Comcast pushed network updates that will allow the cable broadband provider to increase download and upload speeds on its way to the 10G plateau of its digital evolution. Those updates are based on a half-decade of work at the cable giant toward virtualizing its network infrastructure.

The most recent push is around Comcast rolling out multi-gigabit internet speeds in 34 markets by the end of the year. It’s also working toward using the latest 10G and DOCSIS 4.0 technology to begin supporting even higher speeds beginning in the second half of next year.

Elad Nafshi, EVP and Chief Network Officer at Comcast Cable, explained that the latest updates are based on its long-simmering network evolution. He said those efforts took off “four or five years ago when we really embarked on our architecture path to look at the access network architecture.”

This was based on Comcast wanting to transition that construct to a distributed access architecture (DAA) that included the virtualization of its cable modem termination system (CMTS). Nafshi said this is what powers the delivery of data to the individual nodes in the network.

“What they do is really beyond the local aggregation,” Nafshi explained. “They really give us the wealth of data, and visibility, and telemetry like never before to really enhance and take our reliability to the next level.”

Comcast is also using what Nafshi said was a “mid-split” to triple upstream speeds to as much as 200 Mb/s to go along with increased download speeds of up to 2 Gb/s. This is all tied into the virtualized CMTS.

“The speed manifestation and the great benefits to the customers in terms of our increased reliability are really powered and enabled by this transition to a virtualized architecture that we have been working on for the past several years now,” Nafshi said.

Some of that work included the SDN-based Trellis open source project, which was developed as a multi-purpose L2/L3 spine-leaf switching fabric for data-center networking. It leverages the Open Network Operating System (ONOS) controller to create a non-blocking fabric for data centers using white box switching hardware and open source software.

Nafshi noted a lot of the work has been internal at Comcast, though he did point to past work Comcast has done with Harmonic, which has done a lot of work on virtualization and DAA work.

“On the digital nodes, we have of our own ecosystem on the nodes themselves and the amplifiers, and so we have a range of partners that really come together in order to be able to deliver the central experience,” Nafshi said, adding that ecosystem will allow the operator to provide network speeds up to 10-times faster across its network by 2025.