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Cable Telephony Quality of Service









Cable Telephony Quality of Service
An Approach to Real-Time Service Assurance



White Paper









Proprietary Notice

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature without written permission of Net2Phone, the
copyright holder and publisher, application for which must be made to Net2Phone.
cable technology division
520 Broad Street
Newark, NJ 07102
973-438-3075 Net2Phones QoS-based Cable Telephony Solution
April 2003

Table of Contents
Overview ...................................................................................................................... 3

Cable Telephony Quality of Service ..................................................................................3

VoIPs Unique Opportunities and Challenges ................................................................3

Introducing Net2Phones CVOSS .....................................................................................4

CVOSS Features ..............................................................................................................4

Net2Phones QoS-based Service Benefits........................................................................5

CVOSS Differentiators ................................................................................................. 5

True Real-Time Monitoring ...............................................................................................5

Network Call Level View ...................................................................................................5

End-to-End Visibility of Network Performance...................................................................6

Highly Reliable and Scalable ............................................................................................6

CVOSS Components ................................................................................................... 6

Dashboard Know Whats Happening Now! .................................................................6

Miner Identifying the Root Cause of Problems ...............................................................6

Dialer Triangulating End-to-End Quality.........................................................................7

Portal Unified User Interface ..........................................................................................7

Exceed Caller Expectations & Enhance Your Bottom Line .......................................... 8


Net2Phones QoS-based Cable Telephony Solution
April 2003

Net2Phone Proprietary

Page 3
Overview
Cable Telephony Quality of Service
Any technology that wishes to challenge traditional incumbent phone services that have evolved for over a century must start
from the perspective of enhancing the calling experience - voice quality, echo, silence/noise, post-dial delay, etc. In the
Net2Phone cable telephony solution, two critical Quality of Service (QoS) aspects exist that meet this challenge.
The first aspect of QoS is inherent in a managed Cable Telephony service, which is integrated into an Operators
High Speed Data (HSD) deployment, and utilizes the suite of standards forged by CableLabs, such as DOCSIS and
PacketCable. With voice-carrying packets given priority in the network, and the full connection from telephone
through MTA/Cable Modem to CMTS to soft switch being run on a managed IP network, you as an Operator have a
compelling advantage over alternative consumer-targeted voice services forced to bypass the Operators
infrastructure and control.
The second key aspect of QoS is Net2Phone's Real-Time Service Assurance technology, a system developed and
implemented by Net2Phone. Real-Time Service Assurance provides a view of all calls as they are occurring while
drilling down to examine every call on every device at any time. In addition, the system proactively monitors and
analyzes the VoIP service and the underlying HSD cable plant, alerting Network Operations Center (NOC) staff to
anomalies and anticipating potential call quality problems often before a customer is even affected. Built-in data
mining enables the setting of thresholds across a vast number of metrics, resulting in summary reports targeted to
senior executives as well as detailed reports targeted to a spectrum of members of an operations staff.
Net2Phone's NOC, running 24 x 7, 365 days a year, toils behind the scenes to carefully monitor the solution deployed in the
operators network, augmenting your own staff with an experienced team of VoIP professionals. Thus you can get up and
running with a toll quality telephony service without the need to hire and train a completely new staff. With Real-Time Service
Assurance, you get the benefit of a world-class set of tools to track the quality of the underlying HSD service in the cable plant
as well.
Net2Phone's Cable Telephony Solution has been designed from the ground up to deliver superior Quality of Service, on a
platform that is highly scaleable, with redundancy built-in at key points of failure. Backed by the experts at Net2Phone's NOC,
you can have no better partner in delivering voice services to cable subscribers.
VoIPs Unique Opportunities and Challenges
The clear economic and operational advantages of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) lower total cost of ownership, easier
bandwidth management, reduction in infrastructure and workforce costs as well as a bridge to future technology have made
it inevitable that this new technology will supersede the old. As carriers limit incremental investment in circuit switched-based
technologies, it becomes a question of who can offer VoIP services first, and who can offer them best. Todays carriers
recognize that the real upside to VoIP is not the traditional arbitrage, but rather the ability to quickly deploy revenue-generating
enhanced services multimedia conferencing, desktop data collaboration and others that can often double per-minute
revenue.
However, along with the advantages of VoIP come formidable performance and fault management challenges. As a real-
time packet application, voice presents unique difficulties in problem identification and resolution. IP lacks the predictability
associated with circuit-switched networks, and without strong network monitoring and management capabilities, service quality
can suffer. Packet-centric network management solutions may provide retrospective metrics such as dropped or delayed
packets, but they do not give operations staff meaningful telecom network quality measures voice quality, call setup times, Net2Phones QoS-based Cable Telephony Solution
April 2003

Net2Phone Proprietary

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blocked calls and so on. Only the highest degree of visibility and control at the call level can support world-class voice and
enhanced services over IP.
Introducing Net2Phones CVOSS
The Cable Voice OSS Solution (CVOSS) is the central component of Real-Time Service Assurance. It was designed to
eliminate the black box aspects of providing Voice over IP services. CVOSS collects real-time call information from the Cable
access network, Record Keeping Server and VoIP gateways, complements it with a broad range of independent PSTN tests,
and adds extensive data correlation, alarming, and reporting capabilities.
The result is an unparalleled level of visibility and control.
CVOSS Features
With CVOSS Net2Phone has an end-to-end picture of an MSOs VoIP network, instantly, so that it can proactively identify and
resolve the root cause of problems before callers even become aware of them. CVOSS includes:
?? Dashboard true real-time call level display of gateway, span, and call detail information, plus CMTS and MTA status,
that enables operations staff to quickly identify and resolve problems.
?? Dialer end-to-end PSTN testing and analysis that captures all dimensions of the callers experience of your network,
including voice quality and access testing.
?? Miner intelligent data reduction, analysis, alarming, and reporting that support service assurance, network
troubleshooting, and fraud detection.
?? Portal web-based application that acts as a single interface for CVOSS components including subscriber management,
reporting and data mining, and documentation. Net2Phones QoS-based Cable Telephony Solution
April 2003

Net2Phone Proprietary

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Net2Phones QoS-based Service Benefits
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Speeds problem identification and resolution
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Provides centralized view of all key aspects of telephony service
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Enhances customer satisfaction, helping grow number of subscribers, number of calls, and minutes per call
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Supports addition of revenue-generating enhanced services
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Minimizes incremental spending on infrastructure and staff
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Compliant with industry standards PacketCable and DOCSIS
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Enables reporting and analysis of critical indicators of service quality, as well as res