By Communications Technology

Sunrise Telecom, a test and measurement vendor, has unveiled an enhanced version of realWORX WEB, a 24/7 RF monitoring system for CATV and broadband communications services. realWORX WEB provides complete access to information on upstream ingress and downstream channel performance and alerts operators to impairments through any standard browser, including smartphones.

Industry experts are advising operators to continuously monitor the MER and BER performance of all DOCSIS channels to maintain a high quality of DOCSIS 3.0 service. On downstream channels, users can review historical MER and BER measurements with realWORX WEB to determine if channel degradation or errors have occurred. Historical measurement graphs help the user gauge signal quality over time, and in-depth views allow for detailed system inspection.

In the return path, realWORX WEB monitors ingress and helps isolate problem nodes. By monitoring the entire optical return band from 0.5 MHz up to 200 MHz, special monitoring profiles can identify and alert users of hard-to-find impairments like laser clipping and common path distortion (CPD). Laser clipping leads to degradation of data transmission and CPD results in a data loss that can cause significantly slower communication rates. Finding and fixing these impairments can lead to the improved performance of return nodes.