If you missed the SCTE Cable-Tec 2011, I am making available my presentation and white paper on Advanced Troubleshooting in a DOCSIS 3.0 Plant. Each speaker had only 20 minutes to cover topics that could easily last hours, so the presentations are understandably brief. Below you will find More »
Partial Service is a new term encountered in the DOCSIS 3.0 MULPI specification and realized in field deployments of DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems using upstream bonding. This was a topic that I touched on in this years SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, but will explore in greater detail in this article. More »
I first heard of Intraway's products through a LinkedIn request to talk about DOCSIS security from Intraway's CEO, Leandro Rzezak. This immediately peaked my interest becuase today our DOCSIS networks are inherently insecure and many are unaware of this. What do I mean by insecure? No, not More »
When I first heard rumor that a knew company had a DOCSIS protocol analyzer floating around I had to see it! With full disclosure, many of you know that after 10 years in RF and fiber-optic transport equipment, I spent a few years designing, marketing and selling DOCSIS protocol More »
I admit that while I help my clients better understand the sources and negative impacts of RF ingress on DOCSIS in a cable plant, I have never found leakage/ingress detection itself particularly high-tech. That was until Daniel Babeux of VGI Solutions gave me a demo of their CPAT Flex More »
What first caught my eye by Televes H45 Spectrum Analyzer was the HDMI port feeding a flatscreen television. How cool is that? I also noticed the small unit was displaying a QAM "haystack" along with its power, MER, BER, and the demodulated picture just beside the measurements. More »
At this year's Cable-Tec Expo, Rohde & Schwarz (www.rohde-schwarz.com) introduced a 1U Cable Load Generator (CLG) capable of simulating cable TV networks with full channel loading. This baby is not just limited to North America, but can do channel plans for the World over! Here are the highlights: More »
A recent question from a reader provided an interesting response - the answer: maximum transmit power is 52.2 dBmV for DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems under certain conditions. The answer is very simple. They were transmitting at their maximum transmit level. That being in a 16-QAM modulation More »
With IPv6 on the way in a number of MSO (Multi-System Operator) networks, I have received numerous questions lately about how home devices such as routers and PCs attached to DOCSIS cable modems will get their IP addresses. Will cable operators suddenly start issuing IPv6 IP addresses to their More »
Everyone is familiar with Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses. You probably even set them up in your home network, such as 192.168.1.1 IPv4 is described in IETF publication RFC 791 (September 1981), which replaced the previous version RFC 760, dating back to January 1980. So its More »
The following article just released by Broadband Technology Report was written by Carl Weinschenk. A number of us from the industry contributed to Carl’s piece, but it is a nice high-level summary article on the status of DOCSIS 3.0. Below you will find a snippet of the article with a link to the BTR website
Many of us have been there before – one or more cable modems stuck in one of numerous “init()” conditions – how do we interpret these messages and what do we do? A recent reader wrote in and had just this problem. DOCSIS cable modems going offline and getting stuck in “R1″ or “R2″ condition, also known
Interesting post from fellow DOCSIS technologist on CMTS vs. EOC (Ethernet over Coax). Check out the post and his blog.
See me present at IBBS’s symposium during September 13-14, 2011 or Cable-Tec Expo during November 15-17, 2011 on DOCSIS 3.0 test equipment and troubleshooting.
A recent question from a reader provided an interesting response – the answer: maximum transmit power is 52.2 dBmV for DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems under certain conditions. The answer is very simple. They were transmitting at their maximum transmit level. That being in a 16-QAM modulation with four bonded upstream channels.
This is the speak you need to know when talking DOCSIS 3.0 to any DOCSIS Engineer or specialist. It is important that you learn the full name, in many cases the acronym and also what value the particular terminology plays in a DOCSIS 3.0 network as it will likely be crucial in troubleshooting tough-to-diagnose DOCSIS impairments.
Here is a list of five applications that I have found to be extremely useful for cloud-based computing. There are many I have still not tried, but this will give you some idea of what is out there. Chromebooks are definitely worth considering as a low cost laptop.
With IPv6 on the way in a number of MSO (Multi-System Operator) networks, I have received numerous questions lately about how home devices such as routers and PCs attached to DOCSIS cable modems will get their IP addresses. Will cable operators suddenly start issuing IPv6 IP addresses to their customers? Will you as a subscriber need to upgrade your equipment to support IPv6? Or does the cable modem act as a Network Address Translation (NAT) device and hand-out IP address to each device attached to it? These are some very good questions and the answers are addressed in the DOCSIS specification as I will outline.
If you have been upgraded to DOCSIS 3.0 and were issued a cable modem from your cable provider, you are probably paying a monthly fee for that device. I have always been a strong advocate of owning my own cable modems because it likely pay for itself over the two or three years you own it.
This is a handy summary of the various timeout errors you will find in a DOCSIS network. T3 and T4 timeouts are described in much more detail elswhere in this blog, however this post provides a high level overview of the various timeouts as a reference.
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