Comcast moves forward with DOCSIS 4.0

Comcast will begin rolling out DOCSIS 4.0 to select neighborhoods in Colorado Springs next week and to areas of Atlanta and Philadelphia before the end of the year.

Comcast’s path to DOCSIS 4.0 leverages “Full Duplex” technology which uses the same network spectrum to  increase upstream speeds without sacrificing downstream speeds.

Symmetrical 10 Gbps service based on fiber-to-the-home technology is already available in all of Comcast’s markets, and as part of its continued network evolution and the introduction of DOCSIS 4.0, multi-gig symmetrical speeds are rolling out.

New and existing residential customers connected via DOCSIS 4.0 will have access to Comcast’s newly introduced next-generation X-Class Internet portfolio. X-Class speed tiers include X-300 Mbps, X-500 Mbps, X-1 Gbps and X-2 Gbps upload and download speeds and low lag for the ultimate live sports streaming experience on Peacock, smooth connections on work calls, and ultra-responsive gaming​.

“The ubiquity of our network, which is already accessible to tens of millions of homes, provides us with an incredible opportunity to bring multi-gigabit upload and download speeds to communities across the country with the scale and efficiency that no other provider can replicate,” said Dave Watson, President & CEO, Comcast Cable. “Our connectivity experience, powered by the Xfinity 10G Network, will allow us to deliver speeds up to 10 Gbps over our traditional network to virtually all our customers, plus even better reliability, lower latency, and the best in-home WiFi coverage. We’re entering the next phase of this industry leadership with DOCSIS 4.0 technology to introduce X-Class Internet products that will revolutionize the way our customers get online today and many years into the future.”

“The enhancements that we have been making to our network over the past few years have been foundational to creating an award-winning network architecture that is fully virtualized and capable of delivering these exciting capabilities to our customers,” said Elad Nafshi, Chief Network Officer, Comcast Cable. “This is an awesome achievement and I’m incredibly proud of the team of brilliant technologists here at Comcast who have worked relentlessly to make DOCSIS 4.0 a reality ahead of schedule.”

• In April 2021, Comcast conducted the first-ever live test of full duplex DOCSIS and later that year tested the world’s first 10G connection all the way from the network to a modem. 
• In 2022, Comcast conducted a world-first live trial and connected a business location in the Philadelphia region to its live network including a DOCSIS 4.0-enabled 10G node and multiple cable modems. 
• In February 2023, the company marked another major milestone in the nation’s largest and fastest multi-gig deployment by announcing its latest Xfinity 10G Network upgrade launched to 10 million homes and businesses.

https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-multi-gig-symmetrical-speeds-world-first-docsis-4-deployment

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Preview of OCP Summit 2023

OCP Summit 2023 in San Jose will showcase the latest innovations in data center technology.

Cliff Grossner, VP Market Intelligence and Innovation from Open Compute Project, provides a preview:

- Discover the latest AI-related innovations and information, as OCP continues to focus on creating sustainable, large-scale computational infrastructures specifically tuned for AI.

- Learn about the critical projects underway, including those exploring optical networking for scalable AI clusters, chiplets for specialized computation, and strategies to create large memory pools to overcome the AI memory wall.

- Get a glimpse of the future with discussions on new cooling methods for computational infrastructures, the evolution of the open chiplet economy, and preparations for the emerging quantum opportunity.

If you can't make it to the event in person, don't worry - all sessions will be recorded and available post-summit.

https://youtu.be/URi6LnBDIdU

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MEF: Industry Pivot to NaaS

MEF has just published a Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) Industry Blueprint designed to help service providers develop, market, and deliver the next generation of NaaS offerings. Does this represent the biggest challenge for MEF so far? Is it a pivot point for the industry?

Kevin Vachon, COO from MEF, explains:

- The recent MEF's Global NaaS event marked a pivotal point for the industry, with MEF going big with NaaS. The event brought together various industry players to discuss the future of NaaS, providing a baseline for the industry's current state and future plans.

- MEF's value proposition lies in its years of building standards for services, delivering these to the industry, and fostering collaboration. MEF has evolved into a platform that brings the industry together to use these standards, with a changing ecosystem that now includes different players like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and blockchain companies.

- MEF has announced an Enterprise Leadership Council to bring a cross-section of the Enterprise Community to the table. This is part of a broader program to bring Enterprises into MEF, with the council helping to shape this initiative.

https://youtu.be/7Hl1bftnSfE

Check out our Enterprise series on #SASE, #SSE, #SDWAN, #ZTNA, #MCN, #NaaS at: https://ngi.fyi/sdwansaseztna23yt

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HiWire Consortium to standardize CXL via Active Electrical Cables and optics

The HiWire Consortium is announcing a new effort to standardize CXL Active Electrical Cables and optics.

CXL is expected to enable servers to dramatically expand memory footprints and to share compute, memory and storage resources across rack and row scale installations at line rate. 

