In the broadband industry, network operators and vendors are continually working together to advance interoperability and streamline operations — but the puzzle pieces don't always fall into place easily. Passive optical networks (PONs), for example, face the ongoing challenge of achieving interoperability without stifling innovation. PON standards are intentionally written to be flexible and to encourage innovation. When translated to practical implementation, this approach has led to diverse interpretations, creating interoperability challenges.

PON standards establish functional and behavioral requirements that span a network’s operational layers. These standards alone do not guarantee interoperability among vendors. For network operators, lack of interoperability leads to fragmentation and vendor lock-in. This includes bookended deployments, in which optical network units (ONUs) and optical line terminals (OLTs) must be provided by the same vendor. These limitations and challenges drive up operational costs, increase network complexity and extend time to market as operators grapple with compatibility issues.

Early in the evolution of PON, CableLabs’ DOCSIS®️ Provisioning of EPON (DPoE) specifications and certification program represented a significant advancement in addressing these challenges. By implementing rigorous interoperability testing between ONUs and OLTs, DPoE demonstrated that detailed specifications combined with collaborative industry efforts can achieve multi-vendor PON equipment compatibility. This success provided valuable insights for advancing interoperability across the broader PON ecosystem.

But DPoE's scope was focused on PON based on IEEE standards, so it did not address the interoperability challenges present in PON based on ITU-T standards. This is particularly evident in the deployment of XGS-PON, which is becoming the predominant ITU-T-based PON technology worldwide. As the industry moves toward newer technologies like 25GS-PON and 50G-PON, establishing robust interoperability standards becomes increasingly critical.

BBF has made significant strides in advancing PON interoperability through its comprehensive testing framework. By developing detailed test plans and guidelines, the organization addresses the implementation gaps in ITU-T PON standards. Its cornerstone documents — TR-255 “GPON Interoperability Test Plan,” TR-309 “PON TC Layer Interoperability Test Plan” and TP-247 “G-PON & XG-PON & XGS-PON ONU Conformance Test Plan” — establish rigorous testing protocols for various network scenarios, from traffic management to fault handling.

Advancing Interoperability Together

CableLabs recently hosted a PON Plugfest interoperability event on behalf of the Broadband Forum (BBF). CableLabs, a member of the Broadband Forum, provides the technologies, experts and tools to advance ideas from research to real-world deployment. CableLabs is well equipped to offer testing services for hybrid fiber coax (HFC), fiber to the premises (FTTP) and mobile network equipment — making our state-of-the-art facilities ideal for interoperability testing and an event like this.

This event provided a neutral environment in which vendors could work collaboratively to test their products for interoperability — for both XGS-PON and 25GS-PON implementations — according to test plans created by the Broadband Forum.

Collaborate With Us

It is essential for industry partners like CableLabs and BBF to work together to chart the next phase of specification development and drive interoperability standards for OLTs and ONUs. We invite our members and the vendor community to join us in CableLabs’ Interop·Labs events and in other opportunities for collaboration, such as our working groups, to gain valuable insights into key industry technologies and interoperability challenges and opportunities.

What would a future built on seamless network connectivity look like in the real world? For users, it would create seamless experiences that never require switching from one network to another due to dropped connections.  

For operators, seamless connectivity means delivering context-aware networks that are self-learning, self-healing and self-securing. Built on fixed mobile convergence, managed Wi-Fi and profile management applications, these networks will create reliable, stable connections across all networks anywhere and on any device.  

Watch the video below to learn how seamless connectivity plays a key role in the CableLabs Technology Vision as one of the three pillars needed to build adaptive networks. 

Achieving this vision will require collaboration across the industry to ensure alignment and interoperability. CableLabs fosters these connections through working groups that bring together our members, vendors and industry peers to develop future-ready solutions. We invite you to join us as we work together to advance connectivity. 

A fundamental enabler in connecting people around the globe, DOCSIS technology has empowered millions to live, work, learn and play. Since the days of the first DOCSIS 1.0 cable modems (CMs) almost 30 years ago, DOCSIS technology has continued to evolve, benefitting from a robust ecosystem of operators and vendors working together with CableLabs to develop technologies that enable differentiated services.

Just in the last decade, operators have moved from DOCSIS 3.0 technology to deploying DOCSIS 3.1 technology at scale. Now, in 2024 and going into 2025, operators are evaluating, starting initial deployments and rolling out DOCSIS 4.0 networks.

Because DOCSIS networks always provide backward compatibility, older modems can coexist and provide service to customers even after the operator has moved ahead to newer technology. This is critical as modems often live in the network for many years.

Work at CableLabs is underway to define the future of DOCSIS networks and the technology’s role in our broader network strategy. For a better understanding of what’s ahead, let’s discuss some of the recent evolutionary steps in the DOCSIS technology ecosystem.

