US 9,960,951 B1Granted

System, method, and medium for determining a failure of a network element

AssigneeCSC Holdings, LLC

InventorsRobert Cruickshank, III, Chris Cioffi, Thomas Brady, Maziar Hosseinzadeh, Jiyuan Qian, Gholamhosein Sheikholeslami

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Abstract

Embodiments detect issues in an outside plant utilizing a connectivity trail that indicates network elements (NEs) starting at the headend and ending at a distribution tap that serves one or more customer premise devices associated to a customer account. Embodiments determine a failed NE that serves the highest number of customers for which a trouble is reported to a ticketing system. Embodiments avoid reporting downstream child NEs that may be performing poorly due to the upstream failed parent NE. Embodiments associate the one or more customer premise devices, and a customer account with respective NEs of the connectivity trail, perform operational metric tests to determine whether a customer premise device associated with a customer account has failed, determine when an NE of the connectivity trail has failed. Embodiments also include rebooting the failed NE and/or notifying a ticketing system accordingly.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A system, comprising:

a memory;
and
one or more processors configured to:
obtain a connectivity trail of network elements (NEs) that begins at a headend or a first NE between the headend and a customer premise device, and extends toward the customer premise device;
associate the customer premise device with a customer account;
associate the customer account with respective parent NEs including the first NE of the connectivity trail;
determine that the customer premise device has failed based on an operational metric wherein the operational metric comprises at least one of:
Average Hourly Upstream Uncorrectable Codeword Error Rate (CER), Average Hourly Upstream Correctable Codeword Error Rate (CCER), Instantaneous Hourly Upstream Signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR), Cable Modem (CM) Instantaneous Hourly Upstream Transmit Power, Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) Instantaneous Hourly Upstream Receive Power per CM, Average Hourly Downstream Uncorrectable CER, Average Hourly Downstream CCER, Instantaneous Hourly Downstream SNR, CM Instantaneous Hourly Downstream Receive Power HI, CM Instantaneous Hourly Downstream Receive Power LO, Sum of US CM Timeouts in 1 hour, Sum of Downstream CM Timeouts in 1 hour, Sum of CM Resets in 1 hour, Instantaneous Hourly CM Status Value, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly US CER readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly US SNR readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly US Power readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly DS CER readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly DS CCER readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly Downstream CER readings, or Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly Downstream Power readings;
calculate a percentage of failed customer accounts for a second NE of the respective parent NEs of the connectivity trail;
and
determine whether the second NE has failed.

8 more elements

A method for a monitoring system including one or more processors, the method comprising:

obtaining a connectivity trail of network elements (NEs) that begins at a headend or a first NE between the headend and a customer premise device, and extends toward the customer premise device;
associating the customer premise device with a customer account;
associating the customer account with respective parent NEs including the first NE of the connectivity trail;
determining that the customer premise device has failed based on an operational metric wherein the operational metric comprises at least one of:
Average Hourly Upstream Uncorrectable Codeword Error Rate (CER), Average Hourly Upstream Correctable Codeword Error Rate (CCER), Instantaneous Hourly Upstream Signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR), Cable Modem (CM) Instantaneous Hourly Upstream Transmit Power, Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) Instantaneous Hourly Upstream Receive Power per CM, Average Hourly Downstream Uncorrectable CER, Average Hourly Downstream CCER, Instantaneous Hourly Downstream SNR, CM Instantaneous Hourly Downstream Receive Power HI, CM Instantaneous Hourly Downstream Receive Power LO, Sum of US CM Timeouts in 1 hour, Sum of Downstream CM Timeouts in 1 hour, Sum of CM Resets in 1 hour, Instantaneous Hourly CM Status Value, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly US CER readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly US SNR readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly US Power readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly DS CER readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly DS CCER readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly Downstream CER readings, or Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly Downstream Power readings;
calculating a percentage of failed customer accounts for a second NE of the respective parent NEs of the connectivity trail;
and
determining whether the second NE has failed.

5 more elements

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, which when executed by a processor in an electronic device cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

obtaining a connectivity trail of network elements (NEs) that begins at a headend or a first NE between the headend and a customer premise device, and extends toward the customer premise device;
associating the customer premise device with a customer account;
associating the customer account with respective parent NEs including the first NE of the connectivity trail;
determining that the customer premise device has failed based on an operational metric wherein the operational metric comprises at least one of:
Average Hourly Upstream Uncorrectable Codeword Error Rate (CER), Average Hourly Upstream Correctable Codeword Error Rate (CCER), Instantaneous Hourly Upstream Signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR), Cable Modem (CM) Instantaneous Hourly Upstream Transmit Power, Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) Instantaneous Hourly Upstream Receive Power per CM, Average Hourly Downstream Uncorrectable CER, Average Hourly Downstream CCER, Instantaneous Hourly Downstream SNR, CM Instantaneous Hourly Downstream Receive Power HI, CM Instantaneous Hourly Downstream Receive Power LO, Sum of US CM Timeouts in 1 hour, Sum of Downstream CM Timeouts in 1 hour, Sum of CM Resets in 1 hour, Instantaneous Hourly CM Status Value, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly US CER readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly US SNR readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly US Power readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly DS CER readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly DS CCER readings, Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly Downstream CER readings, or Standard Deviation of last 24-hourly Downstream Power readings;
calculating a percentage of failed customer accounts for a second NE of the respective parent NEs of the connectivity trail;
and
determining whether the second NE has failed.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 15/070,907Filed 15 Mar 2016
Granted: 1 May 2018
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification6 codes

H04L 41/0631
Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications: using root cause analysis; using analysis of correlation between notifications, alarms or…
H04L 41/507
Characterised by the interaction between service providers and their network customers, e.g. customer relationship management: filtering out…
H04L 43/0847
Errors, e.g. transmission errors: transmission error
H04L 43/16
Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks: threshold monitoring