Device Provisioning

Chances are, individuals and businesses that subscribe to cable Internet services don’t give much thought to what happens behind the scenes so that the router or other devices they use to connect to the Internet, and the service itself, operates efficiently. But, for the cable provider, problem-free connections are a top concern, and this means that a process called device provisioning runs smoothly.

 

Jay Tanner (News - Alert), vice president of marketing at Incognito (a provider of device provisioning solutions), told TMCnet that this process works essentially as follows. Cable service is installed at a home or office, and the cable is connected to a wireless hub. This hub is then plugged into a phone jack for use with an IP phone.

 

The first time the hub and devices attached to it are started up, initial provisioning has to occur. The solutions offered by Incognito enable the cable provider to complete this provisioning. The cable modem performs that’s known as a “DHCP discover,” using bundled firmware (software). (DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol).

 

DHCP discover involves the modem sending its Media Access Control (MAC) address to the cable provider head office, where it is identified and associated with the subscriber’s account. A specifications file is then sent back to the modem, with details about the service being subscribed to. After that, everything runs automatically and, if the modem has to be restarted at some point, the service gets up and running immediately because the devices are pre-registered or “provisioned.”

 

“Provisioning is the first touch-point that people have in dealing with the cable company,” Tanner said.

 

Cable subscribers, Tanner noted, typically get two types of services from a provider: TV and Internet. The user’s computer, and also the TV, and both plugged into a cable router. The Internet portion of the service, referred to in the industry as “data,” runs on an operating system called DOCSIS (for Data Cable Service Interface Specification).

 

DOCSIS is something that Incognito focuses on, Tanner told TMCnet, because it is significant which version of this OS is supported. Incognito’s device provisioning solutions support DOCSIS 2.0 and 3.0; the newer version offer a number of advantages, including compatibility with Internet Protocol 6, or IPv6.

 

For those not familiar, IPv6 is a new version of the protocol used to run packet-switched networks (e.g. the Internet). A major upgrade from its predecessor, IPv4, this new protocol — which is in the process of being rolled out — will help prevent the world from running out of IP addresses, among other benefits.

 

Another advantage of DOCSIS 3.0 is that it offers higher throughput speeds for data, and when supported results in providers have many more devices to choose among.

 

“If you support DOCSIS 3.0, chances are you can support any DOCSIS device,” Tanner told TMCnet.

 

Beyond DOCSIS, Incognito has also worked hard to provide broad device provisioning support for Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP). Offering this support isn’t that easy to achieve because, although it is often described as a standard, in actual practice it is implemented with variations from different companies. SIP is important, though, because it offers more flexibility to providers than DOCSIS.

 

Tanner added that, while the meat-and-potatoes of device provisioning focuses on failover, high availability and serving files, Incognito’s support for SIP devices takes this process to the next level and offers greater value to cable providers.

 

To learn more about the topics discussed in this article, please visit the Device Provisioning channel on TMCnet.com, brought to you by Incognito.