Broadband edge

The broadband edge is an essential network demarcation point that plays a crucial role in delivering, assuring and monetizing broadband services. It must be flexible and adaptive to support new wireline and fixed-wireless access technologies, higher data speeds, more users and more services. As we enter the AI era, it must also provide a sustainable and future-ready platform that enables you to take on new challenges and opportunities.

The Nokia Multi-Access Gateway (MAG) addresses these needs with a scalable and versatile solution that supports multi-service applications for residential, enterprise, industrial and wholesale users over any access.
 

• Broadband Network Gateway (BNG): Lets you deliver wireline broadband services using fiber-to-the-premises (PON), copper (DSL) and optionally hybrid-fiber coaxial (HFC DAA) access networks.
• Fixed-wireless Access Gateway (FWAG): Lets you complement broadband coverage with 4G/LTE and 5G fixed–wireless access and optionally carrier Wi-Fi.
• Multi-Access Gateway (MAG): Lets you optimize deployment synergies by converging the roles of BNG and FWAG on a common edge platform.

To capitalize on precious investments in faster, future-safe, fiber-based access, you must also scale your broadband edge. Otherwise, you will be held back by bandwidth constraints further upstream. 

Our industry-leading service routing portfolio offers a sustainable platform for scaling your wireline Broadband Network Gateways for high-density residential, business, industry and wholesale applications well into the future. Powered by programmable FP5 silicon, it delivers deterministic service performance and energy efficiency, line-rate DDoS filtering and traffic encryption. Support for integrated and disaggregated BNG control and user plane separation (CUPS) deployments gives you tremendous flexibility to independently place and scale user and control plane functions.

Rural broadband providers may opt to deploy our Virtual Service Router appliances and network-in-a-box solution to connect smaller communities with a few thousand homes. Bridging the digital divide is a cornerstone of our corporate mission to help the world act together. Please refer to our rural broadband page to learn more about our broadband solutions and services for small communities.

Read our BNG solution brochure to learn more about scaling your wireline broadband edge.

5G fixed–wireless access (FWA) can complement wireline deployments where trenching fiber is too costly or time consuming. If you are looking to offer fiber-grade broadband services over FWA, you can use our service routing portfolio to scale 4G/LTE (SPGW) and/or 5G user plane functions (UPFs) while reducing costs for energy use and rack space.

Terminating FWA broadband traffic directly on router line cards equipped with multi-terabit FP silicon ensures that UPFs will meet the capacity and cost constraints of high-speed internet, IPTV and streaming video, while significantly offloading your mobile packet core.

Converged and mobile operators can use the disaggregated CUPS deployment model to interface the control plane functions (SPGW and/or SMF) with a 3GPP Service-Based Architecture (SBA) in 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) or Standalone (SA) mode using standard-compliant interfaces (S11/N11, N7, N10). 

Read our FWA solution brochure to learn more about scaling fixed–wireless broadband.
 

The proliferation of insecure IoT and smart home devices with gigabit data speeds has fueled a steady increase in DDoS attacks. The Nokia Threat Intelligence Report for 2024 flagged a 166% year-over-year increase in attack volume, with 60% of attacks originating from IoT botnets. Botnet attacks direct large sets of malware-infected user devices such as PCs, servers, laptops and webcams to generate huge volumes of bogus traffic that can severely congest your network, cripple its services and cut off their users.

As AI is infused into more applications, operating systems and user devices, it starts to shape broadband network evolution. Emerging AI applications will challenge your network in areas such as throughput, latency, reliability and security. Your broadband edge must be future-ready to anticipate these evolving needs.

Current broadband networks are designed and dimensioned for IP video streaming because video accounts for roughly 80% of internet traffic. Although video is susceptible to fluctuations in bandwidth, packet loss and latency, most content is public, prerecorded and cacheable for on-demand viewing. When network congestion occurs, streaming protocols can dynamically lower the video resolution and adapt bit rates (ABR) to prevent stalling.