Broadband Forum (News - Alert), an open standards development organization in the communications industry, is dedicated to driving innovation, standards, and ecosystem development in broadband technology. Comprising operators, vendors, and thought leaders, their work has laid the foundation for global broadband expansion and innovation.
Their projects cover areas such as 5G, Connected Home, Cloud, and Access, where working groups collaborate to define best practices, enable revenue-generating services, and develop management tools for IP networking infrastructure.
Technical Reports from Broadband Forum provide in-depth technical specifications, guidelines, and recommendations and serve as valuable resources for implementing and optimizing broadband networks.
Its most recent release, Technical Report-459, provides improved resiliency, scalability, and faster deployment times for operators. It will also provide more reliable and consistent services for end users.
“TR-459 Issue 2 includes an additional layer of flexibility to manage subscriber resiliency, simplifying operations and streamlining provisioning and maintenance,” said Jonathan Newton, Co-Director of the Access and Transport Architecture Work Area at Broadband Forum from Vodafone (News - Alert).
“These characteristics are all the more critical in a post-COVID world in which more people are using their home broadband access services to manage their lives, including working and shopping online,” said Newton.
The network's control system (called the Control Plane) can now intelligently decide if switching to a different User Plane is necessary when there are faults that can cause network outages. The User Plane handles network traffic and ensures policies like Quality of Service (QoS) are followed. This helps in avoiding network disruptions and maintaining a smooth user experience.
By standardizing Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS) for a Multi-Service DBNG, it also becomes possible for the Control Plane from one vendor to manage the User Plane from another vendor. This promotes a diverse supply chain, offering more options for Control and User Planes from different vendors, all leveraging the TR-459 standard.
TR-459 Issue 2 also defines essential functions that align with the disaggregation of Wireless-Wireline Convergence (News - Alert) set by Broadband Forum.
“The latest release of the TR-459 standard will continue to drive standards-based interoperability between vendors, with Broadband Forum simplifying network transformation and ensuring more agility and flexibility for broadband operators,” said Craig Thomas, Vice President Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Broadband Forum. “Our work on a Multi-Service Disaggregated Broadband Network Gateway (News - Alert) (DBNG) continues to make it easier to deliver fixed broadband services quickly to new and existing customers as the industry continues to transition and offers a migration path from legacy infrastructures to a future agile cloud native approach.”
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
