rdware to be used in central offices. ON.Lab, a non- profit industry association based in Berkeley, California developed CORD, in conjunction with large telephone and cable TV companies, and industry manufacturers. Their goal is to define standardized open source communications network standards for central offices. In contrast to CORD's open source software and commodity hardware, most current and older central offices are made up of large, costly proprietary switches and specialized equipment. These switches are similar to telephone switches used by enterprises. However, they have greater capacity and are "hardened" for greater reliability and sustainability to withstand natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes. Moreover, traditional central offices operate on Direct Current (DC) power. CORD uses Alternate Current (AC) power. Equipping and upgrading traditional central offices is costly and often ties telephone companies into purchasing costly equipment from a single manufacturer in each central office SO that all the equipment is compatible and able to interoperate together. CORD is architected for mobile as well as fixed line networks. There are also versions for telephone and cable TVs' edge networks, which are connected to enterprise and consumer customers. In contrast to today's central offices, Central Office Re-architected as a Data center makes use of Network Function www.TechnicalPDF.com Virtualization (NFV) to create software copies of network equipment such as servers, switches, and hardware that support and manage access to fiber cabling, cable modems, and mobile networks. CORD is meant to emulate cloud services that depend on virtualization, can scale up or down easily, and whose features are managed directly by customers. The software in CORD-based central offices can be located in the cloud and managed by manufacturers, or remotely by telephone companies. They may alternately be managed and located at carriers' own data centers. The goal, in addition to saving money on central offices, 