A. Cisco BAC is a distributed, scalable application that helps enable the automated flow-through provisioning of subscriber services and management of subscriber devices. Cisco BAC provides a centralized and automated platform for service providers to control and configure residential home gateways and the IP devices behind the gateways. Cisco BAC automatically recognizes devices, assigns the appropriate class of service, dynamically creates and generates device configuration files, and activates subscribers. Cisco BAC provides a single device management platform to support multiple technologies including DOCSIS®, PacketCable™, and satellite.
Q. Who should deploy Cisco Broadband Access Center 4.1?
A. Cisco BAC 4.1 is designed for use by service providers seeking an automated means of provisioning and managing subscriber devices supporting the CableLabs® standards such as DOCSIS and PacketCable. Cisco BAC can be easily extended to support other devices as well. Any service provider planning to deploy and support DOCSIS 3.0 and IPv6 customer premise equipment (CPE) should use BAC 4.1.
Q. How is Cisco Broadband Access Center 4.1 used?
A. Cisco BAC 4.1 is used to replace manual provisioning processes by service providers seeking a more scalable, automated, and higher performance device management platform. It provides service providers an easy means to support newer versions of existing CableLabs standards as well as to implement new technologies such as PacketCable voice.
Q. What benefits can be expected from deploying Cisco Broadband Access Center 4.1?
A. Cisco BAC 4.1 provides the following benefits:
• Reliability and distributed architecture: Cisco BAC provides high reliability and availability supporting autonomous headends, multiple distributed device provisioning engines (DPEs), each of which includes its own data-caching repository, a Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server, and a time-of-day (ToD) server. During central server outages or communication problems, Cisco BAC provides continued service to existing registered subscribers.
• Scalability and performance: Cisco BAC can support millions of devices in distributed deployments. Cisco BAC uses multiple distributed device management and caching engines to balance processing of device requests. A single DPE can support as many as 2 million devices. These DPEs can be combined in groups to provide redundancy and load balancing. Cisco BAC includes a central component called a regional distribution unit (RDU) to handle service requests and modifications. A single RDU server in conjunction with the appropriate number of DPE groups can support as many as 60 million devices with a sustained rate of hundreds of thousands of new devices a day.
• Easy integration with current systems: Cisco BAC integrates with existing service provider systems, such as billing systems, operations support systems (OSSs), and other customer management systems, through a Java provisioning API. It can also notify interested applications of certain events within the system through an event-notification registration procedure.
• Extendable technology support: Cisco BAC supports DOCSIS cable modems and set-top boxes for high-speed data provisioning, PacketCable voice provisioning of media termination adapters (MTAs and DOCSIS cable modems. It also can be extended to support other Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)-based devices, including non-DOCSIS cable modems.
Q. What are the features of Cisco Broadband Access Center 4.1?
A. Cisco BAC 4.1 provides:
• Distributed architecture with high availability and disaster recovery leading to business continuity
• Highly scalable platform that can scale up to 60 million devices
• Dynamic DOCSIS file generation to reduce operational cost
• DOCSIS 3.0 support (channel bonding and IPv6 support)
• Support for mixed IPv4/IPv6 CPE environment
• Scripting interface for flexibility and automating configuration file generation using templates
• Support for CableLabs® business services over DOCSIS standard
• Java-based provisioning API with single point of integration
• Embedded high-performance database, optimized for device provisioning
• Integrated Kerberos Protocol server (KDC) for PacketCable voice service provisioning
Q. What equipment is managed by Cisco Broadband Access Center 4.1?
A. Cisco BAC is a standards-based device management application that supports multiple technologies including DOCSIS 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, PacketCable 1.0, 1.1, and 1.5, and satellite. Cisco BAC supports all end-user CPE devices that adhere to these standards.
Product Licensing and Platform Requirements
Q. How is Cisco Broadband Access Center 4.1 software licensed?
A. The software is licensed on a per subscriber service basis. Service licenses are offered in volumes of 10,000 and 500,0001.
Q. What hardware platform is required to run Cisco Broadband Access Center 4.1?
A. The Cisco BAC RDU, DPE, KDC, and Cisco Network Registrar components are supported on the Sun Solaris 10 operating systems based on SPARC architecture.
Starting with Cisco BAC 4.1, Cisco BAC Provisioning Group components - BAC DPE, Cisco Network Registrar DHCP, and Cisco Network Registrar Domain Name System (DNS) are also supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and later. These systems have been tested on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS).
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