What Is DOCSIS 3.0?

DOCSIS 3.0 networks introduced channel bonding and allowed operators to bond multiple single carrier quadrature amplitude modulation (SC-QAM) channels together (in both the upstream and downstream directions) to increase the available speeds at the CM. A DOCSIS 3.0 CM with 32 SC-QAM channels in the downstream and four SC-QAM channels in the upstream could theoretically get a peak throughput of 1 Gbps/100 Mbps (downstream/upstream) on the network, though actual service tiers offered on individual networks may have differed.

What Is DOCSIS 3.1?

DOCSIS 3.1 technology introduced orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) technology. A DOCSIS 3.1 CM, typically with two OFDM channels and 32 SC-QAM channels in the downstream and two OFDMA channels and four SC-QAM channels in the upstream, theoretically would get to a throughput of 5 Gbps/1.7 Gbps on the network. Actual service tiers offered by operators would be dependent on their network configuration and channels and service tiers enabled.

DOCSIS 3.1 technology allowed operators to enable gigabit and multigigabit service offerings (downstream) in their markets. Depending on the operator upgrades to their outside plant, the upstream capacities could range from 100 to 250 Mbps on a low-split plant, to 250 to 575 Mbps on a mid-split plant, to 1.5 to 1.7 Gbps on a high-split plant.

What Is DOCSIS 3.1 Plus?

In the last year, vendors have built DOCSIS 3.1 cable modems with additional downstream channel capabilities, going up from two, to four or even five OFDM channels. This is a welcome product extension beyond the minimum device capabilities described in the DOCSIS 3.1 specifications.

CableLabs, along with our member operators in the industry and NCTA, are coalescing around the term DOCSIS 3.1 Plus (DOCSIS 3.1+) CM to identify this new class of modems. DOCSIS 3.1 Plus CMs will enable up to 8 or 9 Gbps on the downstream — again, depending on the spectrum available in the cable plant for an operator. Typically, a software upgrade is needed on the CMTS to enable the additional channels. Alternatively, an operator can also seed the network with DOCSIS 4.0 CMs, which have a minimum of five OFDM channels, on existing DOCSIS 3.1 CMTS to support similar increases in downstream speeds.

What Is DOCSIS 4.0?

DOCSIS 4.0 technology is the latest generation of high-speed broadband solutions over hybrid fiber coax (HFC) networks. DOCSIS 4.0 technology catapults the broadband network speeds up to 10 Gbps downstream and 6 Gbps upstream.

DOCSIS 4.0 specifications build on the OFDM and OFDMA technology. It increases the spectrum available for the upstream and downstream and then fills them with more OFDM and OFDMA channels. The technology allows different outside plant upgrade paths to operators, a frequency division duplex (FDD) mode or a full duplex (FDX) mode of operation. For FDD mode, there are different upstream/downstream splits an operator can choose for their outside plant, each providing an increase in upstream/downstream capacity. FDX mode also enables flexibility in how operators size and utilize the FDX portion of the spectrum to meet the needs of their customers.

In an FDD plant, for an FDD CM, the upstream capacities could range from 4.2 Gbps (on a UHS-396 MHz plant), to 6 Gbps on a (UHS-684 MHz plant) and the downstream capacities could range from 9-10 Gbps. In an FDX plant, an FDX CM also can reach up to 6 Gbps on the upstream and 9-10 Gbps or more on the downstream. This is assuming a DOCSIS 4.0 CM has the required minimum support for five OFDM downstream channels and seven OFDMA channels. A CM with more channels and on a plant where the additional spectrum is enabled could get downstream speeds beyond 10 Gbps.

Current product developments also enable devices that can operate on both types of networks — either FDD or FDX (albeit not at the same time, as the outside plant will be configured for either one mode of operation or the other). In addition, a DOCSIS 3.1 CM can also be software upgraded to participate in an FDX network, known as an FDX-Limited or an FDX-L CM, with limited capabilities for operating within the FDX band. Though this CM’s peak speeds remain the same, it allows operators to use the FDX spectrum flexibly, for both DOCSIS 3.1 CMs and DOCSIS 4.0 CMs.

The DOCSIS Technology Evolution

CableLabs has hosted nine DOCSIS 4.0 Interop·Labs events since July of 2023, and more are planned for 2025. Each event offers a new, up-close look into how DOCSIS 4.0 equipment is maturing. Operators are busy evaluating and testing the different components that will need to be upgraded for a DOCSIS 4.0 network — taps, amplifiers, RPDs, CCAP cores and modems.

The industry remains focused on implementing and deploying the DOCSIS 4.0 technology into the broadband networks. Large-scale deployment of DOCSIS 4.0 technology will bring customers into the 10G era in the near future.

