Destinations

Look deeper than you've imagined

Can you answer this question:

What is the Signal/Noise ratio across a Line Extender deep in your HFC plant?

Likely you can, but how much work did it take to find out? Did you have to roll a truck?

In Cinemon, browse to the Line Extender and read off the values. While you're there you can also read off the Transmit/Receive levels, aggregate counts of errored/corrected packets, and modem interface resets. You can even see the upstream and downstream bandwidth across the Line Extender.

How about this one:

Is it a hardware/software conflict in that newly rolled-out firmware patch that's taking customers offline across your network?

The roll-out isn't going so well, or so you suspect. Did you have to write a script or create a spreadsheet to figure it out? The vendor assures you the hardware and software should work together, but you pretty much have to take their word for it or spend hours correlating the values to prove there's a conflict.

In Cinemon, browse the device hierarchy. The red software revisions are the problem. Orange means you've likely got to break the problem down further for that revision.

This one gets a little more involved if you don't have Cinemon handy:

Which modem hardware/software revisions are connected to a given DOCSIS channel on your CMTS? For one of those revisions connected to that channel, which Trunk Amps are involved in serving those modems?

You're pretty sure you're not getting sufficient signal through from the CMTS to a particular modem software revision that's a little too sensitive to Transmit/Receive Level fluctuations. Something out in the HFC plant seems to be interfering with that particular frequency. To find out what, you are likely poring over CAD drawings with a list of street addresses trying to track down where the error appears.

In Cinemon, browse to the greenish-yellow device type. Break down the view by network hierarchy and browse to the channel that's showing yellow. Break down the view by physical hierarchy to see a schematic of your HFC network where the problem Trunk Amps are glowing an unhealthy orange.

Cinemon's interface allows you to intuitively explore your HFC plant in dozens of different ways, all using the same simple interface where red means bad and green means good. (Or, for those who can't distinguish red and green, blue means good and red means bad).