Any engineer who's been to an SCTE Cable-Tec Expo knows that time is at a premium when you're deciding which demos you can't miss on the show floor. That's why Broadband Gear Report established its Diamond Technology Reviews last year. Top engineering managers from the MSO side sit on our judging panel, and they tell you exactly which products they think are "must-sees."

TI Looks to Speed Op's Transition to Converged, All-IP Nets

Texas Instruments announced a new DSP-based carrier infrastructure platform that will enable, cable, fixed and mobile service providers to transform their existing networks into multi-service IP networks with voice, video and data services.

TI's new carrier infrastructure platform is comprised of three elements — silicon, software and reference designs that include evaluation modules.

The silicon architecture expands on that of the company's previous VoIP infrastructure products, offering even higher solution density and the ability to support a greater breadth of applications, like video processing. The second element includes the Telogy voice software as well as a library of software modules designed to support the needs of cable, fixed and mobile network equipment manufacturers. The third element is a fully functional evaluation module, which allows equipment manufacturers to get to market faster and provides for ease of implementation.

Engineering, Management and Training Services

Raise Your Voice Quota at the National Show

A special collection of exhibits supporting cable's delivery of voice-related products and services will be featured in a "VoiceNET" pavilion at the 2006 National Show, the 55th Annual Convention and International Exposition of the NCTA at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, April 9-11. VoiceNET will be a showcase of cable's future in offering these important products, offering displays that provide the latest technological advancements to help Show attendees understand the opportunities provided by this emerging service.

SCTE Tips Its OCAP

SCTE will present "OCAP: How Does It Work and What Does iIt Mean to Operators?" on Feb. 15 as the next installment of its SCTE Live Learning series. SCTE Live Learning — sponsored by Cisco, Fujitsu, Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta — is a series of live, interactive, Web-based seminars offered the third Wednesday of every month (except June). The events are free for SCTE members and $29 per seminar for nonmembers. Registration is required and "seats" are limited. Archived recordings are available to SCTE members only, and at no cost.

ITU Offers Nod To PacketCable

ITU approved a suite of CableLabs' PacketCable specs as standards for the international version of services including VoIP. PacketCable-based standards are known internationally as IPCablecom, and this recently approved suite covers such topics as architecture, network call signaling, call management server (CMS) to CMS signaling, QoS, support for multimedia and other functions necessary to provide time-critical interactive services over a cable network using IP.

ACA Sets Date for Annual Summit

The American Cable Association's Annual Washington Summit is set for May 8-9 in Washington DC at the Washington Wyndham Hotel. During the event, attendees will meet with policymakers and FCC officials to discuss the challenges faced by independent cable ops in smaller and rural markets. The Summit will include educational sessions featuring industry leaders and Washington insiders, as well as exhibits from manufacturers, service providers and programmers.

Distribution

Outside plant, construction, installation and transmission products including amplifiers, test and monitoring equipment, fiber-optic cable, conduit...

Trilithic Names New Reps

Trilithic's RF & Microwave Components division added new companies to its representative team. dBD Communications Ltd. will offer sales and support in the United Kingdom. GCS Electronics LLC will handle Trilithic products in Maryland, Washington DC and northern Virginia.

Retrofit Amp Module Takes It to the Extreme

Extreme Broadband introduced its new Infinity premise retrofit amplifier module, Model IPA1001FIC with cable-less F-port Interface connector (FIC) technology. The direct-connect module is designed to eliminate the use of the jumper cable when using traditional splitters, thus saving installation time. By eliminating the jumper interface, fewer connections are necessary, thereby reducing in-home service calls and reducing the chances of common path distortion.

WiFi/WiMax

Tropos Eyeballs Cable WiFi

Tropos, a municipal WiFi vendor, said it is in talks with cable ops about using the company's wide area outdoor WiFi networks, according to a report in Red Herring. This could mark "a potential turnabout from the cable companies' opposition to these networks as they compete with their already deployed cable broadband networks," according to the magazine.

Transport Platforms and Solutions

Harmonic Powers Up for Deep Fiber Apps

Harmonic introduced its PWRBlazer HLN 3812H, a compact high-output node designed to facilitate the construction and expansion of deep fiber networks. The HLN 3812H streamlines the process of segmenting the hub-to-home section of the cable network in order to increase the effective bandwidth to and from the sub.

A principal method of increasing the service-carrying capacity within the last mile is by driving fiber deeper into the network and segmenting subs into smaller service groups, typically characterized as the number of homes per node. The high levels of RF output provided by the HLN 3812H enable cable ops to deploy passive coax networks from the node to the home. The rugged two-port node supports one optical receiver module and one return path transmitter. A choice of transmitters, each of which uses a different laser technology, is available to address a range of technical and business requirements.

Next-Gen Voice

VoIP, wireless voice, media gateways, multimedia terminal adapters, call management servers, PacketCable, SIP...

Charter to Expand Small Biz Telephony With Level 3

Charter and Level 3 extended their relationship with a new, multi-year agreement under which Level 3 will support Charter's expansion of consumer and small business telephone services. Level 3's (3)VoIP Enhanced Local service will enable Charter to reduce the time-to-market associated with its deployment of VoIP-based services.

Atlantic Broadband Sails Into VoIP With Net2Phone

Atlantic Broadband is partnering with Net2Phone for VoIP. Atlantic Broadband joins Liberty CableVision of Puerto Rico, Bresnan Communications, Millennium Digital Media, Northland Communications, CMA Communications and other cable ops who have selected Net2Phone's end-to-end, managed VoIP solution. Net2Phone assumes the role of PacketCable integrator and telecom administration agent, taking accountability for the telephony deployment together with the Cedar Point Safari³ C3 multimedia switching system and the provisioning and management of the PSTN elements including local, domestic and international long distance, operator services and directory assistance.

