Auto scaling of containerized ACSs for CPE management

The increased popularity of over-the-top (OTT) services such as voice calls and text messaging popular has a great impact on the business of traditional telecom operations. It is important for a telecommunications company to maximize resource utilization so as to decrease OPEX/CAPEX (Operating Expense/Capital Expenditure). On the other hand, the deployment of a variety of digital services for broadband Internet access may complicate telecom operations. When more digital appliances, such as set-top boxes and IP cameras, are deployed at home, more configurations are required in both CPEs and POPs. CWMP is a management protocol between CPEs and auto configuration servers (ACSs) for remote management of those home network devices. It simplifies the service activation and configuration, and provides functionalities of diagnostics and monitoring. The scalability of ACS is an important issue as more CPEs and more configurations are needed, especially when a lot of Internet of Things (IoT) are widely adopted. This paper focuses on ACS containerization to deliver services quickly and to scale well. To dynamically control and manage the containerize ACS, we propose a middleware approach to support container management and to improve scalability horizontally based on designated policies.