Volpe Firm | Technology Blog

20 02, 2020

DOCSIS 4.0

Mia Colabrese2020-05-18T11:03:39-04:00February 20th, 2020|

Evolve or Die: Can DOCSIS 4.0 Compete with Fiber? The Telecommunications Act of 1996 forever changed the cable industry. It allowed cable and telecom to directly compete with each other. Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specifications (DOCSIS) was already in development which enabled the cable industry to provide high speed data and later voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP). It has been over a 20-year competition between telecom and cable operators, one that the cable industry has done quite well with and the telecom industry has struggled to keep up. The question we face is

13 02, 2020

Misunderstood RF Measurements

Mia Colabrese2021-08-17T10:50:22-04:00February 13th, 2020|

Hello Everyone. This is episode 55 of Get Your Tech On, our show on All Things DOCSIS. I'm Brady Volpe, Founder of The Volpe Firm and Nimble This. John Downey is with me and also CMTS Technical Leader at Cisco Systems, and Ron Hranac also of Cisco Systems, welcome John and Ron. Today we are going to discuss Top Commonly Misunderstood RF Measurements. An overall discussion on confusing topics and commonly misunderstood RF measurements in cable. Over 100 years of RF knowledge. Topics Covered: Fun Math problem

21 01, 2020

Cable Haunt: Exploiting DOCSIS Modems

Mia Colabrese2021-12-15T10:13:01-05:00January 21st, 2020|

*Updated* (see patch for Cable Haunt at end of post) Cable Haunt is the fancy name given for a vulnerability recently disclosed by a group of researchers at Lyrebirds in Denmark exploiting DOCSIS modems. Cable Haunt affects cable modems using the Broadcom chipset specifically having the built-in spectrum analyzer many of us in the industry are quite fond of. Typically the forward path spectrum analyzer or Full Band Capture (FBC) analyzer in the broadcom chipset is used by the industry for proactive network maintenance (PNM) applications to

19 12, 2019

DOCSIS Evolution

Mia Colabrese2021-08-15T18:29:09-04:00December 19th, 2019|

Where we were and where we are going Hello Everyone. This is episode 54 of Get Your Tech On, our show on All Things DOCSIS. I'm Brady Volpe, Founder of The Volpe Firm and Nimble This. John Downey is with me and also CMTS Technical Leader at Cisco Systems, welcome John. Today we are going to discuss DOCSIS Evolution But first from watchers: This is in reference to another episode (52) where we were discussing another viewer’s (Jessie) issues with Hitron modems: Jason writes: Hey there! I watch the

5 12, 2019

DAA Pros and Cons

Mia Colabrese2021-08-15T18:32:06-04:00December 5th, 2019|

Distributed Access Architecture Pros and Cons for cable operators Hello Everyone. This is episode 53 of Get Your Tech On, our show on All Things DOCSIS. I'm Brady Volpe, Founder of The Volpe Firm and Nimble This. With us is, John Downey, in the flesh. John is also CMTS Technical Leader at Cisco Systems, welcome John. Today we are going to discuss DAA Pros and Cons. But First Question from Watcher: Love the podcast, so thanks! Secondly, as we know DOCSIS 1.1 introduced BPI+ in 2001. Well

20 11, 2019

How Telecoms are Leveraging 5G to Attract Gamers

Mia Colabrese2019-11-20T10:10:00-05:00November 20th, 2019|

Low latency DOCSIS and gaming — a billion dollar industry we cannot ignore In the last issue of Broadband Library, I wrote an in-depth article on low latency DOCSIS (LLD). The big focus for LLD was on gaming and the rise of Esports (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esports). If you recall, Esports is a billion dollar industry with 454 million viewers in 2019 and growing very quickly. Low latency DOCSIS is required in our industry to keep millions of subscribers who want to continue to use our broadband services for the purpose of Esports

8 11, 2019

CMTS Status Event List

Mia Colabrese2019-11-08T12:26:02-05:00November 8th, 2019|

CMTS Status Event List definitions for Cable and Broadband Technicians. Learn about the CMTS event list and how it can help you understand CMTS status lists Secondary Channel MDD timeout QAM/FEC lock failure Sequence out of range MDD recovery QAM/FEC lock recovery T4 timeout T3 re-tries exceeded Successful ranging after T3 re-tries exceeded CM operating on battery backup CM returned to A/C power MAC Removal Event DS OFDM profile failure Primary Downstream Change DPD Mismatch Invalid DPD NCP Profile Failure Loss of FEC Lock on PLC NCP Profile

30 10, 2019

Technology Trends In Cable

Mia Colabrese2023-08-28T12:53:32-04:00October 30th, 2019|

Low Latency DOCSIS, RF is sexy again, 5G, 10G, Coherent Optics and more Hello Everyone. This is episode 52 of Get Your Tech On, our show on All Things DOCSIS. I'm Brady Volpe, Founder of The Volpe Firm and Nimble This. With us is, John Downey, in the flesh. John is also CMTS Technical Leader at Cisco Systems, welcome John. Also with us is Mia Colabrese of The Volpe Firm and Nimble This. Today we are going to discuss Technology Trends in Cable. BUT First - John

24 09, 2019

DOCSIS Cable Connector Basics

Mia Colabrese2021-08-15T18:35:46-04:00September 24th, 2019|

Craft issues in coax can create havoc later on... Happy Friday Everyone. Today is September 20th and this is episode 51 of Get Your Tech On, our show on All Things DOCSIS. I'm Brady Volpe, Founder of The Volpe Firm and Nimble This. With us is, John Downey, who will strike a pose at this years SCTE EXPO. John is also CMTS Technical Leader at Cisco Systems, welcome John. Also with us is Rich Maroney Product Line Manager Coaxial Cable from PPC. Today we are going to discuss

21 08, 2019

High Latency is “Killing” you

Mia Colabrese2019-08-21T10:30:19-04:00August 21st, 2019|

Why is Low Latency DOCSIS Relevant to Gameplay and Why You Should Care Gaming is a billion-dollar industry with billions of players, and they use broadband to get there. I’ve spent a lot of time discussing the importance of low latency DOCSIS over the last couple of years on my podcast and YouTube channel. Let’s dive into it a bit more. Low latency or ping is desirable to achieve smoother gameplay and a user experience without lagging. If the ping is around 1000 milliseconds or higher, it’s definitely