UMass Heads Out on Safari

The University of Massachusetts will trial the Cedar Point Safari C3 multimedia switching system for the delivery of IP-based telephony services to UMass. The university will deploy SAFARI C3 to a base of more than 30,000 users on campus. The trial will test Safari's ability to replace existing PBX and trunking technology within the UMass communications network, supporting SIP-based residential devices in dormitories and TDM and VoIP applications for university offices.

Feature: Old School and New School Testing for HFC Nets: Part 1

by Laura Hamilton, Editor, Broadband Gear Report

Sweeping is nothing new to cable, but as the HFC network has evolved to eliminate cascades of amplifiers, some engineers question its necessity. That's a dangerous thought, some testing experts say.

"Without sweeping and ensuring good frequency response, you effectively condone putting distortion and carrier-to-noise (C/N) problems into the network," Kevin Oliver, VP of marketing for JDSU's cable networks business unit, warns.

Talk to your guys on the front line, and they'll agree, Steve Windle, product manager at Trilithic, says: "Ask the field techs and they'll tell you sweeping is an excellent troubleshooting tool."

Find Those Leaks

Windle also cautions against overlooking the power of another "old school" test — leakage monitoring. "[It] continues to reap dividends, not only for compliance with FCC regulations, but for troubleshooting, and as a way to fight ingress. Where there's a leak there's an entry point for ingress."

JDSU's Oliver points out that ingress always seems to occur when an operator or technician is not looking for it. "A good return path monitoring practice includes steps such as logging and trending data, as well as creating automated node prioritization reports," he advises.

Windle recommends system analysis using a field analyzer that performs a comprehensive set of tests. "This includes measuring signal levels and quality, spectrum purity (freedom from distortions), digital tests (BER, MER, constellation, equalizer stress), as well as the sweep tests," he says. "Tying this in with reverse monitoring equipment for alignment and ingress troubleshooting gives techs the tools they need to quickly find and fix problems."

Keeping Up With the New Breed of Video

Remember the good ol' days when all you had to do was ensure the physical characteristics of your digital broadcast? Now, you have to guarantee that that the content or digital payload is error-free as well. Two of the most important challenges in testing and maintaining digital/interactive video service include consistency and regularity in testing of MPEG and IP video transport streams, Oliver says.

"Engineers should be mindful of several key areas to ensure optimal performance. Those include multiplexing, which should be correct, consistent and accurate," he continues. "Rate shaping should also be accurate, optimized for the network and not be so 'heavy' that they cause picture problems. In addition, insertions should be in the right place at the right time, and labeled/identified correctly."

Complex MPEG transport layer problems can take days to solve without a complete MPEG test set or monitoring equipment, Oliver says. "So, another major challenge for MSOs is 'interoperability' of different manufacturers' test equipment. Historically, MPEG analyzers have been limited to asynchronous serial interface (ASI) interfaces, but today engineers and technicians need to be able to simultaneously test different interfaces (i.e., DVB, ASI, QPSK, QAM, GigE) at different points within the network."

Trilithic's Windle says that one test capability that may be overlooked is that for impulse affects on BER over time. This plots changes to BER over time, which may be significant, in that at the instant a tech tests BER, it will likely have a good result. But when plotted over time it becomes clear that the transmission is being corrupted by intermittent ingress or impulse noise, Windle explains.

"DOCSIS 2.0 increased the number of equalizer taps to 24, which increases resolution and makes utilizing the MIB data as a test aid more effective," Windle says. "Through analyzing adaptive pre-equalization, test equipment can determine an upstream data channels linear distortion characteristics (frequency response, microreflections and group delay) without requiring special instrumentation or help from someone in the headend."

In Part 2 of this story, which will run in the next issue of BGR, we'll look at tests and measurements in the VoIP space.

Advanced Video and Interactivity

Broadbus Takes Its VOD Over the Pond

Broadbus Technologies opened a European office. The company has established regional headquarters in the UK in response to its strong customer success in Europe, where Broadbus deployments pass nearly five million homes.

Terayon Goes Absolutely Video

Terayon announced a restructuring to focus the company's strategy solely on its digital video apps and reduce its overall cost structure as a pure-play video business. As part of this move, it is reviewing strategic alternatives for its Home Access Solutions product line including the opportunity to monetize its current investment in working capital.

ICTV Marries Switched Media

ICTV is merging with Switched Media. The agreement will enable the combined companies, which will retain the ICTV name, to deliver personalized, Web-driven content to television that combines the live stream video processing capabilities of Switched Media's InStream solution with the interactive capabilities of ICTV's HeadendWare.

The Digital Home

Set-tops, DVRs, home networking,CPEs, CableHome, integrated cable modem gateways...

Cox and Blue Ridge Show Their Passports

Cox is deploying new and more powerful versions of Aptiv Digital's Passport DCT and Passport Echo in select markets later this year. The software upgrades offer two new major apps, Interactive Video Mosaic and iSubscribe, which are now available with both Passport DCT 2.7 and Passport Echo 2.7. The Mosaic app enables the presentation of multiple thumbnail video insets on one screen. iSubscribe is a new impulse subscription app that enables the presentation of a library of service offerings such as VOD or premium channel packages.

In related news, Blue Ridge Communications deployed Aptiv Digital's multi-room DVR. It operates with new versions of Passport (version 4.2) and Passport Echo (version 2.5) IPGs, enabling Blue Ridge to offer multi-room access of programming content that is stored on a central DVR set-top.

Spotlight

What Will Be the "Must-See" Products at Expo '06?