Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable provider, on Wednesday launched a new business application and platform with faster connections in its push to boost sales to commercial customers as more consumers drop traditional cable services.
The new platform is called the Comcast Business ActiveCore SDN platform and is a cable-delivered, gig-ready SDN platform . Additionally, Comcast announced Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) as the first business product powered by the ActiveCore platform.
ActiveCore delivers new services and network changes via software rather than through individually-managed and customized hardware. The platform features an embedded orchestration capability, allowing it to deliver and manage multiple virtualized network functions (VNF). When combined with an open, extensible IT infrastructure, ActiveCore delivers better application performance, shorter deployment cycles, and greater business agility at lower costs. What's more, the platform provides actionable performance data in a single view. ActiveCore can be paired with Comcast's high-performance, DOCSIS 3.1-based gigabit broadband service. Comcast's Business Internet 1 Gig service is already available in much of the Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic and Central United States, and will be available to the entire national Comcast service area by the end of 2017
Comcast Business SD-WAN combines secure IP-VPN, application-aware routing, and a stateful network firewall. This is delivered over the public internet via a carrier-class IP-backbone, leveraging Comcast's broadband solutions.