So, what's next? What will the next generation of DOCSIS technology look like?

Continuing Industry Collaboration

As we shift from the speed era into the experience and adaptive eras — an evolution highlighted in CableLabs’ Technology Vision — DOCSIS technology will continue to evolve as well. The cable operator community, the vendor community and CableLabs have all been thinking and conducting research on how DOCSIS networks should move forward for the next big leap in broadband technology.

There is much work to be done to define new generations of DOCSIS technology and what it will truly look like. As always, CableLabs — which owns the DOCSIS trademark — will work closely with its members and working groups to oversee the development of future versions of the technology.

The impact to the outside plant and the physical characteristics of the coax are important considerations. The technology development work will include analysis and decisions on the spectrum range we ultimately target (for example, 3 GHz or 6 GHz or 7 GHz), where the upstream/downstream/full duplex regions will be, as well as what the underlying physical layer technology (fidelity requirements, channel sizes, FEC, etc.) and what the potential MAC layer technology improvements are going to be.

It’s an exciting time to be in the connectivity business! CableLabs looks forward to collaborating with the ecosystem on future developments for DOCSIS technology.

Follow the CableLabs blog to stay up to date on these developments and our Interop·Labs events.

If you’ve ever spent any time online, you’ve probably uttered some variation of this: “What’s happening with my internet!?” Whether or not you’re technically proficient, your first step toward fixing your network problem is always the same: Shout your frustration into the void.

If you’re a networking professional, you might then open Wireshark and manually search for the culprit — and maybe even find a solution. However, if you don’t have a networking background, you’ll probably have to call customer support and schedule a technician to come over and solve the problem. But that route can be expensive and time-consuming. Is there a reliable way to fix networking problems that pop up while also avoiding the cost of customer support, all while providing a great experience for the user?

The Response From the Void

The solution to this hair-pulling is a CableLabs prototype called NetLLM — your home networking assistant. Powered by a large language model (LLM) that lives on your home router, NetLLM looks at your network activity and any other relevant information (e.g., configuration files, records of past incidents, network metrics such as signal strength and channel noise). Then, it explains the problem in greater detail and attempts to fix it.

Your entire interaction with this automated network assistant could be a one-off response, or it could develop into a conversation in which you and NetLLM discuss the problem and try to address it — all in plain English.

If the issue cannot be resolved, NetLLM will at least add some transparency to the errors and make them less cryptic by explaining them in less technical terms (“Ohhhh, that’s what a DNS error is”). You can also choose to record the interaction so that you can send that information to customer support when you call in, thus providing the important context about the network conditions that caused the problem and what steps have been taken already.

Networking as a Language

The key to NetLLM is that it treats network communication as its own language.

Like any other language, each networking protocol has its own system of syntax and semantics. However, unlike the syntax of human languages, networking syntax is much more structured; the packets themselves and the packet sequences are organized in a very specific way that provides semantic meaning. Thinking of computer communication as a language is the key to using an LLM to decipher problems in a network — just as an LLM can be used to explain and interpret a conversation between humans.

It’s important to note that the real power of NetLLM isn’t the chat interface it uses to converse with users but rather the network LLM it uses for the problem diagnosis itself. The training will be performed with a curated dataset of question-and-answer pairs about network traffic from a wide variety of sources, including Internet of Things (IoT) devices, various network attacks and regular traffic.

Network Configuration and Management

In addition to being trained to recognize and understand network traffic, NetLLM has also been trained to manage and configure a network. For a home user, network management entails updating network settings to fix user issues (e.g., manipulating firewalls, resetting DNS, remedying jittery video calls). So, if any of the problems found in the diagnostic step are the result of configuration issues, NetLLM will attempt to fix those.

A user can also request a network configuration change such as changing a password or creating a guest network in simple English without needing to pull up the router’s configuration user interface (UI).

Future Development

Where do we go from here? In addition to being a reactive tool that a user can utilize manually to seek network assistance, the goal is for NetLLM to be a proactive feature and run as a daemon in the background, monitoring your network both for optimizations and security threats.

This is the ultimate in customer service: solving problems before the customer is even aware of them!

Your IT Buddy

This automated network assistant has the potential to be a one-stop shop for everything happening in your home network and the wider internet, all while protecting you from potential problems. With its diagnosis, configuration, and management capabilities, NetLLM gives you full insight into your network and allows for easy configuration — all in understandable English.

Even if you are a networking professional and have the skills to fix problems on your own, NetLLM can save you time. From advanced features such as setting up firewalls and fixing problematic video calls, to more everyday functionality such as managing passwords and monitoring your network, this CableLabs tool makes network troubleshooting and management as easy as asking a very talented IT friend for help.

