ADC Telecommunications Inc. said it has added a spate of enhancements to its line of cable-modem termination systems.
The new features are part of a strategy to help cable operators figure out how they will handle "open access," or the ability to deal with traffic from several Internet-service providers.
The enhancements center on ADC's "Cuda Provisioning Manager" and its Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification 1.0-qualified "Cuda 12000 IP Access Switch." ADC's chassis is currently being tested for EuroDOCSIS compliance and DOCSIS 1.1 qualification at Cable Television Laboratories Inc.
ADC gained ownership of those technologies and a much-needed IP play when it snapped up Broadband Access Systems Inc. earlier this year for about $2.25 billion in stock.
Mark Komanecky, vice president of marketing and business development for ADC's cable-systems division, said the Cuda 12000 and its complementary provisioning manager would allow cable operators to configure a specific ISP when customers sign on for cable-modem service.
"It can handle an unlimited number of ISPs" on a cable network, Komanecky said.
ADC said its product enhancements support policy-based routing, the most common and supported open-access protocol. They do not require more controversial or potentially
problematic platforms such as Network Address Translation and "tunneling" to handle multiple-ISP data traffic, he said.
"We want to decrease the complexity of the network and not increase the complexity of the network," Komanecky added.
ADC said its Cuda CMTS equipment is just starting to gain some deployment traction. Deals are in place with Time Warner Cable,
Adelphia Communications Corp., InterTECH, Tele-Media, Catawba Services Inc. and Sigecom LLC, according to the company.
ADC gear is also involved in a number of field trials with AT&T Broadband, Cox Communications Inc. and Cablevision Systems Corp, the company said.
AT&T Broadband, which is conducting a "Broadband Choice" technical trial in Boulder, Colo., has yet to disclose which vendors are involved. ADC would not say if its gear is in use there.
One CMTS rival downplayed ADC's addition of QoS and open-access support, claiming it's a common enhancement.
"Open access is standard software" that's included in just about every next-generation CMTS, Cisco Systems Inc. director of marketing John Mattson said.
RiverDelta Networks Inc. and Cadant Inc. also claim to have equipment that can handle data traffic from multiple ISPs over cable networks.
