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To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (5769)	10/31/1999 12:49:00 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 12823

Frank, What you say is, of course, absolutely correct. To repeat myself, I would love a few URLs for sleuthing these comparisons, should anyone have them bookmarked. I find that the MSO community tends to be quite closed-mouth, so these answers are not obvious. Best, Ray

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (5769)	10/31/1999 6:11:00 PM
From: DenverTechie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Frank, Ray, Ken...."Network Effect". Frank is in the driver's seat on this one. He is correct that there are myriad combinations of digital modulations, VoIP QoS schemes, etc. However, I'd like to provide some insight on this concept of "network effect" that has been raised as an issue. About 3 years ago I found myself in the enviable position of being on a consulting team project sponsored by CableLabs to study this very questions. You must of course understand that we were using CBR (constant bit rate) telephone and not VoIp since there were no such cable based systems available at the time. And the study had fixed parameters of a 750 MHz North American standard NTSC channel plan. What we did was load up an HFC network with digital video, analog video, PCS, CBR telephone, and high speed data on cable modems. We mixed and matched different combinations of vendor's telephone and data equipment to test compatibility of different equipment on a common network and to see if different services would create the so-called "network effect" or collisions in the network. Since this was a commissioned study, I'm not at liberty to state specific findings. But in general what we found was there was incredibly little incompatibility among vendor equipment or among different services, even intermixing analog and digital services. And this was on a fully loaded network. Which is what I believe Ken is referring to... what happens when you start saturating the network with all these services. In general what we found was ... no problem. This was of course a controlled experiment, based on a predefined network specification of a "typical MSO". And it did not include VoIP. Network design and construction practices, network administration, engineering of the services, traffic engineering and concentration levels may all have an affect on how the customer ultimately perceives their quality of service. As far as public web sites addressing these issues, I think you will not have much success. This is not something an MSO or the cable industry makes available to the general public.