMTS chassis in service today, by distributing and accelerating Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) processing. The resulting up to 10x performance improvement enables the efficient delivery of advanced data services such as Voice over IP (VoIP).
Cisco now extends the market-leading BPE technology, first introduced on the uBR10012 in December 2002, to the uBR7246VXR series.
"Our current deployment of the Cisco 5x20 BPE has allowed us to rapidly, reliably and cost-effectively improve our capacity and RF performance to meet the growing service requirements of our customers," said Toru Ohara, board director, Himawari Network, Inc. "By extending the capacity of our Cisco uBR10012s, the Cisco 5x20 BPE has provided a significant leap forward in scalability and has allowed us to offer high-performance, next-generation services to a larger number of customers."
The robust RF performance offered the by 2x8 Universal BPE can be attributed to a portfolio of cable-specific innovations. These innovations include: on-board spectrum management with advanced RF intelligence (e.g. look-ahead channel hopping); full implementation of the DOCSIS 2.0 ATDMA specification; the Cisco MAC chip delivering unmatched flexibility for channel assignment and efficiency; and capabilities delivering industry-leading noise cancellation.
In addition, Cisco is announcing a host of new IOS-based management tools for sophisticated content, traffic and network management. Load Balancing provides MSOs with a higher level of intelligence, giving them the ability to efficiently utilize available bandwidth by dynamically assigning modems to available channel capacity. Subscriber Traffic Management enables monitoring, analysis and traffic control on a per-subscriber basis. These new features complement functions such as Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR) and Netflow, which provide network-based application classification and destination based billing, respectively.
"The ability to add processing power and intelligence at the edge are critical foundational elements of the next-generation cable network and are critical to growing revenue and increasing free cash flow from a 'triple play' business model," said Ron Westfall, principal analyst, Broadband Infrastructure for Current Analysis of Sterling, VA. "These new capabilities are key for MSOs as they look to extend their subscriber base with new, higher quality services."
"MSOs worldwide are looking at how they can profitably and competitively expand their data services while managing the challenges caused by peer-to-peer traffic. Today's announcements are significant to the MSOs in that they can now evolve their installed based of Cisco CMTSs with the content and traffic management capabilities required for the deployment of tiered services," said Pankaj Patel, vice president and general manager, Cable Business Unit at Cisco Systems. "The ability to add both processing power and intelligence at the edge will help the MSOs further increase free cash flow from their IP services portfolio."
