Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Ignition
Escapee you used to work for ntl and now don't. There are ways to improve detection and I'm not BSing anyone.
kobuskint - no chance of working at all, for obvious (if you know what you are looking for) reasons. Not going to elaborate any more than that.
|
I am not saying that ntl have not got smarter in detecting illegal boxes on the network, I am however saying that Langley headend areas would be restricted to the amount of nodes that are combined to an individual Intersect card.
The original config combined 2 rings of nodes to a Intercect card, that means an illegal box could of been in one of 800 homes in the 2 ring area. (that assumes the original 500 homes per node build not the later 1000+)
Even upgrading to one Intersect card per node (Cant see why they would in its currect application) would only place the illegal box in one of the 500 possible homes fed from that node, we can be fair and say that could be further reduced to about 200-300 customers to allow for a reasonable penetration in the area.
200-300 drops plus all the ones that have not been disconnected are a lot of leg work and time to check, things can be broken down further by using the RF directional coupler test points firstly at the hubsite, possibly using Cheetah to identify the node, and then at the node usiing test points to identify which Distribution amplifier, exactly the same can then be carried out there and then on to the Distribution Point or points depending how many are fed off that amplifier port. That would probably break things down to a minimum of 50 drops to test. Perhaps they can then run a report to find out how many of those 50 drops are paying customers and how many are on the basic package, as they are more likely to contain the offending box.
As the casual observer will of probably guessed by now, travelling around all these cabinets and eventually removing all those drop cables to identify a single house containing the offending set-top box is very time consuming indeed. It's far easier to scaremonger the casual person who may be offered the chipped box down the pub than it is to catch offenders.
None of that info is company specific to ntl, its all general HFC architecture related and would apply to most operators with HFC systems around the world. The only differences would be homes passed per node and segmentation of Intersect/ubr.
If it was easy for Cable operators to detect a box to a house they wouldn't have so much of a fraud problem.
PS: If anyone from ntl is concerned that I am giving away company specific info it's not the case, most of the fundamental design is based on industry standard designs supplied by the equipment vendors and is freely available.
I actually raised a concern over an issue with an old boss of mine at ntl over some freely available information that CS, Tech support people and senior engineering people who should of known better were making available back in the .com days.
The information they were innocently giving out could potentially cause ntl a lot of nightmares, especially in the current situation where they are very thinm on the ground with people actually out at the sharp end getting their sleeves rolled up!
