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February 2003 Issue

OPTIMIZE

Comcast to Accelerate Upgrades

Editor's note: Welcome to our new department "Optimize." Each month you'll benefit from other engineers' lessons-learned as they strive to save money in the operation and maintenance of broadband networks.

Comcast aims to achieve speed in its large-scale upgrade of AT&T properties by using methods proven during similar work on its legacy systems.

The project involves more than 60,000 miles and should take about two years to complete, John Donahue, Comcast senior vice president of engineering operations, says.

"Obviously, our main goal is to upgrade our bandwidth. But then very close, right behind, you want to do it quickly," Donahue says. "Already we're at the production rates of where we need to be."

The MSO expects to maintain the pace by leveraging models, processes and people employed in its upgrade of the "old" Comcast systems. The models include such factors as standard calculations on determining fiber counts, limits for node density and projected bandwidth required per home.

The processes entail a series of control steps that balance competing demands. "We have found the sweet spot where quality is not compromised, financial control--absolutely--is not compromised, and speed is achieved," Donahue says.

As for personnel, Comcast plans to use familiar contractors who know the system. "We use MasTec and Dycom for the majority of the work," Donahue says. "Then we fill in with numerous other companies as needed."

Comcast expects no less from those "other" players. "Their overall focus is on several things: competitive pricing, speed-to-market and high quality," says Keith Hayes, COO of Gibson Technical Services, which is working with Comcast in South Florida.

Hayes confirms the importance of internal controls: "Documentation is key." He stresses the need for standard procedures at "every possible aspect of the project, from inventory to sweeping to certification."

Seeing room for improvement in that arena, another contractor, SpanPro, has turned some of its own project management tools into a subscription software service. Its WebWorx Suite can reduce the need for administrative personnel and can allow for "microscopic accountability," Kevin Flerlage, SpanPro accounts manager, says.

Innovators may face an uphill climb in Philadelphia, however. Comcast's Donahue is satisfied with his proven upgrade process. "It works, and it's working again." -- Jonathan Tombes

Is Spam a Network Drain?

Cable customers get dozens of emails every day promising to teach them how to make thousands of dollars in their spare time, lose weight while sleeping, spy on their neighbors or do and see an assortment of things we wouldn't dream of mentioning here.

Spam is moving from nuisance to epidemic. Anti-spam vendor Brightmail, whose software was deployed across Cablevision Systems Optimum Online service area during the past several months, has a "probe network" designed to capture spam. According to the company, spam increased by about a factor of three between November 2001 and November of last year, from fewer than 2 million to more than 5.5 million spams.

The anti-spam software can save broadband operators money in a few ways, proponents say. Capturing spam-- especially indecent messages --heightens customer satisfaction and reduces churn. There are fewer complaint calls, which saves money in the call center. There also are savings in network storage and transmission.

Spam was not an overwhelming problem for Optimum Online, says Senior Vice President Gemma Toner. However, the company noted an increase in complaints early last year and deployed Brightmail. "We wanted to get ahead of the curve and make sure that our customers have the best experience," she says.

Spam or un-spam?

The trick is not just finding spam, but doing so with minimal "false positives"--real messages that are mistakenly treated as spam. There are a handful of approaches, which are often combined.

The most common is use of black list/white lists, which accept or reject email based on constantly updated lists of domain names. Another method is to continually create filters based on the characteristics of newly captured spam. A third approach compares huge pools of spam and legitimate messages and judges into which group an incoming message likely falls. Another technique is to divine the meaning of words, phrases and punctuation in messages and decide if it likely is spam. Finally, some anti-spam software determines the cumulative ASCII values of the characters in an email. Often, emails with identical totals are spam.

Anti-spam solutions are likely to become more common for broadband ISPs. MetroCast OnLine, which serves customers in New Hampshire and Maine, uses software from Postini. "Now, when we do get the very rare spam complaint, it is from a subscriber who has not activated their Postini filtering yet," Director of Engineering Steve Murdough explains. "A quick explanation on how to use Postini, and the subscriber complaint is positively resolved."

The best news is that the software isn't expensive. Indeed, blacklists are available for free on the Internet. MetroCast was able to deploy Postini's software without raising rates, Murdough says. Ren Chin, Brightmail's director of product development, says that the starting point for the company's software is $1 per customer per year, but that the price decreases quickly with volume. --

Carl Weinschenk

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