Fixed wireless access (FWA) is a mature access technology that could provide cost-effective solutions for both mobile network operators (MNOs) and multiple system operators (MSOs). It enables MNOs to provide fixed cable-like services and MSOs to increase speed and capacity while extending HFC services beyond their current footprints.

CableLabs recently analyzed how key propagation parameters impact FWA performance. Our findings indicate that while FWA propagation can be challenging, it is scenario dependent. Factors such as user throughput targets, antenna design/selection and MIMO channel capacity can play significant roles. The analysis also highlights some opportunities for operators to mitigate the propagation challenges.

We detailed these findings in two new SCTE papers: “Fixed Wireless Access Propagation Challenges” and “Experimental FWA MIMO Capacity Analysis in 6 and 37 GHz Bands.” We explored our insights further during our session at SCTE TechExpo24, which is now available to watch on-demand.

Together, these publications, along with related papers, analyze the FWA propagation-related challenges for North American residential and indoor office environments and summarize our latest research on FWA.

Our investigation was based on experimental results provided by four extensive indoor and outdoor-to-indoor (O2I) test campaigns, followed by a thorough data analysis and statistical model development.

Customer premises equipment (CPE) in a FWA network can use either an outdoor or an indoor antenna. While the outdoor antenna offers better technical performance, the indoor option is more cost-effective due to minimal installation costs.

Fixed Wireless Access Testing

When using 5G support, the FWA performance is augmented by the associated large channel bandwidth (ChBW), e.g., up to 100MHz for sub 7GHz spectra and up to 400MHz for millimeter (mmWave, 24 - 52 GHz), accordingly increasing user throughput.

CableLabs analyzed the propagation impact upon FWA performance in both indoor and outdoor-to-indoor (O2I) scenarios in the 6 GHz and 37 GHz bands. The studies are grouped into two categories:

• Single-input multiple-output (SIMO) propagation challenges (path loss, O2I loss, power delay and angular profiles, delay and angular spread, angle of arrival, synthetic beamwidth, Small-scale fading Rician K-factor)
• Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel capacity gain

To evaluate the FWA network performance and impact from the propagation channel, multiple test campaigns were designed to characterize the path loss, building entry loss (BEL), large-scale fading (e.g., shadowing), small-scale fading impact (e.g., changing the receiver position by a few lambdas). We selected the test environments accordingly:

• An indoor office environment (CableLabs’ main office in Louisville, Colorado -- 2nd floor), providing 172 links (86 for each 6 and 37GHz band)
• O2I residential environment (the CableLabs Test House in Brighton, Colorado), providing 216 links (108 for each 6 and 37GHz band), in LOS, NLOS, deep NLOS and through vegetation (trees) propagation

The test setup was based on a virtual circular array (VCA), featuring the equivalent of 1,000 antenna elements. For each antenna position on the VCA, measurements included the channel transfer functions (CTFs), channel impulse responses (CIRs), path loss, etc. Using such a VCA avoided a need to re-align the CPE antenna for each measurement and the small-scale fading impact.

Propagation Impairments

Our indoor and O2I measurement results support a direct comparison of the propagation impact upon the indoor and O2I FWA indoor performance for the 6 and 37 GHz cases.

A high-level comparison of the measured FWA O2I path losses indicates that there is a 15-20 dB link budget penalty when 37 GHz links are used vs. similar 6 GHz links for the same type of environment. The 37 GHz O2I penalty is partially compensated by the reduced number of multipath components (MPCs), caused by the rapid Rx power decay of the 37 GHz MPC in the O2I and indoor FWA environments. Intuitively, the latter suggests that 37 GHz FWA O2I/indoor links could provide a better performance (SNR/User Throughput) vs. sub 7GHz bands if the related link budget penalty could be compensated.

MIMO Channel Capacity Gain

The MIMO channel capacity gain represents the ratio of the MIMO vs. SISO channel capacity. The MIMO channel capacity gain is identical to the MIMO user throughput gain (the ratio of the MIMO user throughput vs. SISO user throughput). For a MIMO 2×2 link, the ideal MIMO capacity gain/user throughput is equal to two. Our findings indicate that the MIMO capacity gain and the MIMO user throughput gain is degraded due to the propagation in a FWA scenario.

Our SCTE paper and presentation provide more details on the causes of the MIMO user throughput gain being higher in NLOS than LOS conditions and on MIMO user throughput gain impacted by antenna separation distance and orientation, etc.

Future Opportunities

Despite the propagation-related challenges — particularly in North American residential and indoor office environments — FWA O2I presents a viable solution for operators seeking to expand their service footprint. To learn more, download the SCTE papers, “Fixed Wireless Access Propagation Challenges” and “Experimental FWA MIMO Capacity Analysis in 6 and 37 GHz Bands,” and watch our TechExpo presentation.

