IP Library Granted Patent US 10,284,928
Granted Patent B2
US 10,284,928 · App. 15/426,017 · Granted May 7, 2019

System and method of analyzing CMTS data streams

Inventor: Mark Teflian (Parker, CO)
Assignee: CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS OPERATING, LLC
H04Q9/02H04B1/38H04B3/46H04B10/60H04B10/69H04B10/697H04B15/00H04Q2209/30
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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 10,284,928
App. No.
15/426,017
Granted
May 7, 2019
Kind
B2
Abstract

Systems, methods, architectures, mechanisms or apparatus for analyzing cable modem termination system (CMTS) streams by correlating anomalies found in full spectrum CMTS upstream data to changes in cable modem operational settings to identify and correct network fault conditions, model CMTS behavior, improve network performance and the like.

Claims (31)

1. An apparatus, comprising:

a telemetry data capture device (TDCD), configured to receive passively tapped optical signal including subscriber data streams from a cable modem termination system (CMTS) and extract therefrom customer premises equipment (CPE), application and service telemetry data from a plurality of CPE; and

a computer implemented analytics services engine, operably coupled to the TDCD, and configured to correlate an indicator of degraded operation to CPE adaptive communications settings indicative of CPE faults to identify thereby CPE, within the plurality of CPE, associated with the indicated degraded operation, to adapt an operational model of said CMTS in response to said extracted telemetry information, said operational model comprising a plurality of CMTS operational parameters associated with respective parameter value ranges indicative of a nominal CMTS operational state, and to generate a warning in response to CMTS model adaptations exceeding a threshold value.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said CPE adaptive communications settings comprise cable modem equalizer characterization values of CPE within the plurality of CPE.

3. The apparatus of claim 2 , wherein said cable modem equalizer characterization values are generated using cable modem pre-distortion equalizer values.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the telemetry data comprises Internet Protocol Detail Records (IPDRs) extracted from the tapped optical signal associated with the CMTS, and the computer implemented analytics services engine is further configured to identify data having correlation with a parameter of interest.

5. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said degraded operation comprises at least one of a noise burst in upstream spectrum, uncorrectable forward error corrected code words, and a change in signal to noise ratio in upstream spectrum.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said computer implemented analytics services engine is further configured to generate a CPE warning in response to a high correlation between identified CPE and said indicator of degraded operation.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the TDCD comprises a field programmable gate array (FPGA).

8. A method, comprising:

receiving, from a telemetry data capture device (TDCD), passively tapped optical signal including subscriber data streams from a cable modem termination system (CMTS) and extracting therefrom customer premises equipment (CPE), application and service telemetry data from a plurality of CPE; and

by a computer implemented analytics services engine, operably coupled to the TDCD, correlating an indicator of degraded operation to CPE adaptive communications settings indicative of CPE faults to identify thereby CPE, within the plurality of CPE, associated with the indicated degraded operation, adapting an operational model of said CMTS in response to said extracted telemetry information, said operational model comprising a plurality of CMTS operational parameters associated with respective parameter value ranges indicative of a nominal CMTS operational state, and generating a warning in response to CMTS model adaptations exceeding a threshold value.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein said CPE adaptive communications settings comprise cable modem equalizer characterization values of CPE within the plurality of CPE.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein said cable modem equalizer characterization values of CPE within the plurality of CPE are generated using periodically retrieved data from said plurality of CPE.

11. The method of claim 9 , further comprising selectively increasing a rate of polling of said plurality of CPE to retrieve said data from said plurality of CPE.

12. The method of claim 8 , wherein said CMTS comprises a CMTS identified in a received CMTS monitoring request.

13. A tangible and non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed by a computer, adapt the operation of the computer to:

receive, from a telemetry data capture device (TDCD), passively tapped optical signal including subscriber data streams from a cable modem termination system (CMTS) and extract therefrom customer premises equipment (CPE), application and service telemetry data from a plurality of CPE; and

by a computer implemented analytics services engine, operably coupled to the TDCD, correlate an indicator of degraded operation to CPE adaptive communications settings indicative of CPE faults to identify thereby CPE, within the plurality of CPE, associated with the indicated degraded operation, adapting an operational model of said CMTS in response to said extracted telemetry information, said operational model comprising a plurality of CMTS operational parameters associated with respective parameter value ranges indicative of a nominal CMTS operational state, and generating a warning in response to CMTS model adaptations exceeding a threshold value.

14. The apparatus of claim 1 , further comprising:

one or more optical fiber taps, each tap configured to direct toward said TDCD a portion of a respective upstream optical link signal including subscriber data streams associated with a respective CMTS.

15. The apparatus of claim 14 , wherein each respective upstream optical link signal is associated with a respective CMTS within a system comprising a plurality of hubs, where each hub includes at least one respective CMTS.

16. The apparatus of claim 15 , wherein:

the TDCD is configured to repeatedly process the passively tapped optical signal to extract therefrom CPE, application and service telemetry data from a plurality of CPE;

the computer implemented analytics services engine is configured to build a real-time model of system components including at least CPE in response to indications of degraded operation, correlations of CPE to indications of degraded operation, and any of the repeatedly extracted CPE, application and service telemetry data.

17. The apparatus of claim 15 , wherein:

the TDCD is configured to repeatedly process the passively tapped optical signal to extract therefrom CPE, application and service telemetry data from a plurality of CPE;

the computer implemented analytics services engine is configured to correlate a plurality of extracted telemetry metrics with contemporaneous consumer services consumption to enable thereby a predictive services management of the system.

18. The apparatus of claim 1 , further comprising:

one or more optical fiber taps, each tap configured to direct toward said TDCD a portion of a respective downstream optical link signal including subscriber data streams associated with a respective CMTS;

said TDCD further extracting from each respective downstream optical link signal respective CPE, application and service telemetry data.

Assignments (4)
SECURITY INTEREST Recorded Jul 25, 2018
From: BRIGHT HOUSE NETWORKS, LLC; CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS OPERATING, LLC; TIME WARNER CABLE ENTERPRISES LLC; TIME WARNER CABLE INTERNET LLC
To: WELLS FARGO TRUST COMPANY, N.A.
Reel/Frame 046630/0193 →
SUPPLEMENTAL SECURITY AGREEMENT Recorded Jul 18, 2018
From: CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS OPERATING, LLC
To: BANK OF AMERICA, N.A.
Reel/Frame 046570/0416 →
SUPPLEMENTAL SECURITY AGREEMENT Recorded Jul 18, 2018
From: CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS OPERATING, LLC
To: THE BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON TRUST COMPANY, N.A.
Reel/Frame 046570/0430 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Mar 17, 2017
From: TEFLIAN, MARK
To: CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS OPERATING, LLC
Reel/Frame 041622/0169 →
Continuity (2)
Provisional Application 62291454 · Feb 4, 2016
Related Publication 20170230211A1 · Aug 10, 2017
Cited By (1)
US 12,707,119