Achieving consensus in the broadband industry is no easy feat. It takes time, patience, attention to detail, collaboration, problem-solving, and flexibility. But once achieved, consensus fosters innovation and competition within the ecosystem. It also opens up expanded market opportunities for equipment suppliers and offers operators more choice for subscriber services.
CableLabs provides a neutral testing ground for vendors and operators to come together and demonstrate interoperability across the interfaces defined in our DOCSIS 4.0 specification. Since launching the CableLabs DOCSIS 4.0 Cable Modem Certification Program in June 2023, we’ve spent many exciting weeks hosting DOCSIS 4.0 Interop·Labs events. And how far we’ve come in just one year! Let’s recap:
DOCSIS 4.0 and DAA Technologies
This momentum continues with the success of CableLabs and Kyrio’s latest event, which combined DOCSIS 4.0 and Distributed Access Architecture (DAA). The combination of these interoperability events underscores the importance of interoperability across all system components.
During the event, which took place from June 24 to 27, attendees put more effort into testing products to examine the complexities of interoperability in a more rigorous way. We thank the participants who helped make the event a success and—once again—helped us unlock a new level of productivity.
Featured exercises included DOCSIS 4.0 cable modems and DAA equipment. DAA products included remote MACPHYs and remote PHY equipment such as virtual cores and remote PHY devices (RPDs) that support DOCSIS 4.0 technology. All of these systems came together during the week of exercises to demonstrate interoperability between multiple vendors across the DOCSIS ecosystem.
Participation continues to rise
Attendance remained high with new suppliers and products. Operators joined us to observe and interact with suppliers and talk about the progress of their DOCSIS 4.0 network.
Among the vendors were Casa Systems, CommScope, and Harmonic, which brought DOCSIS 4.0 cores to interoperability. Remote PHY devices (RPDs) from Casa Systems, CommScope, DCT-DELTA, Harmonic, and Vecima Networks demonstrated a mix of DOCSIS 3.1 and DOCSIS 4.0 technologies. DOCSIS 4.0 cable modems were provided by Arcadyan, Askey, Hitron Technologies, MaxLinear, Sagemcom, Sercomm, and Ubee Interactive. Calian brought a remote PHY test system, which can be used to verify interoperability between DOCSIS 4.0 cable modems and DOCSIS 4.0 cores. Microchip Technology shared its clock and timing system. Rohde & Schwarz brought its DOCSIS Signal Analyzer to continue development on DOCSIS 4.0 systems.
Test scenarios included a single-vendor virtual core, multiple RPDs, and DOCSIS 4.0 cable modems from different vendors. Products were mixed and matched to verify interoperability and speed scenarios across the system. As before, DOCSIS 3.1 and DOCSIS 4.0 equipment was combined to demonstrate interoperability between existing and new technologies. Test equipment vendors used these setups to verify their solutions.
This interaction had a different impact than past events but demonstrated that DOCSIS 4.0 modems continue to mature, enabling new investigations into the technology.
sustainable speed
Achieving 9 Gbps (or more) downstream through a DOCSIS 4.0 cable modem is now the norm. We’ve now achieved this on multiple modems and multiple cores. (And stay tuned. We’re now expecting DOCSIS 4.0 modems that can exceed 10 Gbps!)
In July, we started looking at sustained speeds—that is, the stability of very high-speed traffic over several hours. One test used two modems on a virtual core and an RPD and ran 4Gbps across each modem (8Gbps across the core) for three hours, with no data loss. That was over 5 terabytes (TB) of download per modem in 3 hours!
We also tried to see how fast the system could download 1TB. By putting 9.2Gbps through the modem, we were able to download 1TB in 18 minutes. That’s about 50 hours of 4K movie content. More importantly, imagine what these speeds could mean for future services like home healthcare. There’s no doubt that this high-speed data transfer rate will lead to transformative new products and services for the connected home.
PNM Operations for Cable Modem
PNM is an important function of cable modems. Engineers and technicians use these proven tools to maintain, troubleshoot, and optimize the cable plant. Increasingly, signals in the plant are orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), offering higher speeds and capacities than traditional quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals.
In this interaction, we looked at five different PNM tests, specifically acquiring data from DOCSIS 4.0 cable modems and verifying compatibility with APIs and data generated by the modems. These PNM data will enable more efficient operation of the coaxial cable network, while maintaining peak data levels using the more efficient OFDM and OFDMA signals.
Remote PHY Compatibility
While modems were the focus, the event also included a deeper look at interoperability between DOCSIS 4.0 cores and RPDs. This will be a new infrastructure for operators and another interface around which interoperability must be demonstrated. To facilitate a best-in-class infrastructure for new DOCSIS 4.0 products and services, this interface must demonstrate the flexibility to allow for configurations and channel plans that work best for the operator.
In the interoperability process, we spent time deliberately experimenting with these new configurations. We sought to ensure that the components requesting and allocating resources could communicate and allow for flexibility in configuration that could be used in the new future as DOCSIS 4.0 technology moves into the field.
Join us at SCTE TechExpo
The next DOCSIS 4.0 interactive event is scheduled for the week of August 12 at CableLabs’ headquarters in Louisville, Colorado. The event will provide suppliers with an opportunity to hone their products—and offerings—for the upcoming SCTE®️ TechExpo conference in Atlanta.
At TechExpo, the must-attend event for the broadband industry, CableLabs will highlight products and efforts made at Interop·Labs events. Full access passes are free for CableLabs members. Register now to join us!
