By Matt Wichman, Comcast Cable Venk Mutalik, Comcast Cable Josh Cook, Comcast Cable
Today’s field hardware is becoming more advanced and can be impacted by environmental factors. Traditional node housings now contain a variety of advanced modules that have capabilities of delivering symmetrical gigabit speed to customers. To deliver reliable bandwidth, all components and modules in the node must be installed correctly. Incorrectly installed components can cause modules to overheat, causing reduced life of the module, reset, reboot or even complete sudden failure. With advanced analysis of telemetry, we can detect loose or improperly installed modules well ahead of customer impacting events. This new detection method will improve the customer experience, reduce outages, and extend the service life of field installed modules. Advanced consistent telemetry of all temperature sensors in a node tells a complete story that one sensor alone can not reveal. Today’s node modules are capable of reporting individual temperature readings and in some cases multiple temperatures from components, like small form pluggable’s (SFP’s) and chips. Individually we can tell if a module or component is overheating, but this leaves out the impact of external temperature the node housing is experiencing due to weather or the node location. When individual temperature readings are combined into a complete picture, we show in this paper how to remotely determine if the node is over heating due to external forces, or if individual modules and components are the cause of an overheated reading.