testing Archives |

Back to the Future

By Matthew Hayes and David Ririe — Cox first began residential PON based services in 2014. At that time we were looking for more than simply billboard speeds. We were looking to defend our backyard from new entrants.

Into the Fire…

By Charles Allred and David Ririe — While we were successful with our initial orchestration system, there are still areas left to expand upon. Scalability is a bit of an unknown, but we will work through that as our remote PHY deployments grow. There is also substantial integration work to be done to blend the system into our existing tools. Once complete, its functions should be invisible to most of our support teams.

The Future Is Now

By Chris Topazi and David Ririe — As competitive pressures and bandwidth consumption continue to increase, the industry has looked toward new technical solutions to enable the future and provide a superior customer experience. One emerging technology is distributed access. This migration to new architectures is an inflection point, crossing intra-organizational boundaries and touching virtually every aspect of the network.

A Standardization Success Story from Cox Communications

By Michael Garramone and David Ririe — The fruits of our labors were later seen with our FTTH and CCAP deployments, and will now be realized with DAA. This has put us in prime position for the next step, everybody’s favorite buzzword, automation. We have a new organization focused on maintenance verification, software upgrades, customer provisioning, and among other things, compliance standards.

Will Smart Robots Automate OSP Maintenance?

By Ray Thomas – The time has come for the use of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) to maintain the outside coaxial cable network. Robotics technology has developed well beyond what would be required for a product that is specialized for cable outside plant (OSP) maintenance. Artificial intelligence is also well advanced and capable of guiding an autonomous robotic unit, which we shall refer to as the “OSP-bot.”

Making IPv6 Work for You

By By Alan Skinner and David Ririe – IPv6 has been a long time coming, but it’s here and offers some enticing benefits. Cox has deployed IPv6 to over 3 million residential and business customers, and another 3 million managed STB devices. Our insights can help you get the most out of your IPv6 migration.

Reflections on Automation in Testing

By Ray Thomas – As test equipment has gotten “smarter” through the addition of automated measurement routines, does the flip side of the coin mean that techs’ understanding of basic electronics theory is being negatively affected? An executive at a large search engine company has speculated in public that the ability to search online for easy answers to life’s questions was dumbing people down.

Crawl, Walk, Run to Network Transformation – DOCSIS 3.1

By David Ririe and Chris Topazi – Having recently completed our initial deployments of DOCSIS 3.1 OFDM on our CCAP platform here at Cox, our team took a few moments to take a deep breath and reflect on what has occurred over the past two years. We thought that sharing our reflections on the successes we have had, the challenges we have faced and overcome, and our view of what the future may hold, would be of interest to those planning to journey down a similar path.

The Testing Dilemma: Getting it Right vs. Right Now

By David Ririe – You can have it good, fast, and/or cheap. Pick two.” Let’s talk about some of those challenges we face in testing our new platforms and devices and how we might launch them both the “right way” and at the “right time.

Scalar Testing (Part ONE)

By H. Mark Bowers – In my last column we examined digital QAM testing requirements under present FCC Part 76 Rules and ANSI/SCTE 40 2003 Requirements. In this column we’ll begin an examination of scalar testing and why it’s important in the HFC network.