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Hi everyone, we are going to give an update on network demand — Specifically, how broadband DOCSIS networks need to adapt to changing societal needs due to COVID-19
This is episode 63 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 today is John Downey, CMTS Technical Leader at Cisco Systems, welcome back John.
In our Power Hour of Cable on All Things DOCSIS join us and drop your comments into the chat. We want to hear your experiences as well as to how the impact of Covid has had on your cable networks from an increased demand standpoint.
To set the stage for the conversation, we have put together some numbers of the impact of Covid on broadband and wireless networks. This is some interesting information.
Overview (slides are attached via slideshare):
- Downstream peak traffic growing 20.1%
- Surge of 35.1% growth since March 1st
- Congestion limited
- Wi-Fi data traffic and Wi-Fi calling increased on broadband networks
- Symmetrical use of network
- Caps on downloads?
- UGS vs PGS
- Laser Clipping
- Congestion and compression
- Graph national downstream peak growth
- Graph national upstream peak growth
- Peak Internet downstream traffic
- Graph daily time usage shift – during the day
- Average broadband consumption has increased from 273.5 to 402.5 GB year over year
- 47 percent increase in broadband data usage, more gigabit and terabyte subscribers
- Ring doorbells impact on network and cloud usage – traffic on the upstream
- Upstream usage
- Cache services – off backbone
- Mobile phone service changes by country
- Applications and platforms responsible for this growth
- Streaming
- 50,000 years of streaming media in one day
- 22% Netflix growth year over year
- 4 years Disney+ growth ahead of projections
- 66% Peloton membership growth
- Social media
- 27% facebook daily website traffic
- 2x WhatsApp increased call and video
- 26% Linkedin quarterly growth
- 25% Tiktok increase in monthly downloads
- Business
- 3,800 years of Google meet in one day
- 2,900% Zoom growth since December 2019
- 2.7 billion meeting minutes in single day
- 80% Slack increase in new paid customers to previous quarter
- Gaming
- 41% Nintendo in annual profit
- 2X% activision Blizzard – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare vs Call of Duty: Black Ops
- 1 million Bunch Live – growth of users over seven days
- 70% House Party – growth in monthly signups.
- The Cloud
- 775% Microsoft increase in cloud service usage in regions
- 70% AWS year over year growth
- Streaming
- Mobile phone usage changes per country discussed
- 4G 5G hotspot at home for redundancy
- At home work changes discussed
- Social conversation on COVID changing things – evolve or die – adaptation in the networks to meet new societal needs
- Changing networks from city to suburbs
- piggy backing / congestion flow / burst / laser clipping
- 85 split to a 204 split
- contention windows in the return
- mobile to wifi calling and also Zoom causing laser clipping
- Contention requests and collisions
- DOCSIS works – request, grant, request, grant, request, grant – cycle
- best effort audio -wifi calling
- request packet – every 20 milliseconds request to CMTS for WiFi calling
- Collision sounds like dropped packets – sound you will never hear
- Laser clipping described
- Packets build up on energy
- Only 10 modems can cause a 10 dB spike in power – explained
- Stop Gap fix (until node split or increase capacity) – Take a hit on MER – Go to CMTS and set upstream level to minus 6 (lower receive power)- Modems levels drop by 6 (modems reduce transmit power) – which could give you some headroom into the laser clipping – must have good MER first
- Laser clipping is 100% uncorrectable FEC
- R-PHY – mac-PHY
- Tradeoffs
- PGS (Proactive Grant Service Flows) Low fancy DOCSIS initiative – UGS (unsolicited Grant Service) flows to mitigate laser clipping
- Non-mTA calls or Gaming
- Call Signaling
- nRTPS for call signaling to create “nailed up” non-contention request opportunities.
- Increase bw in suburbs – but now
- Work from home will entice employees to move out of cities?
- customer service has changed with employees working from home – godaddy
- EMTA usage is going up
- wifi calling – non ugs short packets
- nRPTS is a D1.1 service flow and can be used call signaling
- Best Effort VoIP (Vonage, Skype, Zoom, Webex, etc) creates thousands of BW requests and may not efficiently use piggybacking causing collisions and in turn power addition which leads to next point below.
