Broadband Forum Releases Initial Spec for Virtual Residential Gateway

The Broadband Forum announced first specifications for a virtual residential gateway. The Network Enhanced Residential Gateway (TR-317) provides requirements for an end-to-end architecture, creating a flexible and agile environment, said the forum in a Wednesday news release. TR-317’s virtual customer premises equipment eliminates the need to provision and attach new services physically at an end user’s residential gateway, enabling service providers to do so from the cloud, it said. Service providers will be able to deploy services faster and personalize end-user packages, and quality of service could be enforced on a per device, per user and per service basis, the forum said. Broadband operators already are working on cloud-based virtual residential gateway services, said David Minodier, network architect at U.K. broadband provider Orange, which led development of TR-317. Network functions virtualization and software defined network techniques allow the delivery of such innovative services from a POP or data center to be implemented, which was not possible before, said Minodier. TR-317 ensures interoperability between the bridged residential gateway at the customer premises and the virtual gateway hosted in the provider’s cloud infrastructure, he said. TR-317 also gives telcos a way to upgrade existing gateway models virtually, enabling new features and services, he said. Local services will be shifted from the home to the network, giving users reliable and expandable virtual storage, which can be provisioned on a “pay-as-you-grow” basis, said the forum. In the TR-317 world, the machine-to-machine (M2M) home automation box will move to the network, “providing enhanced and easily-upgradeable M2M services,” the forum said. Parental controls can be enabled virtually, along with diagnosis, troubleshooting and maintenance services, it said.