Subject matter experts, innovators and thought leaders from CableLabs, SCTE and the industry at large came together last month for the Americas’ largest broadband event. From inspiring headliners and insightful interviews to hands-on demonstrations and an exposition full of solutions, SCTE TechExpo 2024 provided an in-depth look at the innovations that are shaping the future of broadband.

It was a lot to take in! But the learning opportunities didn’t stop there. Now, many of those track keynotes and sessions are available to anyone to view anytime, anywhere. Whether you want to revisit your favorite sessions or discover the ones you missed, you now have access to exclusive on-demand content from the action-packed event in Atlanta.

TechExpo24 On-Demand Content

Explore recorded sessions by topic — everything from strategy to sustainability — or catch up quickly with highlights from each day of TechExpo. And, in case you missed them, here’s a short recap of just a handful of the sessions our experts participated in.

Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence (AI) featured heavily in many sessions, with speakers discussing its impact on broadband networks. It’s obvious that AI will be critical to industry advancements, and operators are already beginning to find low-risk, low-cost ways to integrate AI into their network operations. Tools are emerging to speed the development of both enterprise- and industry-specific AI platforms. Catch up on how AI can be leveraged to build more secure networks in the session Driving a Proactive Approach to AI-Powered Security.

Technology Policy: Hear more about AI and get an update on its policy implications in A Year After the Artificial Intelligence Executive Order: Current Status & What’s Ahead. In the session, government experts outline federal priorities and the industry-relevant requirements of the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.

Wireless & Convergence: In Seamless Connectivity: Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere, learn about the key considerations and how the industry can overcome challenges to achieve seamless connectivity. Then explore how fixed wireless access can meet the ever-increasing demand for network capacity and deliver broadband wireless services more effectively in Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Fixed Wireless Access (FWA)… But Were Afraid to Ask!

Wireline: Operators and vendors are demonstrating their ability to deliver or their interest in delivering 25 Gbps capabilities through DOCSIS®️ technology on the HFC plant. In Practical Strategies for Deploying FTTH, hear an analysis of modern passive optical networking (PON) technologies in the evolutionary path of HFC networks.

Network as a Service: Learn how operators can grow new revenues with Network as a Service (NaaS) and Quality by Design (QbD), which leverages standardized APIs to facilitate communication between applications and the network. Tune in to the recording of the API-Powered NaaS session to hear more.

Security: CableLabs gave an overview of its Zero Trust and Infrastructure Security (ØTIS) Best Common Practices (BCP) document, which was released at TechExpo, and discussed the critical role of zero trust in networks. The BCP serves as a guideline for cable operators and vendors as they implement zero trust concepts and support network convergence and automation. This session wasn’t recorded, but you can learn more and download the document here.

Business Strategy: In a recording from Growth & Transformation—Lessons from the Video Game Industry, level up your understanding of what the broadband industry can learn from the gaming industry when it comes to competitive differentiation, launching products and entering new markets.

Explore more exciting on-demand video content and continue your learning journey well after TechExpo24 — at your convenience. We’ll see you next year at TechExpo25, Sept. 29- Oct. 1, in Washington, D.C.!

CableLabs Winter Conference 2025

For more opportunities to share insights and discover the technology advancements transforming the industry, join us at CableLabs Winter Conference in March 2025 in Orlando, Florida.

This exclusive gathering provides a neutral meeting ground for CableLabs member operators and our vendor community to exchange knowledge and build meaningful connections. Members can register now, and a limited number of exhibitor tables are still available.

At CableLabs, we talk a lot about the importance of innovation and collaboration. These are the connecting themes in our Technology Vision for the broadband industry to drive competitiveness, scale and alignment while also cultivating technologies for the future.

But there’s another critical piece of the puzzle that comes into play when we talk about the industry’s collective advancements: intellectual property. Specifically, the licensing of patents and software — and how these creative safeguards move broadband technology forward by incentivizing innovation.

Why Are Patents Important?

Patents are a pillar of innovation in tech. They give inventors rights to their creations, allowing them to protect their hard-earned ideas in exchange for sharing the details of their invention with the world and pushing the boundaries of public knowledge. And during the patent protection period, a patent license allows other innovators to create and even build on the original invention. This allows technology to evolve and spark new ideas, even before the patent period ends.

Once the patent's protection runs out, the invention becomes public domain, meaning anyone can use or improve on it freely, fueling further progress. It's a win-win, keeping innovation moving forward!

It’s no surprise that the broadband industry is rife with patents. In fact, as of today, the CableLabs patent portfolio includes more than 850 issued and allowed U.S. patents and 97 foreign-issued patents.

Why Is Licensing Important?

Most standards and specifications carry an associated patent licensing requirement. This means that if you agree to work on and contribute to a specification, you also agree to license your patents that are essential for the specification’s implementation.

