Planning for the Future: Cox Communications Grows with Cuda through Succession of DOCSIS® Generations and Adoption of Advanced Services

Background

Cox Communications, Inc. is among the nation's largest broadband communications companies, serving more than 6 million customers in more than 20 states. The company is rapidly evolving into a full-service provider of advanced video, voice, and data services for homes and businesses. The Cox Mid-America division has never had a broadband ISP affiliation, so it has always provided its own cable modem service. The division previously ran on a proprietary platform but wanted a future-proof solution that could easily segue through succeeding DOCSIS® (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) generations, and advanced services.

Challenge

Proud of a strong customer service record, Cox Communications considers this attention its first priority. Minimizing customer downtime is always a big concern, so the company looked for a next-generation CMTS that wouldn't require a forklift upgrade when enhancing functionality and adopting new versions of DOCSIS®.

"The Cuda is fully DOCSIS®-compliant, so there's no need to swap out a chassis and take customers down," said Pirjo Tuomi, senior vice president of worldwide sales, BigBand Networks.

"The risk of any impact to our customers is something we contemplate heavily," said Jeff Strout, Director of IP Services for the Internet Unit of Cox's Mid-America operations. "We were unwilling to put our customers through an unnecessary forklift upgrade when we moved to the next version of DOCSIS."

A nod from industry experts also lent weight to their decision. "Cuda was a logical choice since it's CableLabs®-qualified – and has some screaming fast switching technology inside it," Strout said.

Solution

The Cuda12000 platform offers the highest DOCSIS® performance capacity of any system in the industry. It is a high performance, highly scalable solution with no single point of failure, fully distributed protocol processing and forwarding, integrated RF and WAN interfaces, and full network management and service provisioning capabilities all integrated into a NEBS/ETSI compliant chassis with high switching and forwarding capacity on each interface module. Cox utilizes this technology for its reliability characteristics and data aggregation capabilities.

Benefits

The Cuda12000's management module is running Linux, which was very appealing to the technical team at Cox. "We like that the box is NEBS-compliant," Jeff said. "It's a more resilient box than what we previously ran." Cuda12000 was deployed at multiple Cox Communications sites within weeks. "It's pretty phenomenal," Strout said.

The Cuda system plays an integral role in the company's VoIP strategy in the Mid-America market. "When you're talking VoIP, you're possibly talking about a lifeline service," said Strout. "You have to provide a high level of service or you can't provide it at all. The Cuda gave us a platform to do that."