News & Events
What's happening,
and where...
AUSPICEÆ UNVEILS END-TO-END CABLE VSM
Meets Providersí VoIP Service Delivery Challenges By Monitoring Entire Cable VoIP Infrastructure; Real-Time MTA and HFC Plant Performance and Fault Monitoring, Infrastructure-wide Event Correlation and Ticketing
Orlando, FL ― June 16, 2004 ― Leveraging its experience in deploying automation solutions for high-speed data and circuit-based telephony services for leading broadband cable providers, Auspice Corporation today announced its Opslogicô VSMô (VSM) for voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. Based on the Auspice TLX® Real-Time Systems Integration and Operations Automation Platform, VSM will enable cable providers to reliably and cost-effectively deliver VoIP services to subscribers by proactively monitoring the health of the entire cable VoIP infrastructure. VSM supports the PacketCable® industry standard for VoIP as well as the DOCSIS standard for cable devices. VSM joins the wide range of TLX platform-based OpsLogic products used by leading cable providers to automate network operations center, customer care and field service operations.
ìVSM enables cable companies to overcome the complexity and cost of reliably delivering VoIP services,î said William Yan, Auspice Executive VP of Sales and Business Development. ìBy monitoring all elements of the PacketCable VoIP infrastructure in real-time ó and by correlating their status, alarms and outages in real time ó VSM gives a true, proactive picture of the service and the root cause of current or impending problems. VSM not only assures VoIP delivery, it also enables providers to avoid hiring scores of additional NOC, customer care and field technicians to support this highly complex service.î
VSM's key functions encompass:
- Correlated outage, alarm condition, performance and quality-of-service (QoS) monitoring of:
- cable modems
- multimedia terminal adapters (MTAs)
- embedded MTAs (eMTAs)
- hybrid-fiber coax (HFC) plants/transponders/nodes
- Correlation of monitored data with status of:
- call management servers (CMSs), switches and DHCP servers
- customer databases, billing and provisioning systems
- Intelligent trouble ticket creation and update
- Customer service visibility for:
- a consolidated, real-time view of all VoIP infrastructure components per subscriber
- subscriber account information and billing status
- real-time service diagnostic tools.
To find true real-time status and root cause analysis, VSM monitors, filters and correlates conditions across the entire PacketCable VoIP infrastructure. VSM monitoring rates, filters and correlations can be configured to adhere to any provider's unique procedures. VSM also includes built-in extensions to third-party applications and systems, such as CMS/softswitches, CMTSs, modems, MTSs and ticketing systems.
For example, VSM can determine if the root cause of phone outage is due to a regional power outage, an unplugged modem or MTA, a missing MTA battery, a misconfigured softswitch, or a DHCP server, CMTS or node outage. Also, for example, VSM can determine if the QoS degradation is due to a high-speed data or video problem on the same node, out-of-spec signal-to-noise ratio on a modem, or a switch or router that is dropping packets.
Examples of MTA outage and alarm monitoring features include:
- MTA on battery back-up; battery low, missing or dead
- MTA download and diagnostic failures
- MTA-to-CMS loss of communications
- DOCSIS modem online/offline
- Customer account and provisioning data correlation
- Filtering against HFC plant, CMTS and power outages.
Examples of MTA performance monitoring features include:
- DOCSIS modem values (signal-to-noise ratio, broadcast strength, packet loss)
- Call QoS (latency, jitter, packet loss)
- Configuration setting audit
- MTA and modem trend plots per CMTS, upstream and node
- Web-based daily and on-demand reports
- Correlation with CMS and switch status.
Examples of HFC plant outage monitoring features include:
- Real-time cross-service correlation of HFC, high-speed data and MTA outages across nodes
- On-demand reporting and outage correlation with DOCSIS/HMS transponders
- Trouble ticketing automation and/or trap generation for selected outages
- Real-time dashboard indicating outages per market, CMTS and node
- Recovery analysis tools
- History logs and plots.
Examples of HFC plant performance monitoring features include:
- Periodic aggregation and correlation of HFC, high speed data, voice and video performance indicators
- User-configurable weighting of indicator values per node or other HFC group
- Web-based performance reports
- Automated trouble ticket creation/update
- Correlation with assigned technicians.
Examples of service visibility features include:
- Subscriber account information (billing status, phone, address, modem MAC address, MTA FQDN, etc.)
- Real-time MTA network, provisioning and battery status
- Real-time CMTS and modem status and performance data
- Real-time status of CMS and DHCP servers
- MTA configuration audit (from CMS/switches and MTAs)
- Diagnostic tools (CMS-MTA communications test, modem/MTA ping; modem, MTA and line reset).
About Auspice
Founded in 1997, Auspice, The Enterprise Control Company , is the first commercial developer of an operations control software platform that enables enterprises and service providers to manage disparate technology infrastructure in an orchestrated manner to dramatically improve operations reliability and efficiency. With its roots in the modern-day manned space program, Auspice's TLX® platform was originally developed for mission-critical and complex operational environments, such as the International Space Station (for NASA), which are characterized by heterogeneous systems that demand absolute reliability. Auspice is also the developer of the TLX-based OpsLogic Broadband Solution Suite ó a set of integrated operations automation applications for broadband service providers. Auspice TLX and Auspice OpsLogic applications are currently deployed at leading North American MSOs. Visit www.auspicecorp.com.
For more information, contact:
David Hayward |
Auspice and TLX are registered trademarks and OpsLogic and VSM are trademarks of Auspice Corporation.
“Now we have a unified tool that gives our technicians a single view across multiple services – voice, video and data.”
Director, NOC Operations, Major North American MSO