Managing today’s cable networks can be a nightmare; simple tools like mib browsers can alleviate some of this pain. There are a vast number of areas in the network, which are important to delivering content to the end users. For any provider of cable services it is imperative to have a network monitoring system as well as some sort of fault management system to receive SNMP traps. The combination of these two systems allows providers to know exactly what is going on in their infrastructure.
Traditional cable companies are expanding their offering of services everyday. Most are now offering what is called a “triple play”. A triple play consists of providing the end user with voice, video, and data all over the same link. To be able to provide this service a cable operator must have sufficient bandwidth in their network. This is where using a tool for network monitoring and fault monitoring to collect SNMP traps is a must. The operator must be able to watch for situations in their infrastructure (mib browser and fault management tools are common) which would lead to a service degradation or outage. As one can imagine all three of the mediums being transmitted to the end user has their own requirements.
Lets start with voice, which is the newest addition to the cable providers list of services, creating the “triple play”. Inevitably everyone has been on a phone call at some point in their life where they either hear themselves and not the other person or cannot hear the other person at all. Usually in a triple play the voice/telephone service is referred to as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). For a VoIP service to sound like your old fashion phone line it is important to have certain network performance metrics within specific ranges. For instance it is thought that a delay of 250 milliseconds or more for a voice call is too much, once this threshold is passed, the call will sound either choppy or have an echo to it. Knowing what metrics to look at to ensure there is no echo, is half the battle and a mib browser can do just that for an operator. Once identified operators can have SNMP traps sent to their fault management systems for further analysis. Another key metric operators look at is the jitter in the network, the smaller or lower the jitter number is the better call quality an end user will have, again SNMP traps going to a fault monitoring system can notify operators when the jitter becomes too high. Using a fault monitoring and network monitoring system becomes crucial for operators to ensure end users are within certain boundaries for their voice service to be optimal.
Then there is the video component which a cable operator needs to deal with. This is where cable companies have the most experience in deploying a service. As high definition (HD) starts to become more and more popular it is increasingly important to have a network monitoring solution in place and a mib browser to complement it. Pushing out more and more HD channels to customers requires more bandwidth in the network. Some say it is a seven to one ratio of standard to HD channels; meaning that a single HD channel requires the same amount of bandwidth as seven non-HD channels. As one can see the trade-off is quite big and having the available bandwidth in the infrastructure and the proper fault monitoring system to monitor the bandwidth to push out this new TV format on more channels is a must.
Finally there is the data component of the triple play. Again, most cable operators have years of experience in rolling out data services. Today people are of course looking for faster speeds and more bandwidth with the explosion of multi-media on the net. Watching movies and streaming music from the web has become standard use of the internet, where as just a few years ago there were very few people using the internet for these types of mediums. Operators are using fault management tools, mib browsers and performance management statistics pollers to watch the infrastructure as it evolves and more customers come online. One of the biggest video sites in the world today sees as much traffic as the entire internet did back just five years ago. With this explosion of end users wanting bigger, faster, more efficient data services, providers need serious network monitoring and fault monitoring tools to ensure they have the capacity in their network to provide this service to their end users.
Cable operators have come a long way in the services they provide today. The services being rolling out are becoming more and more complex as technology evolves. Video-on-demand (VOD), is starting to become very popular in the house as it allows end users to watch what they want, when they want to watch it. Operators have to use a fault management system combined with the collection of SNMP traps with the VOD system to ensure service delivery of the content when the customer requests it. Who knows what the next big craze will be, but be sure it will be something which will require networks to be tuned to support multiple services over a single link.
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