STANDARD Revision 1.0
C4® CMTS Release 8.3 User Guide
© 2016 ARRIS Enterprises LLC. All Rights Reserved.
375
Chapter 13
CAM Sparing
FlexCAM™ Hitless CAM Sparing ....................................................... 375
Guidelines for CAM Spare Groups ................................................... 377
Configuration Example ..................................................................... 378
Deleting a CAM Spare-group ............................................................ 384
FlexCAM™ Hitless CAM Sparing
CAM sparing minimizes traffic loss and customer impact in case of a hardware or software failure. When an active CAM in
a spare-group fails, the spare CAM automatically takes over. The cable modems that were connected to the upstream and
downstream channels on the failed CAM are immediately connected to the spare CAM. This includes configuration of
downstream and upstream channels and port administrative status. Cable modems do not have to re-register, and they
incur minimal data loss. Failback from the spare CAM to a recovered CAM can be set to take place automatically or
manually.
When a failover occurs, the CMTS automatically reconfigures the spare CAM to take over the functions of the failed
module. This includes configuration of downstream and upstream channels and port administrative status. Depending on
how you configure the CMTS, the spare CAM remains the active module or automatically switches back to the original
active CAM once that CAM comes back online.