Complete Coverage: IBC2011
Cisco announced at IBC that it is working with U.K. cable operator Virgin Media in the deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 technology that offers operators much faster broadband speeds.
During an ongoing trial in East London, Virgin Media achieved broadband speeds of 1.5 Gigabytes per second (Gbps) by using Cisco's (3G60) Broadband Processing Engine, a high-density, line card for Cisco's uBR10K Universal Broadband Router and Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS).
"Cisco CMTS solutions are designed to support large-scale IP broadband and video services today -- as well as the migration to IP networks in the near future," noted Mark Palazzo, vice president and general manager, Cable Access Business Unit Cisco in a statement. "We are proud to help Virgin Media achieve such significant milestones with its network capacity and broadband connection speeds."
As previously reported, the Cisco technology was also used in a demonstration of the technology at the Cable Show by Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts.
"Using a Cisco CMTS and 3G60 solution, Brian [Roberts] downloaded an entire season of 30 Rock -- 23 full episodes -- in about a minute and a half," noted Murali Nemani, senior director, Service Provider Marketing at Cisco in a blog post over the weekend. "And he did it on camera, over a real-world production network, the first ever with 1-Gbps broadband download speeds.
Cisco's Universal Broadband Router together with the 3G60 line card supports the full set of DOCSIS 3.0, including IPv6, and such advanced features such as dynamic bandwidth sharing.
Using the 3G60, a single Cisco Universal Broadband Router can support up to 576 downstream and 480 upstream channels per chassis. This is the highest CMTS capacity and density in the industry, the company contends.
