Continental taps Cabletron for management solution

Continental Cablevision will use Cabletron Systems' Spectrum network management platform to tie together its various system management applications, including its recently announced comprehensive customer care system, C2IT.

Spectrum's scalability played heavily into Continental's decision to work with Cabletron, said Tom Roskowick, director of network services at Continental Cablevision.

"Continental is a decentralized company with many different regions," said Roskowick. "As we began connecting regions with data networks, we realized that we needed a network management system that was scalable and could be distributed across different areas."

Spectrum's client-server based architecture fits the bill, Roskowick said. The client portion of Spectrum, called SpectroGRAPH, is a graphical user interface, while the server, SpectroSERVER, provides database, security and device management functions.

Together, they use a form of object-oriented technology called inductive modeling (IMT) to identify network problems efficiently, said Peter Cruz, network management support engineer at Cabletron. IMT provides alarm filtering that streamlines the troubleshooting process, allowing the network operator to quickly distinguish between actual faults and symptoms of faults, Cruz said.

Continental will use Spectrum to bring together its various network management systems, including its C2IT customer management system and its upcoming telephony management system, he said. "Spectrum will allow Continental to combine all of its convergence technologies into one view of the network with one management application."

Originally introduced as the Continental Customer Expert System, or CONCERT, at the Western Cable show last November (Telephony, Dec. 4, 1995, page 1), Continental's C2IT customer care system pulls together applications from 13 vendors, including the CheetahNet broadband network manager from Superior Electronics, decision support servers from Sun and Pyramid Technology, and a billing system from CSG Systems.

Continental plans to offer data services over its networks in Illinois, Florida and New England in 1997.