Licensing agreements prevent parties from incorporating their patented technology into a specification and later withholding or over-leveraging patent rights against a manufacturer that wants to build products that implement the specification. This is sometimes called patent hold-up, or a patent hold-out.

Adhering to a patent licensing policy establishes a nurturing environment that fosters collaboration, advances development and unifies goals in the industry to ensure the cooperation and interoperability that are critical to innovation advancements. It’s one of the reasons DOCSIS®️ technology was such a success and rapidly adopted, and why it continues to benefit the industry.

Further, in addition to licensing regimes created for specification development, patents and licensing play a pivotal role in broadband technology development more generally, helping industry players navigate a complex legal landscape while contributing to a stronger, healthier ecosystem and ensuring vendor neutrality.

Focusing on the future, CableLabs develops technologies and demonstrates proof-of-concept for innovations that will provide value to our members through an innovation lens that usually targets an impact eight to 10 years out. Developed to benefit the industry as a whole, CableLabs’ patented technologies are available for our member operators to leverage at any time.

Since our first intellectual property license in 1998, CableLabs has made it a tenet of our mission to enable the vendor ecosystem to deliver interoperable, competitive solutions. Licensing also reduces the litigation risk for vendors who contribute to the work we do.

Gridmetrics Available for Licensing

Gridmetrics, which evolved from a project incubated at CableLabs, uses existing broadband infrastructure to deliver actionable insights about the state of power in the last mile of the distribution grid. By providing an out-of-band measurement of the quality and consistency of the power grid, Gridmetrics data can be leveraged for outage detection, power restoration, grid safety and voltage variability.

Gridmetrics is now on a path to expanding its market reach. CableLabs’ research is complete, and licensing of the technology’s intellectual property is available.

Contact us using the button below to discuss licensing opportunities and learn how to join us in our work to achieve this vision for the industry. We’re excited to help put CableLabs’ technologies to work for you!

This is the first in a series of blog posts about large language models and CableLabs’ efforts to apply them to transform knowledge-based work across the cable industry.

What happens if you ask ChatGPT cable-related questions? To conjure an example, we asked the AI chatbot to describe adjacency misalignment and its symptoms. Here is ChatGPT’s response:

Adjacency misalignment, also known as adjacency mismatch, is a common issue in network routing. It occurs when two routers have different views of their network adjacency. In other words, one router believes it has a direct connection to another router, but the second router does not have the same understanding. This can happen due to various reasons such as incorrect configuration, network congestion, or hardware failure.

[ChatGPT then describes symptoms of this issue.]

If you're unfamiliar with adjacency misalignment, the ChatGPT definition sounds pretty convincing! If you are familiar with adjacency misalignment, however, you probably noticed right away the answer is completely false. Adjacency misalignment is actually a radio frequency (RF) impairment. ChatGPT's answer wasn't even at the right level of the network stack.

ChatGPT and other tools of its kind are amazing for what they're beginning to achieve across industries and use cases, but answers like this aren’t helpful at all. CableLabs is actively solving this problem to help bring unprecedented AI advancements to the cable industry. Let's see how.

Why Is ChatGPT So Confidently Wrong?

ChatGPT and other generative AI products are built on revolutionary machine learning (ML) technology commonly known as large language models, or LLMs. The ability to talk naturally to a computer was science fiction only a few years ago, but LLMs have made human-to-AI conversation easier than entering a Google search.

Unfortunately, LLMs often fall short when it comes to technical, domain-specific questions like the example above. Unless you already know the answer to your question, it becomes difficult to check the LLM’s response is factually correct.

At their core, LLMs are like extremely sophisticated “predict-the-next-word” machines. When you provide an LLM with a sequence of text, the text gets chopped into small chunks called “tokens,” which the LLM can understand. Then, the LLM performs processing to guess the most likely token that would come after the input sequence. The method may sound basic, but when text is repeatedly added to the end of a sequence you get a chatbot!

The main reason LLMs act so confident when they're wrong is that optimizing for "predicting the next word" makes them expert at sounding convincing — but not at recognizing truths and falsehoods. If they don’t “know” an answer to a question, they still try to sound legitimate, and this often leads to making something up. The AI community has called this behavior “hallucination,” because the LLM acts like its own made-up writings are real. In reality, hallucinations are an extension of the LLM’s generative nature; they are simply not rooted in reality.

A Huge Opportunity Within Reach

If we can solve the hallucination problem — that is, build an AI that can reliably give accurate answers to cable-related questions — then we have the potential to revolutionize all sorts of knowledge work across the industry, including field operations, customer experience and innovation.

The industry has decades of technical, operational and business knowledge just waiting to be harnessed to help enable more seamless connectivity and network platform evolution, as well as pervasive intelligence, security and privacy. These key themes form the foundation of CableLabs’ Technology Vision.

