Cisco Broadband Access Centre for Cable = Rubbish
Posted 10:23:45 PM on Tue, 28th October 2008 by Dj-ZoRt!

Recently I have had the opportunity to migrate cable internet services migrate from an existing ISC DHCPD + LDAP provisioning system to Ciscos Broadband Access Centre for Cable.

This is my warning to anyone considering forking out good money for it.

Whats my advise then? Dont.

Its pure and utter garbage. Ive found better software in abandoned projects on sourceforge.net, and fortunately they dont charge you!

Whats wrong with it?

There are a number of glaring issues which have meant I have spent weeks making massive massive hacks to get things to work right.

• The RDU (Modem/MTA/CPE database) is only accessible via Java API or gui. Seriously, wtf? This makes integration nearly impossible. Where are the command line tools? What about other languages like perl? python? anything? Making any form of autoinstallation is nearly impossible. Next to no actual documentation on the API and the gui is totally unsuitable for more than 20 devices.
  
• DHCP extensions are written in in TCL or C. um. genius.
• DPE, CNR, KDC and RDU all have completely different configuration methods. Yet they are all part of the one product. DPE at least has a cisco like telnetable interface, and the cnr has a clumsly but scriptable cli interface.
• Only runs on solaris
• Only runs as root! (all members of the system)
• Device config templating has no flow control, only variable substitution.
• Home grown file system layout (this is unix, get with it)
• Doesnt support ZFS on solaris
  
• Doesnt officially support Solaris 10
• Doesnt support non-sparc solaris
• No firm metrics on performance
• No firm metrics on database growth
• No revision control in the templating engine, or any aspects of the configuration
  
• Lacks cohesive back up strategy
• DPE fails to install properly
• Manual installation only, no install config file etc (great for disaster recovery)

So why on earth anyone would want to buy it is beyond me. You can do much more with ISC-DHCP and LDAP, going home each night not hating your job. As for support? Call the cisco hotline and they have never even heard of the product before.

Youre going to have to attach bacc to your user db anyway, so why not just hook ISC straight to it rather than having to copying users in and out of BACC from sql or ldap (etc).

There are even companies you can pay to support your ISC if the massive wealth of information on websites, newsgroups and forums, plus printed inside paper books isnt enough.

BACC wont give you peace of mind, it will just give you a clunky cable provisioning system.