How to Monitor DOCSIS Devices Using SNMP, InfluxDB, and Telegraf
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The document presents a presentation by Peter Jones and Dylan Shorter from WOW! Internet, TV, Phone about monitoring DOCSIS devices using InfluxDB. It details the company's history, the evolution of DOCSIS technology, and the challenges and advantages of implementing InfluxDB for telemetry and monitoring of customer cable modems and services. Key takeaways include the need for enhanced monitoring solutions, the performance of InfluxDB, and future steps for development and integration.
![proprietary and confidential
What is DOCSIS?
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) was originally developed by CableLabs.
DOCSIS
version[13]
Production
date
Maximum
downstream capacity
Maximum
upstream capacity
Features
1.0 1997 40 Mbit/s 10 Mbit/s Initial release
1.1 2001 Added VOIP capabilities and QoS mechanisms
2.0 2002 30 Mbit/s Enhanced upstream data rates
3.0 2006 1 Gbit/s 200 Mbit/s Significantly increased downstream and upstream data rates,
introduced support for IPv6, introduced channel bonding
3.1 2013 10 Gbit/s 1–2 Gbit/s Significantly increased downstream and upstream data rates,
restructured channel specifications
4.0 2017 6 Gbit/s Significantly increased upstream rates from DOCSIS 3.1](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/monitoringdocsisdeviceswithinfluxdb-220920161659-4b835610/85/How-to-Monitor-DOCSIS-Devices-Using-SNMP-InfluxDB-and-Telegraf-5-320.jpg)
How to Monitor DOCSIS Devices Using SNMP, InfluxDB, and Telegraf
- 1. proprietary and confidential Monitoring DOCSIS Devices with InfluxDB September 20, 2022 Presented by Peter Jones & Dylan Shorter WOW! Internet, TV, Phone
- 2. proprietary and confidential Brief Introductions Peter Jones - Senior Manager, Software & Product Integration Engineering, WOW! Internet, TV, Phone ● ~22 years in IT/telecom/software development ● 20 years with WOW! in various roles Dylan Shorter - Engineer III Software & Product Integration Engineering, WOW! Internet, TV, Phone ● ~18 years in IT/telecom/software development ● Almost 3 years with WOW!
- 3. proprietary and confidential What is WOW? WideOpenWest (dba WOW! Internet, TV, Phone) offers Internet, video, and voice services in a number of markets in Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Tennessee. • Founded in 1996 in Denver, Colorado • 2001, acquisition of Americast properties in Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit • 2006, acquisition of Sigecom, LLC in Evansville, Indiana • 2012, acquisition of Knology, who operated in 13 markets in the Southeast & Mid-west • 2017, IPO • 2021, sale of IL, IN, OH, & MD properties. Announced build outs of additional fiber builds in Seminole & Orange Counties, FL & Greenville County, SC.
- 4. proprietary and confidential WOW! Service Areas
- 5. proprietary and confidential What is DOCSIS? Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) was originally developed by CableLabs. DOCSIS version[13] Production date Maximum downstream capacity Maximum upstream capacity Features 1.0 1997 40 Mbit/s 10 Mbit/s Initial release 1.1 2001 Added VOIP capabilities and QoS mechanisms 2.0 2002 30 Mbit/s Enhanced upstream data rates 3.0 2006 1 Gbit/s 200 Mbit/s Significantly increased downstream and upstream data rates, introduced support for IPv6, introduced channel bonding 3.1 2013 10 Gbit/s 1–2 Gbit/s Significantly increased downstream and upstream data rates, restructured channel specifications 4.0 2017 6 Gbit/s Significantly increased upstream rates from DOCSIS 3.1
- 6. proprietary and confidential Overview of a FTTN Network
- 7. proprietary and confidential Concerning Monitoring - Nodes • Circa 2015, with much of the integration of the Knology acquisition completed, we asked ourselves: How can we monitor individual customer cable modems within the network as well as determine the health of a node as a whole? • Various markets had different monitoring platforms • Purchasing hardware to support monitoring of individual nodes was cost prohibitive • Rudimentary processes were already in place for gathering telemetry data from individual modems • Solution: Add additional resources to the existing telemetry polling processes and add logic for alerting on potential outage conditions, thus creating a homegrown solution for node monitoring
- 8. proprietary and confidential Node Monitoring Solved… Sort of… Our cable modem telemetry polling process used the same time series database for 5 years. When it worked, it was great. However, the database often had to be restarted to get the read and write databases back in sync and about once/year the database would have a weekend killing catastrophic outage.
- 9. proprietary and confidential Enter InfluxDB In 2020, we compared a couple of potential replacements for our previous time series database. This load testing was performed with Time Series Benchmark Suite Database Read Speed Write Speed TimescaleDB 26.88 queries/sec 5189.18 rows/sec InfluxDB 22.80 queries/sec 111245.38 rows/sec
- 10. proprietary and confidential Implementation InfluxDB Enterprise - 4 node cluster
- 11. proprietary and confidential Implementation • Started with InfluxDB 1.8 OSS as a POC • Eventually moved to 2.0 upon release • Decided to purchase InfluxDB Enterprise for an all-in-solution • We currently have a 4 data node cluster in production and a 2 data node cluster in test running on Openstack • Cluster setup and installation has been automated using Ansible Setting up InfluxDB Enterprise was extremely easy, support has been great and we are very happy with the product.
- 12. proprietary and confidential The Solution In Action ● Primary purpose is for monitoring and alerting and general telemetry. ● Data collection: ○ Telegraf ○ Filebeats ○ Custom scripts and Vendor APIs ○ Snmp ● Collected data is sent to Kafka which is forwarded into InfluxDB InfluxDB has given us the flexibility to work around restrictions on vendor managed systems and enabled us to collect and monitor data from all kinds of sources
- 13. proprietary and confidential The Solution In Action - Modem Data One of our biggest current data sets is modem data. We collect status and signal information from over 650k modems on 5 minutes polling cycles. This data is used for: ● Analytics ● Alarming ● Troubleshooting ● Reporting and Visualization (we opted to use Grafana)
- 14. proprietary and confidential The Solution In Action - Modem Data
- 15. proprietary and confidential The Solution In Action - Monitoring Streaming Video Feeds We are using InfluxDB to help monitor services provided by WOW! including statuses of streaming video channels.
- 16. proprietary and confidential Challenges • Steep learning curve (not easy to hand-off to an operations team) ⁃ Needing to learn two new and very different query languages, TICKscript & Flux • Using InfluxDB 2.0 as a POC and then having to somewhat relearn 1.x once moving to InfluxDB Enterprise • Sometimes difficult to convince vendors to integrate with it • Testing / debugging non trivial (especially kapacitor) • ServiceNow integration didn’t work for us out-of-the-box
- 17. proprietary and confidential Strengths • Ease of setup/installation • Performance • Support • Allows for infrastructure as code • Flexibility and power • Telegraf (my new favorite hammer) • Push model data collection (as opposed to pull model like Prometheus)
- 18. proprietary and confidential Next Steps • Full CI/CD implementation and automated code promotion ⁃ Dashboards ⁃ Kapacitor scripts • Improve automated testing • Continue to transition away from our other existing monitoring solutions • Add additional infrastructure monitoring In the end, we have been very happy overall with InfluxDB
- 19. proprietary and confidential Q & A