For that reason, CableLabs has been hard at work building our solution to the knowledge accuracy problem faced by LLMs.

The Solution: CableLabs Expert LLM

CableLabs' Expert LLM is a first-of-its-kind chat application that answers questions based on a domain-expertise layer consisting of hand-curated, authoritative sources on cable technologies. If we ask the CableLabs Expert LLM the same question from the beginning of this article, you’ll get an answer like this:

Adjacency misalignment is an RF impairment recognizable as a difference in channel power between adjacent channels or groups of channels. It may be observed multiple times at different points in the spectrum and can be attributable to RF combining or source issues at the headend or hub or in a node utilizing a broadcast/narrowcast overlay or a split band configuration when the two spectrums are not combined correctly.

When adjacency misalignment is observed, the lower power channels may indicate poor performance, seen as a poor modulation error ratio (MER) when the delta between channels is large. This condition can manifest as lost packets, video tiling, freezing, or in very extreme cases, black screens at a customer’s home. Because adjacency misalignment is introduced very early in the downstream signal path, it has the potential to impact a significant number of customers.

Sources:

• • SCTE 280
  • CM-SP-PHYv4.0-I06-221019

Much better!

As you can see, the CableLabs Expert even cites its sources. Currently, the system has access to the specifications for DOCSIS 3.0, 3.1 and 4.0, as well as select SCTE documents including 280 and 40. Soon, we will expand support to other key sources of information related to cable broadband technologies.

The application supports all the latest state-of-the-art LLMs, including the GPT series, Claude, Mistral, Llama and many more. Whenever a useful new model comes out, the application can be extended in minutes to support the model in minutes without expensive fine-tuning or training from scratch.

The CableLabs Expert LLM's capabilities are mainly thanks to a powerful technique known as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). In a nutshell, RAG is like giving an LLM an open-book test. When a user asks a question, the words are converted into a numerical representation known as "vector embeddings," and then those representations help us automatically pick out snippets of the CableLabs specifications and SCTE standards that are most likely to have the user's answer therein. The LLM is given those snippets as context for it to make an accurate, fact-based answer. Additionally, RAG can run on cheap, low-end hardware as opposed to alternative methods like fine-tuning, which requires GPUs to complete in a timely manner.

In addition to the chat interface, the CableLabs Expert application provides a comprehensive validation dataset and benchmarking framework to automatically evaluate models against a large body of known questions and answers from varied sources. Model evaluation is a critical part of this process: We must be able to precisely understand how well our system is performing, especially when comparing specific approaches, datasets or models.

Building for the Future

Generative AI is here to stay. ChatGPT captured the imagination of people around the world, across all business sectors and walks of life. Everybody agrees that it is a disruptive force, but the real question is who will disrupt and who will be disrupted. At CableLabs, we are building a better future for the broadband industry using cutting-edge AI technologies.

Foundational discussions are happening now between CableLabs and our members to bring the industry together for generative AI innovation and interchange standards.

Stay tuned for future blog posts on generative AI for network operations, in which we'll take a closer look under the hood of the CableLabs Expert LLM! Next time, we'll explore evaluation and analysis of the Expert's writings.

If you want to know everything about CableLabs' work with LLMs and RAG, check out our technical paper, "The Conversational Network: AI-Powered Language Models for Smarter Cable Operations," which was presented at TechExpo 2024.

CableLabs is at the forefront of innovation for the broadband industry. One new area where this is especially true is in our work developing Network as a Service (NaaS) APIs. As part of this initiative, CableLabs actively contributes to CAMARA, an open source project hosted by Linux Foundation.

All of CableLabs’ contributions to CAMARA are part of our NaaS initiative. NaaS allows network operators to expose previously unavailable features to application developers via open source APIs. Alignment with the industry means CableLabs can not only utilize open source APIs, but we can help drive new APIs and adoption from multiple network operators.

The end goal is straightforward: Creating happier end users by making applications perform better across all types of networks.

What Is CAMARA, and Who Contributes to It?

CAMARA focuses on defining, developing and testing APIs that allow interaction with a service provider's network. The project is closely aligned with the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative for the development, publishing and testing of these open source APIs.

Contributors to the CAMARA community include network operators, mobile carriers and application developers. CAMARA aims to simplify APIs that interact with a service provider by abstracting the complexity of the network away. This allows developers to create applications that interact with a service provider's network without needing to understand which access network is being used or the inner workings and complexities of a mobile, PON or DOCSIS®️ networks.

Rather than develop solutions for our members in a silo, by contributing to CAMARA, CableLabs helps provide a path to adoption across a broader ecosystem. CAMARA’s open source approach enables rapid development of network-based APIs for companies within the industry.

