That is Half III of a three-blog collection on options to beat challenges related to bridging the digital divide.
In half I of this collection, we mentioned conventional broadband community architectures and their limitations. In half II, we mentioned particulars on the evolution of broadband networks, utilizing a distributed structure with a centralized management airplane, designed to deal with the challenges related to conventional broadband networks. On this remaining weblog, we’ll give attention to the Cisco answer with Subscriber Edge.
Cisco Subscriber Edge answer
The Management and Consumer Aircraft Separation Broadband Community Gateway (CUPS BNG) answer from Cisco terminates residential broadband subscribers, is aligned with TR-459, and referred to as Cisco Subscriber Edge or cloud-native BNG (cnBNG), as a result of cloud-native know-how is used to host management airplane features.
Given the essential want for resiliency within the management airplane, which is tasked with terminating hundreds of thousands of subscriber classes over lots of of distributed consumer planes, Cisco’s subscriber edge management airplane has been developed as a cloud-native utility from the bottom up utilizing Go programming language to make sure superior reliability.
As a part of the evolution to cloud-native community features, the Cisco Subscriber Edge management airplane structure is decomposed into a number of microservices and deployed as containers that may be independently scaled, upgraded, and deployed in accordance with necessities (see Determine 1 on cloud-native tenets used for the management airplane structure).
The decomposition of management features into a number of unbiased stateless microservices permits higher resiliency. It additionally allows hitless improve of the management airplane, unbiased patching of drawback or failed containers, and restricted rollout of options or software program modifications with no widespread useful influence. These microservices are deployed utilizing the identical infrastructure as Extremely 5G Packet Core, which hosts the 5G Packet Core Capabilities as containers, and may be simply prolonged to run on third-party container-as-a-service (CaaS) platforms.
Cisco Subscriber Edge structure
Cisco Subscriber Edge structure (see Determine 2) is aligned with Broadband Discussion board TR-459 . On this structure, the management airplane is cloud-native with selections of {hardware} and software program consumer planes primarily based on the IOS XR community working system (NOS).
The Cisco Subscriber Edge structure offers quite a few technical benefits and advantages, positioning CSPs to successfully broaden their networks in alignment with the altering calls for of the market. These benefits are distinctive to the Cisco structure and complement the advantages already inherent within the CUPS framework. The extra advantages embrace:
- Operational ease: Cisco’s management airplane structure contains an Ops Heart perform, which makes BNG operations extra user-friendly for BNG community engineers and decreasing the necessity to handle Kubernetes instantly. For added effectivity, Cisco Crosswork Community Automation presents automation for deployment, lifecycle administration, and repair orchestration, whereas additionally sustaining service assurance.
- Business-leading scale: On the coronary heart of Cisco Subscriber Edge is a cloud-native management airplane, designed for enormous industry-leading scale, supporting a community of 1 million classes with lots of of consumer planes. Increasing capability is simplified by including additional computing sources or new nodes, guaranteeing a easy scale-up course of that retains current subscriber classes on-line with none influence.
- Resiliency: Cisco’s structure makes use of a layered strategy for resilience that ensures the management airplane is protected against server to knowledge heart failures in a cloud-native setting. The consumer airplane safety is ensured by subscriber redundancy group (SRG) function assist, which mitigates dangers from hyperlink and platform failures to whole website outages.
- Simplified BNG Monitoring: With Cisco Subscriber Edge, the duty of monitoring BNG key efficiency indicators (KPIs) is simplified by an included Grafana Dashboard, taking away advanced monitoring setups and further licensing prices. This intuitive dashboard showcases an in depth choice of metrics that operation groups can customise, simplifying the monitoring expertise considerably. Furthermore, Cisco Subscriber Edge ensures easy integration with third-party dashboards, by telemetry and bulk statistics.
- Simpler integration: Cisco Subscriber Edge structure is aligned to TR-459 normal, which makes use of the CUPS mannequin to scale back OSS/BSS touchpoints with the management airplane, thereby facilitating smoother integration. Constructed on a basis of cloud-native know-how and a microservices framework, the management airplane ensures fast deployment of latest options, streamlining the combination course of for enhanced effectivity.
Bridge to common broadband
The Cisco Subscriber Edge answer, aligned to Broadband Discussion board TR-459 normal, marks a major development in broadband community gateway know-how. With the cloud-native management airplane, CSPs can effectively handle the calls for of hundreds of thousands of subscriber classes throughout an enormous array of distributed consumer planes deployed at completely different layers within the community.
The Cisco answer may also help CSPs adapt to evolving broadband and visitors necessities, increase their networks successfully, and leverage distinctive answer benefits which counterpoint advantages inherent within the CUPS framework.
For BNG engineers, the Cisco structure simplifies operations and will increase effectivity by the Ops Heart perform and Cisco Crosswork automation capabilities.
Community operators can profit from a fortified answer utilizing a layered structure that protects each the management airplane and consumer airplane from varied malfunctions and outages, together with website failures and knowledge heart outages. Different operational advantages embrace simpler integration with standards-based alignment, and simplified monitoring of key BNG efficiency indicators utilizing the embedded Grafana dashboard for a customizable and complete view of efficiency metrics with out additional prices.
Cisco’s dedication to innovation and the cloud-native strategy empowers community operators to construct a brighter future for broadband networks. Decreasing prices, simplifying networks, and enabling high-quality companies may also help make the web extra reasonably priced and ubiquitous with higher end-user experiences for all.
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