This article will discuss the channel bonding process and ultimately the DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem registration process. In order to be able to understand this article, I will make many references to my prior article on Cable Modem Registration which focused on DOCSIS 1.x and 2.0 cable modems.
If you have missed our previous DOCSIS 3.0 seminars in the Southeast, make sure to catch this one next week in Nashville! John Downey of Cisco and I will be covering the critical DOCSIS 3.0 bonded downstream and upstream implementation and troubleshooting need-to-know issues.
See Brady Volpe and John Downey - Consulting Network Engineer, Cisco Systems at the SCTE Music City Chapter, February 22nd, in Nashville, TN to discuss DOCSIS 3.0 Troubleshooting, Implementation and Planning.
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 my presentation in "Slideshare" for online viewing as well as a fully downloadable PowerPoint version. The PowerPoint version also has reader notes attached at the bottom of each slide which you may find useful. In addition, the animations work a little better in the downloadable version.
The following presentation was delivered to the SCTE Piedmont Chapter on January 18th. DOCSIS 3.0 Piedmont SCTE Chapter January 18th View more presentations from volpefirm.
Don't Miss out on the Encore Presentation! Come see John Downey and I in another day-long DOCSIS 3.0 Troubleshooting, Implementation, and Planning presentation. We will be covering a wide variety of DOCSIS 3.0 topics, answering as many questions as you can ask, and providing you with an entertaining presentation - no one calls us boring!
See Brady Volpe and John Downey at the SCTE Piedmont Chapter, January 18th, in Raleigh NC to discuss DOCSIS 3.0 Troubleshooting, Implementation and Planning
"Impaired Service" in which case one or more bonded upstream channels are impacted by upstream RF impairments while other bonded channels are not. Since subscriber data is striped (that is broken into pieces and spread across each upstream channel and then re-assembled by the CMTS), some of the data will be lost or have errors while other data will not. Subscribers will most likely notice an impaired condition as upstream data rates slow down due to TCP/IP transmissions and/or VoIP, gaming, teleconferencing and other real-time applications will be noticeably impacted.
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. Partial service can be considered a feature because the cable modem will stay online even when one or more upstream transmit channels goes offline.
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 crying and sniffling in a corner. They are open to theft of service, illegal intercept of the data transmitted, illegal wiretapping of phone calls, etc. Even with Baseline Privacy Interface Specification (BPI+) DOCSIS is quite hackable as evidenced on a number of well known hacking sites. The cool factor in the Fraud & Network Usage Control module offered by Intraway is that they have developed effective algorithms which sit on-top of the most used provisioning systems, Cisco's CNR and Incognito's BCC.
