PreEqualization Analyzer: Features

A bad connector or damaged cable can cause micro-reflections and ingress in your cable plant. Most diagnostics applications don’t identify problems like that. In fact, symptoms like bad SNR or high power levels are actually hidden from most diagnostics software when pre-eq is enabled in the CMTS. This means you often have to wait for customers to call and complain to even know you have an issue.

PreEqualization Analyzer is a Proactive Network Maintenance (PNM) tool that lets you clearly see which devices are being impacted by upstream impairments like micro-reflections and group delay, the severity of the problem, and the approximate location of the fault that’s causing the issue. And, you can see the issue before service is ever impacted for the subscriber. That lets you proactively fix the problem as part of your routine maintenance.

Our business intelligence dashboard places key summary data on one screen so you can quickly see the health of your cable plant. For example, you can view your worst performing modems and nodes, and devices that have the worst downstream spectrum performance, helping you prioritize which issues to address first. You can also keep an eye on plant performance trends with charts that show historical online and offline modem counts, and changes in modem health over time. You can easily customize the display of widgets that appear on the dashboard and their placement.

With our interactive mapping display you can see the performance of all of your modems at a glance. Three threshold levels (green, yellow and red) show degrees of impairments. You can filter the map to show only modems at a particular impairment level, only those that are partially impaired, or only modems that are full-band capture capable.

When viewing a device in a table or on the map you can drill-in to see more details such as the modem vendor, software version, MAC Address, port, digital tap response, in-channel frequency response, micro reflection levels, group delay, TDR, and VTDR. You can also see if the modem is associated with a correlation group, which is when the application identifies a common impairment affecting multiple modems (see below). In addition, you can view the history of the modem to see past performance.

PreEqualization Analyzer automatically identifies groups of modems that are likely being impacted by the same upstream impairment. The devices are clearly identified on the map, allowing you to see which subscribers are impacted and which nearby devices are not part of the identified group. The application also calculates a vTDR distance, which is the length of the micro-reflection. This information provides you the data you need to more easily find the source of the problem. You can also view past correlation groups with our correlation history feature to see any changes that have occurred over time.

SpectraVizion – included in your PreEqualization Analyzer license – displays a list of devices experiencing downstream spectrum issues. You can drill-in to view a capture of the full spectrum from that day for any device that supports spectrum capture. Click again to see captures from previous days. You can also rescan the modem at any time to capture the current spectrum and see if anything has changed.

If you have strand maps for your cable plant in a compatible digital format, they can be overlaid to on top of our detailed PNM map. For example, we can display layers such as your active devices, your passive devices, and your cable runs. This, combined with TDR and vTDR data, makes it even easier to determine where the fault is that’s causing the upstream issue.

Our Upstream Analyzer—a separately licensed module available in the same interface—displays the upstream spectrum from your CMTS in real time from anywhere. You can view the live spectrum passing through the CMTS on a PC or mobile device. There are settings for Max Hold and Min Hold, and with one click you can view ingress under the cable modem. You can also view a history of the upstream spectrum over time. Best of all, there’s no expensive equipment or complicated cabling to set-up. All you need is your CMTS.

We automatically geolocate your devices in our system if the format of the subscriber’s address allows for that. If an address cannot be geocoded, your technician can geolocate a device with pinpoint accuracy while at the customer premises using our mobile PNM app.

With our Cable Modem Installer and Birth Certificate feature, your installer can make sure the cable modem meets your criteria before leaving the subscriber’s home—and you have a permanent history of that install.  When your technician runs the Cable Modem Installer it automatically checks key upstream, downstream and PNM readings. The test clearly shows where a device passes or fails so that any issues can be addressed by the technician before they leave the home; or, if need be, handed off to another technician if the problem is further out in the plant. That definitely beats having to roll a truck a week later to a newly dissatisfied customer.

The Cable Modem Installer can be run multiple times from any location. Each time it is run it generates a Birth Certificate, which includes the last test results and readings, the tech’s name and a timestamp. This provides you with a record of each installation attempt, allowing you to track overall installation success. This also keeps your installers accountable, including any contractors you may employ, and it can show you where there may be a need for additional training.

If you need to dispatch a maintenance technician, it’s nice to know where your resources are positioned. There is a great feature in PreEqualization Analyzer called Where’s My Truck that  plots the location of any technicians who are using our mobile app.

If you see an outage or an opportunity to do some proactive maintenance, you can send a work order to the nearest available technician, which is pushed to their mobile device. Through the app they can log all work performed – making notes, adding pictures if needed, and closing it out. You can check the status of the work order at any time so you have up-to-the-minute information on what has been completed and which technicians are available.

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