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DOCSIS & EURODOCSIS Cable TV Analyser

PROMAX ELECTRONICA S. L. is now presenting its new cable TV analyser PROMAX-27. This product is an evolution of the PROMAX-26 which has successfully been in the market for almost two years now. It includes all the functions of its predecessors adding longer battery operating time thanks to the use of new Li+ battery technology and offering brand new features to help cable TV installers to better perform nowadays challenging installation and maintenance works in modern networks.

Most systems have been offering internet connections to their subscribers for years. Cable TV operators upgrade their networks to offer IPTV and VoIP services searching for higher revenues. From subscriber side this means to be able to watch a TV programme or to receive a phone call in addition to the web browsing possibility using the same network connection. But IPTV and VoIP services have special requirements compared to internet web browsing or file downloading.

In order to make services with different technical requirements coexist in the same network it is necessary to introduce the concept of QoS (Quality of Service). It basically describes the fact that if a group of packets is late at destination while downloading a file, the user can hardly notice it. On the contrary if these packets are part of a life TV picture or audio communication then subscriber will immediately notice that there is a problem in the transmission.

To optimise network performance in all cases every packet will need to be classified and given a priority level, in other words given a QoS, depending on the type of information it carries.

DOCSIS and EURODOCSIS protocols define four types of QoS:

• UGS, Unsolicited Grant Service (used for VoIP)
• rtPS, Real Time Polling Service (used for IPTV)
• nrtPS, Non Real Time Polling Service
• BE, Best Effort (used for web browsing or file downloading)

Measurements such as packet latency or jitter can vary substantially depending on whether the test packet stream is set with rtPS or BE quality of service for the whole cable TV network will behave differently and make different effort levels to route the packets.

PROMAX-27 has dedicated menus to perform all those measurements in every case in the proper way.

PROMAX is a leading manufacturer of test and measurement systems, broadcast and TV signal distribution equipment. Our product lines include measuring instruments for cable TV, satellite TV, broadcast, wireless and fibre optics networks, FTTH and GPON analyzers. DVB-T modulators, IP streamers or IP converters (ASI, DVB-T) are among the company’s latest developments.