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Vodafone connected with Intel on a study that pinpoints the power and space savings the operator is seeing via its shift to a distributed access architecture and virtual CMTS technologies.
CABLE NEXT-GEN EUROPE 2023 – The distributed access architecture (DAA) is poised to help cable operators boost the performance of their hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks and serve as a stepping stone to DOCSIS 4.0.
But another big – and perhaps less publicized – benefit of DAA is unlocking huge power savings by distributing key elements of the network toward the edges while also vastly reducing the amount of hardware that needs to be powered in headends and hubs.
Those power savings are significant, Tino Muders, an exec with the fixed access center of excellence at Vodafone, said today at an annual Light Reading-hosted event focused on tech advancements in the European cable/telecom industry.
Triggered by an energy crisis in Europe surfacing last year that made every saved kilowatt hour count, Vodafone, in partnership with Intel, undertook an initiative to develop a methodology that enabled the operator to analyze the power savings it is seeing with DAA and alongside with the deployment of virtual cable modem termination system (vCMTS) systems powered by software running on off-the-shelf servers. The study stood those results against the power consumption and space requirements of Vodafone's legacy integrated CMTS (iCMTS) chassis.
Vodafone had a good sense about the energy consumption benefits, but had no firm evidence to point to, Muders explained.
The study results were eye-opening. Vodafone's gen-one vCMTS, which is appliance-based, was shown to be about 28% more power-efficient than the iCMTS. Power efficiencies shot up to 39% using an emerging gen-two vCMTS that employs a cloud-native architecture.
Broken down further, Vodafone generated 59 watts per gigabit with its iCMTS, compared to 57 watts (-4%) with its gen-one vCMTS and 29 watts (-50.1%) with its gen-two vCMTS.
Notably, Vodafone's power consumption study excluded legacy video infrastructure, since that will remain in place as the company moves to phase out its iCMTS architecture. Muders said Vodafone expects to see further power savings as the operator switches off legacy video platforms that include edge QAMs devices.
Tied in, Vodafone is also seeing big savings in physical infrastructure space and associated capital expenditures with the new distributed architecture. Muders said the DAA/vCMTS combo has been shown to reduce headend rack space by 28x and cut capex by more than 40%, while delivering more capacity.
And the requirement of rack units per service group is also being slashed under the distributed architecture. While an integrated CMTS takes up nearly four rack units per service group, that figure plummets 96% to just 0.14 of a rack unit per service group with the gen-one vCMTS, and drops 97% to 0.12 of a rack unit per service group with the gen-two vCMTS, Muders explained.
More improvements to come
Muders also expects Vodafone to see further benefits with the use of programmable vCMTSs and software tools that will enable the company to adjust CPU capabilities based on the actual traffic flowing through the network over the course of a day.
Vodafone, which is currently running such scenarios in the lab, is seeing 25% more power savings per server with those emerging capabilities.
"This is not the end of it," Muders said, noting that software-based ecosystems will also help Vodafone take advantage of faster innovation cycles than what was seen with purpose-built hardware.
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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading
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