Sunrise Telecom today unveiled an updated version of its realWorx Web system, a 24/7 RF monitoring system for cable TV and broadband communications services.

Sunrise said 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.

Sunrise Telecom said its “anywhere, anytime” access to network information gives service providers a new level of confidence in the reliability of their DOCSIS 2.0 and 3.0 systems without additional capital expenditures.

Industry experts are advising operators to continuously monitor the MER and BER performance of all DOCSIS channels in order to maintain a high quality of DOCSIS 3.0 service . On downstream channels, reviewing historical MER and BER measurements with realWorx Web makes it easy 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 very 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.