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August 2002 Issue

By Michael Robuck, CT Associate Editor

Winners abound in Communications Technology's third annual Readers' Choice Awards contest. This year four winners emerged from a field of 17 finalists.

The competition was keen this year among the finalists in Communications Technology's third annual Readers' Choice Awards. The panel of engineers from cable operators whittled the field down to 17 finalists, who competed across four categories. When the ballots were tallied only a handful of votes separated most of the winners from the runners-up.

Readers cast their ballots at the recent SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in San Antonio. This year, contestants took a more proactive approach in promoting themselves at the show. C-COR.net, the eventual winner in the Best New Headend Product category, handed out buttons inscribed with "Go Vote!," while other finalists incorporated the Readers' Choice logo into their booth designs. Communications Technology's staff also received feedback that voters were making informed decisions by taking the ballots by the finalists' booths before casting their deciding votes.

This year's winners are: Distribution, Line and Transmission--CommScope; Customer Premises--Acterna; Headend--C-COR.net; and Network Diagnosis--Acterna.

CommScope tunes conduit

There's plenty of new "gee-whiz" products out there that could very well revolutionize the cable industry, but improving upon one of cable's most basic products may help installers do their jobs more effectively today.

CommScope took to the trenches to nab the Readers' Choice Award in the distribution category. Over the past year, CommScope's engineers worked on the ConQuest Toneable Conduit. The result is an embedded 18-gauge copper clad steel tone wire that allows installers to find the conduit without tearing up terra firma.

"The trend for years in outside plant has been towards more underground equipment," says Scott Lumley, ConQuest's product manager. "Easements are getting very tight in many locations, so being able to consistently locate your buried cables is very important."

Lumley explains that CommScope looked at different wire diameters for the conduit wall, while keeping in mind the standard dimensions that the cable industry requires.

"We ended up with the 18-gauge copper clad steel for several reasons," he says "One was the added strength, and two was the ability to carry the tone effectively. If we had gone too small on the diameter of the wire, or just a solid copper material on a smaller diameter, then you wouldn't be able to rip it out of the conduit wall."

The tone wire can be ripped out from the conduit wall for easy access when connecting tone-generating equipment, and standard industry connectors can be used without interfering with the tone wire. The wire has a fluoropolymer coating that allows it to move independently inside of the conduit wall and acts a moisture barrier.

The bottom line, according to CommScope, is that the toneable conduit can reduce costs by as much as 50 percent when compared to other detection mechanisms. By using CommScope's toneable conduit, cable operators don't have to put an extra wire in a trench or pull an extra tone wire through an additional conduit.

"It seems like an easy way to locate conduit, even when no cables are installed," one of the judges noted.

Acterna's meter a hit

Acterna's Digital Service Activation Meter (DSAM), entered in the customer premise category, impressed both the voters and the judges with its versatility and functionality. The DSAM is an all-in-one handheld meter that uses DOCSIS and EuroDOCSIS chipset technology to help installers connect cable modems.

"It's a handy tool for techs who are dealing with today's mix of advanced services," says one of the judges.

By streamlining the install process, Acterna says cable operators may cut down the number of truck rolls. Plus it's "rugged and durable," according to a judge's ballot. Without intruding on the customer's PC, the meter talks with a network's cable modem termination system (CMTS) to complete a cable modem install.

"When I moved into my house a couple of months ago, the installers used one of our older traditional signal meters to check connectivity," says Dave Holly, Acterna's general manager, cable networks division. "But they struggled a bit, and they actually had to get on my home computer to get verification. With the DSAM they wouldn't have needed to do that, plus it saves time in turning up the service. MSOs are looking for anything that helps them deploy services quicker, and anything that helps them reduce operational costs."

The DSAM combines DOCSIS protocol and modulation formats to perform in-band and in-service tests such as signal level, miniscan, upstream ingress spectrum view and QAM quality parameters. In addition, the DSAM is a signal level meter and has a one-button auto test feature that ensures all digital, analog and DOCSIS tests are performed the same way every time by technicians. It's also DOCSIS 1.0, 1.1 and EuroDOCSIS compatible.

"I've seen this meter, and I really like the size and the simplicity of operation for the installers," a judge wrote. "It's just what was needed for quick checks on data installs."

C-COR.net gets dense

While it looks as though video-on-demand (VOD) is shaping up as cable's knight errant in the battle against digital broadcast satellite, VOD is going to need some armor to be the industry's champion.

C-COR.net's lumaCOR High Density Platform (HDP), the Readers' Choice winner in the headend category, adds flexibility and muscle to a headend to meet the increased demand that new services such as VOD put on forward path segmentation.

