Cisco Takes Aim at Gigabit

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) has introduced a software upgrade intended to help cable operators use their existing broadband infrastructure to offer a Gigabit service tier. The company's 6 Gigabit Shared Port Adapter (6G SPA) is a software upgrade of the 3G SPA line card for its uBR10012 Universal Broadband Router. It's intended to enable 32 DOCSIS 3.0 channels support for existing bBR10K CMTS chassis.

The new card is designed to increase the number of downstream channels available for the uBR10K from 1,152 to 1,728 without needing any additional rack space. Up to eight SPA line cards can be used per uBR10K. Each card is designed to support up to 144 downstream licenses per card, for a total of 1,152 6G SPA downstream channels per chassis. 6G SPA cards can be installed in conjunction with the uBR10K's standard line cards, which are designed to support up to 576 downstream channels per chassis.