CableLabs’ Contributions to CAMARA APIs

The CAMARA APIs align with the work that CableLabs is doing to help improve networks and make APIs more accessible to a broader range of developers, both within and outside a network operator. 

Quality on Demand APIs: CableLabs contributes to multiple CAMARA projects, starting with expanding the CAMARA Quality on Demand (QoD) APIs to include the QoS profile. This allows an application to set target minimum thresholds for network performance including throughput, latency, packet loss and jitter. You can read more about this in our QoD blog post.

Network Access Management APIs: The CAMARA Network Access Management APIs are also something that CableLabs contributes to. These APIs allow for an application to interact with network operator-provided equipment in the home. The initial scope of the Network Access Management APIs is to allow actions such as rebooting a device or managing a Wi-Fi network.

Edge Cloud: CableLabs also contributes to CAMARA’s Edge Cloud project. This project allows for customers to discover the closest edge cloud zone to a given device for improved application performance.

Quality by Design: Working closely with the Connectivity Insights group at CAMARA, CableLabs is developing a new API that takes Quality on Demand a step further. Quality by Design (QbD) defines network requirements and enables an application to communicate its network KPIs — throughput, latency, jitter, packet loss — to a network operator. The network operator can then determine the cause of the network performance issues and suggest corrective action.

How Do CAMARA APIs Become Available?

Twice a year, CAMARA rolls up all of these API projects into what it calls a meta-release. The fall 2024 meta-release — the first from CAMARA — is now available.

Although the next meta-release isn’t planned until spring 2025, contributions to CAMARA are ongoing. In fact, APIs are even released between meta-releases. CableLabs’ QbD API, which didn’t make the fall release, is expected in the coming months. At that point, it will be tagged at a certain version to also be included in the spring 2025 meta-release.

Once released, APIs are available for anyone to download and use immediately.

Engage With Us on CAMARA Projects

Read more about the CAMARA open source project on their website and join the project on GitHub. If you are a CableLabs member or vendor, you can also join the Network as a Service (NaaS) working group. The more who contribute, the better the industry gets as a whole.

The vision: ubiquitous, context-aware connectivity and an adaptive, intelligent network. The challenge: navigating the ever-evolving digital landscape with confidence and ease.

CableLabs’ Technology Vision serves as a roadmap for advancing innovation and technology development in the coming years. It will drive industry alignment and support unmatched scale for operator members and the vendor community. Collectively, we can unlock the value of seamless connectivity to create nearly endless opportunities for players across the ecosystem.

Defining the Future

We’ll explore this vision in-depth and share how it is defining the future of the industry at CableLabs Winter Conference 2025 in Orlando, Florida.

This exclusive gathering provides a neutral meeting ground for CableLabs member operators and our vendor community to build meaningful connections, share knowledge and discover the technology advancements transforming the industry.

The event kicks off on Monday, March 10, with a welcome reception followed by two full days of practical knowledge and enriching insights. It wraps up Thursday, March 13, with member-exclusive project meetings.

Members can register now to join us, and a limited number of demo tables are available for exhibiting vendors to showcase their solutions. In addition to hours of unparalleled exposure during exhibiting hours, demo table packages also include conference passes for vendor company employees.

A Cornerstone of Industry Transformation

In each session at Winter Conference, we will zero in on the Technology Vision, exploring individual aspects of this transformative framework. We will outline the architectures, protocols, technologies and strategies required for building and evolving the network of the future together.

Launched at CableLabs Winter Conference 2024, the Technology Vision is a blueprint for accelerating the delivery of next-generation connectivity and beyond — propelling the evolution of the network from one primarily focused on speed to one that adapts to the needs of users and devices in real time.

The framework defines three core pillars that encompass the scope of broadband technologies:

• Seamless Connectivity: ensuring connectivity anywhere, anytime, on any device.
• Network Platform Evolution: creating the most efficient network architectures to deliver secure, truly seamless connectivity experiences.
• Pervasive Intelligence, Security & Privacy: supporting intelligence at every point in the network.

During Winter Conference 2025, we will explore how — at an individual, company and industry level — the framework can be leveraged to unlock new opportunities for better, more seamless online experiences and fuel innovation at scale.

Smaller Market Conference

Ahead of Winter Conference, we invite multi-system operators to join the Smaller Marketing Conference on Monday, March 10, to discuss the issues that are most important to them and their teams. Connect with and hear from leaders representing business strategy, technology, engineering, marketing, operations and customer experience, within the Smaller Market community.

This event is available for CableLabs members and NCTA guests. Registration for Smaller Market Conference is separate from Winter Conference, so if you are planning to attend, please be sure to register for both.

Let’s Collaborate at CableLabs Winter Conference

Join Winter Conference to be part of the collaborative ecosystem shaping the future of connectivity.

This is an event you can’t afford to miss! Register and start planning your trip today.