However, existing passive copper connectivity solutions will not scale to meet this opportunity as they are too short, too bulky and provide insufficient signal integrity for the upcoming PCIe6/CXL3.0 PAM4 64GT/s standard. 

The HiWire Consortium CXL Cabling workstream is intended to enable row-scale CXL connectivity with the simplicity and interoperability that HiWire Ethernet AECs are already known for.

“The HiWire Consortium was a key actor in standardizing the Ethernet AECs that much of the cloud runs on today,” said Don Barnetson, Vice President of Product at Credo and organizer of the HiWire Consortium. “Our new CXL workstream will bring this same innovation – enabling plug and play, low-cost, low latency interconnect that allows CXL to span to rack and row scale installations.”

“External connectivity solutions will be key to enhancing the full potential of Intel’s CXL enabled Xeon products,” said Jim Pappas, director of Technology Initiatives at Intel. “Intel is working as a member of the CXL and HiWire Consortium to support these standardization efforts.”

https://hiwire.org

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Colt tests 800G with Nokia's PSE-6s Coherent Optics

Colt Technology Services completed a long-haul production network trial achieving 800G line capacity over a 1,500 Km network connecting Madrid, Spain to Lisbon, Portugal. 

The trial, which leveraged Nokia’s sixth generation super-coherent Photonic Service Engine (PSE-6s), was deployed over real-world conditions, including aerial fibre cables, as an alien wavelength, over 22 spans involving ROADMs in CDC configuration.

Rafael DeFermin, SVP Network Infrastructure, Europe Regional Business Center at Nokia, said: “With data volumes growing exponentially every year, there continues to be an increased focus by operators on the cost and power consumption per bit. But it’s not just about meeting the demands of today’s networks, it’s also about shaping the future of connectivity. Nokia’s PSE-6s solution allows operators like Colt to position themselves at the forefront of the industry and use their existing network to deliver the unmatched speed, efficiency and reliability essential for meeting both current and future evolving customer demands.”

Vivek Gaur, VP of Network Engineering at Colt, said: “This trial highlights our commitment to work with our technology partners to provide scalable and flexible high-bandwidth services across our entire optical network backbone. We are excited by the results of Nokia’s of PSE-6 super coherent optics and see their solution as an important enabler to effectively stay ahead of demand for new high-speed optical services.”

https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2023/10/12/nokia-and-colt-showcase-power-of-pse-6s-coherent-optics-in-live-european-optical-network-demonstration/

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SUBCO deploys Ciena GeoMesh Extreme on Oman-Australia Cable

SUBCO is deploying tye Ciena GeoMesh Extreme, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme in the 6500 Packet-Optical Platforonce, to provide a resilient and reliable undersea corridor between Australia and Europe via the Oman Australia Cable (OAC). OAC has now increased its capacity to a maximum of 48 Tbps, helping support increased bandwidth demands.

Launched for commercial service in November 2022, OAC is a 9,800km submarine cable connecting Muscat, Oman, and Perth, Australia, with an alternate path that leads from Salalah, Oman into Europe and Africa to be ready by 2024.

“We have a long history of working with Ciena and, together, we are proud to provide our customers with an express gateway for onward capacity from Australia to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. OAC provides the market with the most secure and diverse route to connect Europe with Asia Pacific and is important in boosting Australia’s digital resiliency,” said Lee Harper, Chief Operating Officer, SUBCO.

“Security and reliability are important to SUBCO as OAC prides itself as an alternative for moving traffic from Asia Pacific to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, and promotes Australia’s role as a digital hub. With Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme solution, SUBCO can keep pace with proactive bandwidth requirements and reactive performance demands while guaranteeing overall network availability,” said Ivan Polizzi, Regional Managing Director, Ciena Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

https://www.ciena.com

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Nokia ships 25G PON sealed fiber access node for cable operators

Nokia announced availability of its 25G PON technology on the Lightspan SF-8M sealed fiber access node for cable operators. The sealed remote Optical Line Terminal (OLT) also concurrently supports both GPON and XGS-PON. 

Based on the Nokia Quillion chipset, the Lightspan SF-8M supports eight GPON, XGS-PON, or multi-PON ports, or four 25G PON ports. It features flexible powering options including power-over-coax, AC, DC, or RFT-V. 

The Lightspan SF-8M has an IP67 rating, offers an array of installation options anywhere in the outside plant – on a strand, inside or outside a cabinet, or on a pole or wall – and supports various power options.

Mark Klimek, North America Business Center Head for Fixed Networks at Nokia, said: “Gigabit speeds are becoming the new normal, and operators are realizing that their fiber-to-the-home networks can be used for more than residential broadband. The ability to quickly deploy a remote FTTH node, and deliver GPON, 10G PON, and 25G PON based services over the same network allows operators to nimbly go after new opportunities and beat competition.”

https://www.nokia.com/networks/fixed-networks/lightspan-sf/

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