2022.10.21 – Open Broadband News

CloudCO Demo at Network X 2022: Broadband Slicing?

Broadband Forum is reaching new highs in Amsterdam this year, showcasing a very special demo at Network X. As many as 14 companies came together, using Broadband Forum standards, to build a network where latency is monitored continuously on both sides of the Residential Gateway, and where network slices are automatically configured to adapt to the varying needs of each and every customer.

The Network X demo showcased dynamic Subscriber Session Steering, which is the broadband version of network slicing. Dynamic Subscriber Session Steering allows an ISP to dynamically re-allocate resources between isolated slices in a running network — just like network slicing in the mobile world. In the broadband case, you can think of it as dynamically increasing a subscriber’s bandwidth on-demand.

This year’s demo starts with detecting that a latency sensitive and demanding application is running on an end-user device in the home Wi-Fi network. This event triggers a check: is the current network delivering consistent low latency? If the link latency is too bad or too unreliable, the network connection for that specific user is automatically transferred to a “network slice” that can deliver what the application needs. In this way we can guarantee the performance of latency sensitive application types, such as gaming and video conferencing, even in the presence of significant network congestion.

Read the full blog from Bjørn Ivar Teigen, Head of Research at Domos here.

Improved network quality and user experience showcased in CloudCO Demo

As the broadband industry migrates to software defined open networks, 14 vendors, service providers, and consultancy companies came together to demonstrate greater automation, reduced network congestion and greater interoperability.

Improved quality and user experience in case of Wi-Fi or network congestion, better utilization of network resources, and zero-touch service provisioning from multiple vendors was delivered at this year’s CloudCO Demo from Broadband Forum at Network X. This was enabled by this year’s sponsors: Altice Labs, Deutsche Telekom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Radisys, Reply and Zyxel.

“CloudCO provides a network operator with a “step by step” approach to migrate from existing infrastructure while still amortising their existing hardware investments. Our work is enabling operators to disaggregate their networks, virtualise functionality, and move to the SDN driven solutions of the future,” said Broadband Forum Technical Chair Lincoln Lavoie.

25GS-PON continues to gain global traction with service providers and vendor community

The 25GS-PON Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) Group announced that, in evidence of the rapidly growing, global momentum behind 25GS-PON development and deployments, the Broadband Forum membership has approved initiating work to add 25GS-PON to both its Interoperability Testing and PON Management projects.

This is a key development as 25GS-PON technology continues to mature, verifying that equipment, products, and systems from different companies function and seamlessly communicate as required by the 25GS-PON specification.

“The Broadband Forum has agreed to start work on an interoperability test specification and a YANG data model for 25GS-PON. This is an important development as interoperability testing and YANG data modeling have been critical to the success of every previous generation of PON technology and ensuring that future PON advancements are relevant to multi-service needs beyond current residential services,” said Craig Thomas, Vice-President Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Broadband Forum.

Successful collaboration between HomeGrid Forum and Broadband Forum at the first ever G.hn Access Pre-Certification Plugfest

The first ever G.hn Access Pre-Certification Plugfest, a joint event between Broadband Forum and HomeGrid Forum, was held successfully at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL).

The Plugfest demonstrates the continued importance of G.hn Access technology’s role in delivering multi-gigabit services. The event saw participation from BBF and HGF members including; Albis Elcon, Comtrend Corporation, devolo AG, MaxLinear, Methode Electronics, Inc, Positron Access Solutions Corp, ReadyLinks and SendTek Corporation, and was supported by testing equipment providers Sparnex and Telebyte.

“We were delighted to collaborate with HomeGrid Forum and successfully hold the first ever G.hn Access Pre-Certification Plugfest at UNH-IOL’s labs, with participants both on-site and remotely connecting to the test beds from around the world,” Broadband Forum Managing Director Ken Ko said.

Read the full press release on Broadband Forum’s collaboration with HomeGrid Forum here.