- nailing up
- quality of service
- Low latency will come into play and better QoS for business calls from home, etc. The acceptance of low quality during the pandemic will not be acceptable forever.
- back offs / add in power
- packet cable multi-media
- Low Latency DOCSIS – PGS – contention request
- Can eliminate contention requests and create unicast requests at the expense of “nailed up” BW per device/flow.
- OFDMA – Upstream / OFDM – downstream
In The News and helpful links:
COVID-19 didn’t break the internet. It brought the future to our doorstep
Canada is in a strong position to keep pace with the insatiable demand for bandwidth
https://thewalrus.ca/covid-19-didnt-break-the-internet-it-brought-the-future-to-our-doorstep/
Mobile First, Virtual Everything—The Compelling Case For 5G Enhanced Broadband
Operators need to prepare for the game-streaming tsunami
Pay-TV losses hit 1.55M in Q2 as cord-cutting’s ‘second wave’ looms
US broadband market sees more net additions since 2012
https://www.rapidtvnews.com/2020081458901/us-broadband-markets-sees-more-net-additions-since-2012.html#axzz6V4xm1CjF
Charter Defies Cord-Cutting by Gaining Cable-TV Customers
https://www.wsj.com/articles/charter-defies-cord-cutting-by-gaining-cable-tv-customers-11596217742
https://www.pcmag.com/news/data-usage-has-increased-47-percent-during-covid-19-quarantine
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1106607/device-usage-coronavirus-worldwide-by-country/
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August 26th and 27th Light Reading Next Gen Conference (FREE to Attend)
Brady will be speaking August 26th on the 10G panel @ 1 pm
https://tmt.knect365.com/cable-next-gen-strategies/
SCTE Expo 2020 Virtual (Free to Attend all Workshops)
October 12-15, 2020
What Does A Wider Upstream Path Mean for Signal Leakage Monitoring & Reporting?
Brady Volpe – Volpe Firm and Nimble This, Ron Hranac – Cisco, John Chrostowski – Comcast, Kyle Hohman – Shaw
Wednesday, October 14th 9:30am EDT
Free to Attend the workshops
https://s19.a2zinc.net/clients/ezscte/ex20/Public/SessionDetails.aspx?FromPage=Sessions.aspx&SessionID=1848&SessionDateID=21
How COVID-19 Catalyzed the Network – with John Downey
Wednesday, October 14, 2020: 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM EDT
https://s19.a2zinc.net/clients/ezscte/ex20/Public/SessionDetails.aspx?FromPage=Sessions.aspx&SessionID=1822&SessionDateID=21
DAA Out in the Field: The Real Story – with John Downey
Wednesday, October 14, 2020: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT
https://s19.a2zinc.net/clients/ezscte/ex20/Public/SessionDetails.aspx?FromPage=Sessions.aspx&SessionID=1849&SessionDateID=21
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Upcoming Shows
August 28th @ 2 pm – Cloud Native Virtualization Part 2
Follow part 2 of this series on cloud native virtualization of DOCSIS and broadband networks? Brady Volpe and Asaf Matatyaou, Vice President, Solutions and Product Management, Cable Edge Business at Harmonic, explore this topic as it is becoming a big focus in the way we deploy and manage our networks through cloud native virtualization. In this second installment we focus more on practical applications of virtualized CMTSs and answer more questions from our listeners.
September 11th @ 2 pm
Episode 64 with Brady Volpe and John Downey CMTS Technical Leader at Cisco
September 25th @ 2 pm – Full Band Capture – Rocking PNM
Special with Larry Wolcott Leader at Comcast’s Next Generation Technology Group and Brady Volpe
Full band capture continues to rock PNM as we continue to uncover new potential with it. Join us with special guest Larry Wolcott, PNM pioneer and guru, while we discuss some of the latest advancements in full band capture (FBC) that will help the cable industry use proactive network maintenance (PNM) to optimize outside plant operations.
End Podcast
John thank you for your time today. This was a great episode. Our next Episode 64 September 11th.
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Hey just wanted to say I discovered your videos on Youtube earlier this year and have found them and your site super informative. Thanks for sharing your vast knowledge and cool to see you directed engineering at PSU!
Thank you for your nice comments. Just a correction to your comment though, Brady graduated from PSU and also JHU. PSU all the way though.
Awesome Greg, thanks for the feedback!