"The need for high-density platforms with low-power, low-cost lasers will help when subdivision of nodes fed on lasers becomes essential due to increased downstream traffic," wrote a judge. "We need to better manage space consumption in headends and hubs as the need for more lasers occurs."

C-COR.net's HDP is built with a four-rack unit, rack-mount chassis that can accommodate up to 16 applications modules, which is the equivalent of four modules in a one-rack unit. The HDP houses up to two power supply modules for redundancy, and an element management module. It uses Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) over Ethernet for remote element management.

The HDP provides cable operators a large number of transmitters on a dense platform to create one-to-one transmitter-to-node configurations as more advanced services are ramped up. The end result is fewer subscribers per transmitter and increased network granularity.

"With the lumaCOR HDP one can have scalability with granularity, avoiding the need to add bandwidth in big chunks," says Horacio Facca, senior director of business development and strategic marketing for C-COR.net. "With finer bandwidth granularity, MSOs can meet the increased demand for capacity a few steps at a time as their customers and enhanced services rollout plans dictate."

In addition, up to 10 chassis can be linked via a universal series bus (USB) interface. C-COR.net cites new laser technology and advanced thermal management techniques in the HDP transmitters as the reasons for improved link performance and higher rack density at a lower cost.

Facca explains that C-COR.net estimates the cost per VOD stream using its HDP is between $20 and $25, depending on the system, "but a sub $20 per stream design is achievable based on particular network scenarios."

Acterna enters OSS space

With 30 years in the cable industry, Acterna knows the business from the ground up. At the beginning of the year Acterna decided to apply that experience to the increasingly complex world of operations support systems (OSSs).

Merging all of the different pieces of equipment, and each equipment's various software and hardware requirements, with advanced voice, video and high-speed data services means cable operators will have to negotiate a maze of integration with regard to OSS.

Acterna's Vision360 OSS Applications Platform, the network diagnosis winner, is designed to pull together information from all aspects of the cable infrastructure.

"The Vision360 platform dips down into the management layer and up into the service management layer," says John Hart, Acterna's vice president, OSS Solutions unit. "The whole structure of the application is to build harnesses to other applications. Ideally, we'd like them to build to our fault management and automated testing products, but all of the companies are treated with the same harness set. This takes the best of what an MSO has already invested in, be it our products or someone else's, and links it all together with customer records."

Vision360 can correlate information culled from cable modems, set-tops, status data from power supplies and fiber nodes, headend equipment, upconverters, laser transmitters, and receivers and CMTSs with the data and IP layers of the network backbone.

"As we move towards multiple advanced services, it will be critical to support, execute and deploy these services," a judge wrote. "Having one platform to do this is best, and integrated products bring simplicity to complex networks.

Hart says that Acterna's goal is to have the Vision360 "80 percent in the box, 20 percent configuration" when it comes to deployment. It uses simple "drag and drop" methods when mapping SNMP and has templates that fill themselves in as the data is collected.

Time Warner Cable used an alpha version of the platform in Tampa Bay, and Cablevision is using it for an alarm correlation application in Long Island.

Acterna demonstrated two Vision360 applications at the SCTE Cable Tec Expo: High-Speed Data Service Assurance and Interactive TV Service Assurance. It has a VoIP application slated for release later this year.

Voting pays off

Vendors weren't the only winners at this year's Cable-Tec Expo. Tony Herrman, a Time Warner Cable lead headend technician from Kansas City, pocketed $1,000 after his Readers' Choice ballot was picked in a drawing.

"I was very surprised, but very pleased," Herrman says. "I think every year that I go to the Expo it's better than the year before. One of these days they're not going to be able to top themselves."

Mike Robuck is an associate editor with Communications Technology. Email him at .

Congratulations to Other Readers Choice Finalists

Please see CT's Marketplace for details on our other finalists.

Headend

• Advent Networks, Ultraband Switch Router
• Cedar Point Communications, SAFARI C³ Media Switching System
• Clarent, Clarent Class 5 Call Manager
• Terayon Communications Systems, DM 3200 Network CherryPicker

• Aurora Instruments, Altima X Fusion Splicer
• Corning Gilbert, Corning Gilbert Cable Assemblies
• Wireless-Bypass, WDL-5800: Wire-Hanging Cable Access Radio System

• Jedai Broadband Networks, FrontRunner 3200 Access Switch Router
• Terayon Communications Systems, TA 102: Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapter
• Terayon Communications Systems, TJ 615: DOCSIS 1.1 and 2.0 Cable Modem

• NOISE COM, DNG7500 Digital Noise Generator
• Pioneer Digital Technologies, Webnostics Remote-Access Set-Top Diagnostic Tool
• Sunrise Telecom Broadband, CM500IP Install Profiler Meter

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