2020 has been unusual on so many levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While unimaginable at the start of this year, SCTE and the cable industry have undoubtedly made the right decision to hold SCTE Cable-Tec Expo as a virtual event. While we will miss the in-person interactions, the up-side is that many more people from around the globe will have access to industry insights and experts at North America’s preeminent cable industry event, for free through their digital platform. 

Ciena is excited to once again be a very active participant at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo. In addition to our virtual exhibit, we will have experts speaking on several exciting topics during the SCTE Technical Forum. What’s more, our experts will be available to discuss these topics with attendees throughout the digital event: 

Fernando Villarruel (Chief Architect, MSO Practice, Ciena) has authored a paper for SCTE on the Framework for Convergence of Services on the MSO Network Using the Principles of Network Slicing. The digitization of the cable access network enables the promise of end-to-end convergence for different lines of service over shared resources. The promise, however, does not come with a framework and this leads to trepidation on how to proceed. A framework for service convergence must address three key principles. The first is that each line of service will have unique prioritization, throughput and latency requirements. The second is that within a service there will be distinctions of tenants and applications that will eventually need a granular treatment through the network for compute and storage. The third is that the principles mentioned above are transitional over the lifecycle of the service and on-going automation mechanisms to adapt and coexist are necessary. In this paper we propose a framework for service convergence using network slicing for MSO networks.

Fernando will be presenting highlights and key take-a-ways during the I’d Like a (Network) Slice, Please: Current Events in Multi-Network Convergence session on Thursday Oct 15 at 1:00pm ET. 

Tim Maenpaa (Consulting Regional System Engineer, MSO Practice, Ciena) has authored a paper for SCTE on Addressing Unrelenting Growth in Backbone Fiber Systems Using Next Generation Photonics and Automation.  As core backbone bandwidth requirements continue to increase and as photonics and transponder capacities “ride the curve” due to the realities of Shannon’s limit, cable MSOs are using deployment principles, hardware innovation, and software automation to make the most of their fiber assets. Deployment principles include deploying flexible grid photonic systems to maximize limited fiber assets, and deploying purpose-built networks, such as core-to-core only or core-to-access only networks. Hardware innovations include C&L band to double the utilization of fiber resources. Software automation includes zero-touch provisioning to permit rapid, highly efficient equipment deployments, maximizing system performance while limiting manual involvement.  Margin mining is another example of software automation to analyze the network, find available margin, and then increase bit rates accordingly to maximize bandwidth resource efficiency.

Tim will be presenting highlights and key take-a-ways during the Adventures in Fiber Operations:  Switched Optics, Automation and DevOps session on Wednesday Oct 14, 9:30am ET.

Marco Naveda (Senior Director, CTO Office, Ciena) has authored a paper for SCTE on Delivering Cloud-Native Operations Agility in Compute-enabled Distributed Access Architectures. The networking software industry is experiencing an accelerating technology shift from centralized, cloud application delivery models to a distributed edge computing paradigm. The drivers for this shift are the emergence of advanced use cases, digital transformation initiatives and business applications that require deterministic proximity and ultra-fast response times, distributed processing of large volumes of data near the source and flexible scalability across network and computing ecosystems. This new software paradigm is enabled by cloud-native application containerization and orchestration technologies. Existing cloud-based management and control systems were not designed for network distributed cluster computing. This paper delves into emerging edge cloud infrastructure architectures, available open-source software to enable network distributed edge computing, and key technical considerations to accelerate adoption of new operational methods.  

Marco will be presenting highlights and key take-a-ways during the I’d Like a (Network) Slice, Please: Current Events in Multi-Network Convergence on Thursday Oct 15, 1:00pm ET. 

Tom Dimicelli (Senior Product Marketing Advisor, Blue Planet a division of Ciena) has written a paper for SCTE on Unleashing Managed SD-WAN with Closed-Loop Automation.  Managed SD-WAN adoption continues unabated, taking a preeminent role in enterprise SaaS, cloud and digital transformation initiatives. In order to capture this high-growth market opportunity, many cable operators are expanding their SD-WAN portfolio to improve their market appeal, increase service differentiation, and better address diverse customer requirements. Introducing new and enhanced features to current SD-WAN offerings, however, challenges operational scale. Technicians already spend countless hours interrogating inventory systems, configuring SD-WAN controllers and edge routers, and troubleshooting transient performance issues.  Each new VNF and SD-WAN infrastructure vendor introduces even more proprietary user-interfaces and procedures that multiply these burdens and result in increased order fallout and OPEX. Automation can eliminate manual intervention from SD-WAN service design, activation and management processes, allowing cable operators to add new vendors and services without operational penalty – based in part on the significant progress that has been made in industry bodies.  This paper provides details on how cable operators can now implement an open, modular and standards-based automation framework that addresses the entire SD-WAN service lifecycle.

Tom will be presenting highlights and key take-a-ways during the Creative Ways to Create Value for Lit Services:  Enterprise Cloud, Beyond the Pipe, with SD-WAN on Tuesday Oct 13, 1:00pm ET. 

Imagine the Possibilities is the tagline for SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2020.  Ciena is looking forward to sharing the possibilities on these forward-looking topics for the cable industry.