CATV Archives

29 01, 2023

What is a dB?

Mia Colabrese2023-05-01T16:12:26-04:00January 29th, 2023|

What is a dB? RF and Cable Basics :: Brady Volpe and Ron Hranac discuss RF and cable basics in a new series designed to help those who are interested in understanding RF and Cable TV technology a little better. In this first episode we cover what is a decibel (dB). This is a fundamental unit of measure that every person working in the cable industry should understand. To learn more, watch this episode 0:00 Intro 4:30 The Decibel Primer Beginning 5:13 What is a Logarithm 9:15 Question

14 07, 2020

How to fix your Coax and Internet

Mia Colabrese2023-02-17T18:35:20-05:00July 14th, 2020|

How to fix your coax and internet. I have previously discussed that coax cable is really fragile. To some this can sound crazy because we hang coax cable in the air, burry it in the ground and run it through walls. It gets driven over by cars and walked on by people. So why do I say its fragile. Let me explain in a little more detail. I am Brady Volpe, Founder of The Volpe Firm and Nimble This. I have nearly 30 years experience in the broadband and

20 04, 2016

RF Measurements in the Cable Plant

Mia Colabrese2021-08-16T20:15:37-04:00April 20th, 2016|

RF Measurements in the Cable Plant - Learn more about RF Episode 20 Hosted by Brady Volpe of the Volpe Firm and Nimble This. Guest John Downey, CMTS Technical Leader at Cisco Systems and special guest, Ron Hranac Technical Leader at Cisco Systems. Today’s show we will cover a number of topics including RF measurements and fundamentals. The discussion starts with basic building blocks of the sine wave and evolves to how QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) signals are comprised of sine waves with varying amplitude and phase shifts, which means even though we call

4 03, 2016

OFDM, Completely New in DOCSIS 3.1

Mia Colabrese2023-09-06T19:41:07-04:00March 4th, 2016|

OFDM, Completely New in DOCSIS 3.1 CableLabs has just issued the first DOCSIS 3.1 certifications to five cable modem vendors. These vendors were Askey, Castlenet, Netgear, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive. Cable operators are implementing DOCSIS 3.1 trials and very soon. production systems. Frequently I receive questions about DOCSIS 3.1 such as “is it backwards compatible with DOCSIS 2.0 and 3.0 modems?”, “what are the channel bandwidths?”, “ ”, and many more. OFDM It Always Begins at the Physical Layer As with my original tutorials on DOCSIS, we start

20 07, 2015

DOCSIS Online

Mia Colabrese2021-08-18T10:05:06-04:00July 20th, 2015|

DOCSIS Reboot… Everybody is talking about DOCSIS 3.1 and the technology surrounding it. In the coming months I will cover both the emerging technology of DOCSIS and how it impacts our careers, our subscribers and our industry with a focus on DOCSIS 3.1. This is an opportunity to discuss both the technical aspects of the DOCSIS specifications and then discuss the impacts. As an example, when we first introduced quality of service (QoS) in the DOCSIS 1.1 specification there were a lot of items that were not quite tangible.

23 05, 2014

Reduce Ingress and Egress – Simple is Genius

Mia Colabrese2022-05-16T15:47:05-04:00May 23rd, 2014|

It's a smart idea that doesn't cost a lot more than a regular splitter and also helps reduce ingress. It's called BarrIER technology by Teleste. BarrIER® technology is an innovative solution for reducing ingress/egress that addresses the complete in-home interconnect domain and solves the problem of maintaining adequate C/N levels. Using BarrIER® will reduce the need for manual maintenance work, greatly reduce operational costs, and incrementally increase service reliability and enhance network performance".

20 05, 2014

ANGACOM 2014 DOCSIS 3.1 Technology Panel

Mia Colabrese2014-05-20T16:21:23-04:00May 20th, 2014|

DOCSIS 3.1: Challenges to make DOCSIS 3.1 operational in HFC Networks ANGACOM Moderator: Brady Volpe - President and CTO, The Volpe Firm 11.45 - 13.00 Technology Panel ROOM B Access Network Dimensioning in DOCSIS 3.1 Dr. L. Alberto Campos - Principal Architect Advanced Technology Group, Cable Television Laboratories Impact of DOCSIS 3.1 on HFC Network Design Dirk Langer - Head of Marketing Broadband Communication Systems, KATHREIN-Werke KG Ingress/Egress/LTE: The Imperative to improve the In-Home Interconnect Keith Mothersdale - Head of Engineering, Passives and Indoor Solutions, Teleste Corporation Challenges

3 12, 2012

EPON | A Brief Primer

Mia Colabrese2012-12-03T09:00:25-05:00December 3rd, 2012|

EPON Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) is an actual Ethernet network over optical cable following the IEEE 802.3av standard for 1 Gbps (supporting up to 10 Gbps). There are two (2) functional components of an EPON network, an Optical Line Terminator (OLT) and an Optical Network Unit (ONU). The OLT is analogous to a CMTS in a DOCSIS network while the ONU is similar to the cable modem. Data is transmitted to by the OLT to ONUs in the downstream by a broadcast method. Encryption is used, so