Last week we exhibited at The Cable Show in Los Angeles, CA. This event provides a forum for all the Cable MSOs to gather to discuss content/programming, TV networks and much of the infrastructure to deliver next generation video.

Alongside the very Hollywood-esque show is CableNet. This always well-attended “product demo-focused” pavilion of the show, organized by CableLabs, provides insight into timely key themes such as interactive TV, video on demand, and broadband over cable. It gives operators the chance to see a broad range of product demonstrations within a very focused area.

Sandvine took the opportunity to demonstrate its latest product in our Network Business Intelligence Portfolio.  Network Data Analytics is focused on providing an executive level dashboard view of how subscribers are using their broadband service. It aims to answer questions like “How do my DOCSIS 3 subscribers use their service compared to the DOCSIS 2 subscribers?” or “Where will I get the best return on my CAPEX budget?”. It was great to see the many cable operators who  dropped by to explore. They were quite intrigued by the flexibility of the product and how it could potentially help them to enhance their businesses and their customers quality of experience. After all, providing better broadband is the end goal.

In addition to a wide range of operators, we were pleased to host FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, when he dropped by to see some of the trends that Sandvine is currently reporting on.

Were you at the show? Please share your better broadband observations and experiences.

Have you ever read a press release containing superlatives such as “greatest” or “largest” and wondered…is that claim credible?  In today’s competitive broadband climate, it is more important than ever to deliver products that provide cost-efficiencies for the operator.  This translates to lower capital and operating costs, which in turn benefits the subscriber in the form of network and service expansions.  Where it becomes challenging is when equipment vendors advertise leadership where the actual numbers don’t add up. 

In our business, one key metric is ‘throughput per rack unit’. This is calculated as aggregate throughput in bits per second, divided by the number of rack units or RU (a rack unit is a standard unit of height equal to 4.5cm).  For example, Sandvine’s PTS 24000 has 80 gigabits per second per RU so (80 Gbps)/4RU = 20 Gbps/RU. In comparison, a platform that claimed 80 gigabits per second in 9RU or (80 Gbps)/9RU would be delivering just 8 gigabits per second per RU. 

Other meaningful metrics to explore, depending on your objective, might include the port-density angle with ‘ports per rack unit’ or a comparison of the ‘number of subscribers supported per rack unit’. Any way you slice the density question, making sense of the numbers can require cutting through some confusion as well as analysis beyond face value.