DOCSIS® ONLINE Archives

The Proactive and Reactive Power of DOCSIS PNM Tools

By Brady Volpe – From a reactive perspective, cable operators can use PNM tools to resolve subscriber issues more efficiently. A classic scenario involves resource utilization.

Beyond the Cheetah

By Brady Volpe – The cable industry hopes to deliver Internet so fast even your dog can’t catch it. Beyond fast broadband internet services. DOCSIS 3.1 has a lot of potential and we haven’t even scratched the surface yet, but DOCSIS 4.0 is fast on its heels. Let’s take a closer look.

Are Staples in Coax Cable Impacting My DOCSIS speed?

By Brady Volpe – I recently posted a YouTube short about how staples in coaxial cable can cause micro-reflections and interfere with subscriber modems. The video was well-received, and I received a lot of feedback, including real-world experiences and questions.

The DOCSIS Virtual CMTSs — What You Should Know

By Brady Volpe – One big difference is that a vCMTS runs on commodity, off the shelf servers. This can have many benefits such as serving different functions to the cable operator. Examples of these benefits are versatility, ease of upgrade from DOCSIS 3.1 to DOCSIS 4.0

Got a DBC to Change Your Cable Modem’s OUDP IUC? I thought so.

By Brady Volpe – In this article, I’ll cover how an impairment will cause the CMTS to change a single CM’s OUDP IUC using a DBC transaction. I will also hopefully help you understand what the heck I just said.

OFDMA — It’s Trending

By Brady Volpe – Should you or shouldn’t you deploy OFDMA in your plant? This is an important question that should be asked inside any organization before rolling out any new technology. Sure, OFDMA is trending now, and it seems like everyone is trialing OFDMA, but does that mean you should be doing it?

Understanding DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Modem Transmit Power

By Brady Volpe – Understanding DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem transmit power with OFDMA introduces new concepts. Understanding and obtaining the optimal transmit power can make or break a subscriber’s quality of experience (QoE).

Why RxMER

By Brady Volpe – One of the most useful downstream tests for OFDM is called receive modulation error ratio (RxMER) per subcarrier. RxMER per subcarrier provides an MER measurement for each subcarrier in the OFDM (downstream) or OFDMA (upstream) channel.

DOCSIS Going Green

By Brady Volpe – The traditional legacy analog CMTS is not sustainable. In speaking with Cisco and Harmonic about vCMTS, both agree that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a vCMTS is roughly 50%-65% of legacy “big iron” CMTSs. The cost savings come in multiple forms.

Why are the DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Modems Crashing with OFDMA?

By Brady Volpe — For these two reasons alone, OFDMA is a great technology that we get with DOCSIS 3.1 to start using in the upstream to meet the traffic demands of our subscribers.