At Expo, Harmonic announced the availability of its new Outdoor Hub platform, which is designed to enable cable operators to extend their existing HFC network without building facilities to house new hub functions. Employing an optical node housing, the Outdoor Hub acts as an optical distribution point for downstream traffic and an aggregation point for upstream traffic.Outdoor Hubs are designed to be configured for a variety of functions. Each hub can house modules for optical switching, splitting, amplification, wavelength multiplexing and de-multiplexing, and re-lasing. The modules are compatible with existing optical node housings. An optional DOCSIS or HMS status-monitoring transponder enables remote monitoring and control of all functionality in the Outdoor Hub.