Using Lego Principles to Build your Access Network. It’s Time to Play.

Do you remember building cool things with Lego blocks as a kid or with a kid? I remember that feeling very well. It is fun, it fosters innovation and collaboration, removes externally imposed constraints and enables you to build what nobody else has imagined before.  What if you could recreate that same fun when building your access network?

Today's central offices (COs) use monolithic chassis and hardware-centric systems which are costly and beset with longer deployment cycles, making it hard to keep pace with subscriber demands.

So how can you build a network, that enables you to be agile and nimble, keeps costs down, and reduces risk by enabling you to pay as you succeed?

To accomplish this, Calix decided to fundamentally re-think how access networks are built. We adopted an approach similar to Lego toys; we provide you with a software platform along with supporting systems and let you unleash your innovation on top of them. We disaggregated big monolithic systems into smaller parts, discarding the unnecessary parts, reworking others to let you rebuild for your needs in an agile manner.

First, we decoupled the hardware and the software from each other so you could innovate in each space independently. On the software side, we deconstructed monolithic network elements into individual software modules using DevOps principles. You can read more here.

On the hardware side, we designed the AXOS E9-2 Intelligent Edge System to leverage the unconstrained architecture that has been perfected in data centers globally and adopted by nimble web scale companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon to quickly scale their networks and businesses.

Instead of building one big, inflexible, power and space consuming system, the E9-2 disaggregates the system into smaller single rack unit sub-systems which snap into data center fabrics on demand. Technologies like GPON, XGS-PON, and NG-PON2 can be quickly snapped on through corresponding line cards.

The overall impact is that OpEx and CapEx are dramatically reduced, while substantially improving the time to market. It is also more capital efficient as it enables you to pay as you succeed.

More importantly, it lets you pick and choose what and how you want to build.

As we embarked on this fun and fundamental redesign of the monolithic access system into a nimble platform of innovation, little did we expect the extent to which this would unleash the creativity among our product teams and our customers. As with Legos, the possibilities are many, and the fun is never-ending. Can you imagine how AXOS and the E9-2 Intelligent Edge System can change how you innovate in your business?