Scalability & Reliability:

• Ability to scale to millions of devices across large geographic regions, providing a centralized or distributed platform.
• Ability to distribute and manage firmware images to Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) servers
• Must support load balancing for large wide scale upgrades
• Must support a multi-threaded/multi-device upgrade and discovery tasks for optimum throughput and performance.
• Distributed processes must be able to perform work independently, in case of network connectivity issues.
• Must support load balancing by supporting multiple TFTP servers for each region or CMTS.
• Ability to support devices that take long periods of time to upgrade without sacrificing throughput of the system.
• Capability to handle up to 1 million modems, and upgrade 50,000 modems per day per region/division
• Distributed architecture, allowing devices in multiple regions to be upgraded from a central network operations center (NOC)
• Ensured total upgrade performance and minimal network traffic through load balancing across multiple TFTP servers and load balancing across multiple CMTSs
• Ability to upgrade multiple vendor devices at the same time
• Ensured reliability by supplying upgrades only to cable modems which need the new firmware and are ready to receive it
  

DOCSIS Device Recognition & Handling:

• Ability to set the firmware filename and TFTP server for DOCSIS 1.x, 2.0, and EuroDOCSIS Devices.
• Ability to distinguish between vendor, model and firmware versions using intelligent parsing of the information that is provided by the device. (i.e accurate classification of model, regardless of firmware revision being used)
• Ability to discover the vendor, model and current firmware version of all devices regardless of DOCSIS version.
• Ability to support a mixed DOCSIS version environment (i.e. DOCSIS 1.0 devices and DOCSIS 1.1 devices in secure mode connected to the same CMTS)
• Upgrades based on user-specified criteria such as vendor, model, hardware revision, and firmware version
• Support VoIP features associated with DOCSIS 1.1, 2.x, PacketCable, CableHome, and beyond
• Must support dynamic, real-time upgrades as well as scheduled upgrades to CM firmware.
  

Interface & Security Support:

• All sensitive data such as community strings and keys must be encrypted in the database and during message transfer ensuring maximum security.
• Must support a secure multi-administrator model that allows for complete control over functions and network topology that each administrator can access.
• Must support Read Only administrators to allow for summary and detailed reports to be shared without compromising network integrity.
• Extensive search capability to quickly located individual or groups of devices.
• Web-based, wizard-style interface with point and click functionality
• Ability to utilize the security mechanisms that have been defined by DOCSIS 1.1 including utilizing Diffie-Hellman and SNMPv3.
• Enforcement of single-user access for upgrades with observation of progress by multiple users
• Flexible and powerful cable plant views, with extensive navigation tools for search, group & filter
  

Operational Considerations:

• Ability to schedule firmware updates to occur off hours to minimize end-user service disruption.
• Ability to segregate the network during updates so that network traffic can be managed.
• Must provide a centralized cable modem (DOCSIS Device) asset inventory.
• Ability to easily manage DOCSIS 1.0 to 1.1 conversion, and other future conversions.
  
• Must support Command Line Interfaces or Programming APIs in order to integrate into other OSS systems.
• Must support User defined hierarchies of CMTS groupings to allow unlimited organization capabilities.
• Must be able to assign portions of the network topology to individual administrators.
• Must have the ability to auto discover CMTS Slots, Interfaces, Subnets, and DOCSIS device attributes. Having to maintain these manually in a large environment is very difficult.
• Must have the ability to discover all devices connected to a CMTS, devices within a region (multiple CMTSs), devices on subnet(s), devices within an IP Address Range, or single IP Addresses.
• Must have the ability to perform on-demand discovers, scheduled discovers, or recurring scheduled discovers in order to automatically keep the inventory database fresh.
• Must have the ability to update based on vendor, model, hardware revision, and firmware version.
• Must have the ability to scope the update process to include only devices that are part of certain regions, CMTS groups, individual CMTS, Slots/Interfaces, Subnets, IP Address ranges, or Mac Address lists.
• Must have the ability to perform on-demand updates, scheduled updates, or recurring scheduled updates in order to perform updates during off hours and coordinated planned maintenance windows.
• Must have the ability to automatically capture the data from the device's syslog during error conditions for maximum feedback to the operator.
• Must have the ability to upgrade multiple vendor, model, hardware revision, and firmware versions simultaneously.
• Ability to define authorized lists of firmware versions, and the ability to track devices that have unauthorized firmware.
• Ability to perform updates against all unauthorized versions regardless of vendor or model.
• Ability to send a DOCSIS Reset command to device(s) to force reprovisioning.
• Ensure reliability by supplying upgrades only to cable modems which
  need the new Firmware.
• Ability to automatically retry failed upgrades.
• Ability to automatically detect the number of bricked devices, and automatically stop the upgrade if a specific threshold has been reached.
• Must have the ability to synchronize files that are located on distributed TFTP servers, with the central repository.
• Ability to utilize FTP or SCP for firmware distribution to the TFTP servers.
• Ability to discover additional device attributes such as 1)Device DOCSIS Capability 2)Current DOCSIS Operating Mode
• Ability to understand the statistical and geographical distribution information about each vendor, model and firmware revision.
• Automatic interruption of the upgrade process if the number of failed upgrades reaches a user-defined threshold

Reporting:

• Ability to understand the statistical and geographical distribution information about each vendor, model and firmware revision.
• Complete audit history of update process for each device within the network
• Must have real-time progress indicators and reports showing status of discovery and update tasks.
• Must have the ability to create reports in a flexible format (i.e Adode PDF) that can be used for printing, emailing, or posting to the web.
• Must provide extensive reporting including; Audit Reports, Device Discovery Summary and Detail Result reports, Firmware Update Summary and Detail result reports, Device Attribute detail reports and lists, Device Summary reports and lists, Device Summary Reports by Vendor, Device Summary Reports by CMTS, Unauthorized summary reports and lists, Unauthorized detailed reports and lists.
• Ability to export information (device, and summary data) by CSV Format, Excel Format, Text Format (tab or space separator).
• Progress indicators measuring how many upgrades have been completed and how many are outstanding
• Reporting and tracking of failed upgrades that can be attempted again with the firmware upgrade tool or done manually at a later time