A euphemism for the fear that other digital media, beyond audio, will be illegally replicated and distributed on the Internet. From the company and brand name Napster, which, in its early days, enabled consumers (largely teenagers) to freely share music. As in, without ever paying for it. As a direct result, the music industry suffered a financial tailspin in the early years of the millennium. Owners of video copyrights, not wanting to experience a similar fate, plan to thwart “Napsterization” by tightening the electronic locks on their material (see “digital rights management.”)

An adjective connoting low bandwidth, but with decidedly ambiguous boundaries. Cable providers call telcos twisted-pair loops “narrowband,” to point out the limited spectral capacity in that distribution technique. But compared to OC-192 backhaul or private optical networks, cable too is narrowband. In general, cable providers affix a verbal narrowband label to anything slower than T-1, or 1.54 Mbps.

Usage: The cable viewpoint is that every last-mile distribution method, with the possible exception of fixed wireless, is narrowband, meaning that the alternatives cannot yet adequately or economically handle the simultaneous transmission of living-room quality digital video, high-speed Internet access, and phone.

The method specified in the CableLabs PacketCable specification for voice over IP devices to talk to the network, identify themselves, and set up telephone calls. NCS is contrasted with SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, by being very “chatty” with the center of the network. SIP makes no demands of the network, being more involved with intelligent end devices.

The cable industry’s major trade association, founded in 1952 and responsible for providing the industry’s regulatory voice. According to its own descriptions, “NCTA represents cable systems serving more than 80 percent of the nations approximately 67 million cable subscribers. It also represents over 100 cable program networks such as CNN, HBO and MTV. In addition, NCTA represents the hardware suppliers and providers of other services to the industry.”

Further, the “NCTAs mission is to advance the public policies of the cable television industry before Congress, the executive branch, the courts and the American public. Working with state cable associations, NCTA also presents the industry’s interests to organizations representing state and local policy makers. NCTA hosts the industry’s annual trade show, which typically features more than 300 exhibiting companies and attracts more than 30,000 attendees.

The NCTA is overseen by a board of directors populated by the CEOs of cable and member companies; a variety of working committees address specific issues. The organization itself is staffed by about 85 individuals, in departments including: Association Affairs (with subcategories handling cable signal theft and rural system issues), communications, government relations, industry affairs/administration, legal, program network policy, public affairs, and science/technology. Web site: www.ncta.com.

The notion of making all television programs available on demand, and available from the network — even if a customer hasnt “made an appointment” to watch the show, such as with in-home DVRs. The idea: Come home at 6:15p, still catch the 6P news — even if you’ve not ever before expressed a desire to watch that show. Networked DVR was instigated by a division of Time Warner Cable, named Mystro TV, in the 2001-2003 timeframe. The effort was ultimately postponed, and resources re-allocated, because of then-insurmountable copyright issues.

In cable parlance, the two words in combination are used as a noun describing sections of plant that are built from the ground-up, as opposed to rebuilt or upgraded. New builds are generally associated with “line extensions,” or the construction of HFC plant out to newly built neighborhoods. By contrast, rebuilt plant involves removing existing plant, and replacing it with new equipment.

Usage: Most cable providers segment capital expenditures for plant into three categories: New built/line extension, rebuild, and upgrade.

A technology blueprint devised by Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications in 2003-2004, then handed over to CableLabs for development and implementation. Not unlike MCNS, which developed an interoperable cable modem specification then handed it off to CableLabs, NGNA was begun as an actual company, with a 12-month deadline (March 2004) to publish a comprehensive request for information (RFI) on an assortment of technology advances.

In its early iterations, NGNA was a fairly heavily guarded topic amongst its participants. It began as a way to collate industrial mindsets around “all-digital,” or, the migration to wholly digital networks. Another tenet was to shift, as entirely as possible, away from proprietary technologies. And, the MSOs wanted to provide focus to the supplier community about advanced codecs, OCAP, alternative two-way signal paths, and open conditional access. Elements of DOCSIS 3.0 and M-CMTS also grew out of NGNA. Two areas were specifically excluded: Plant, and back office functions, like billing and device/service provisioning.

In Spring of 2004, NGNA was “closed” as a separate, privately-held company, and its contents shifted to CableLabs for development.

In cable technical parlance, a device mounted to or placed discreetly inside a customer’s home to receive telephone service. NID is one of several such acronyms describing that same box; the others are NIU (network interface unit), BTI (broadband telephony interface) and MTA (multimedia terminal adapter). In general, the use of NIDs and NIUs is correlated with RF-styled cable telephony services, while BTIs and MTAs relate to voice-over-IP techniques.

Usage: A rule of thumb in NID design is to enable at least four lines of residential phone service per unit.

Network Interface Unit. See NID.

The physical location in which communications services are monitored for health, outages, bandwidth usage, and other back-office functions. In traditional cable systems, the NOC, in essence were the customers who called in to growl about service outages. Today, most major MSOs allocate resources or align with turnkey providers of NOC services, so that they can anticipate and quickly pinpoint outages and potential outages before their customers are affected.

The first time you walk into a NOC, you’re likely to be struck by the Star Wars-ness of it. (If for no other reason than this: If youve been invited into a NOC, it’s usually to instill in you that very sense.) Heads-up displays line the upper portion of the walls, showing detailed maps of plant layout and links to other networks. In most cases, NOCs have the ability to drill down to individual components within the plant, showing inputs, outputs and performance statistics (Am I healthy? Am I getting overloaded? Have I died?). Blinking colors show alarm areas. Employees sit at banks of computers, busily attending to network health needs.

A spot, physical or logical, in a communications network where signals are connected or manipulated. In cable networks, the node generally refers to the place in the network where lightwave signals, carried over fiber optic cable from the headend, are translated back into radio frequency. The resultant RF signals are launched into coaxial cable for the remainder of the transmission to the home. It is also a the node that upstream signals, from the home to the headend, are received at RF, then translated into light to ride over the fiber lines to the headend.

In local area networks, nodes are connected devices — individual PCs, printers, scanners — identifiable by their individual MAC (media access control) address.

Usage: Most cable HFC networks are designed to handle between 500-1000 homes per node.

A technique employed to make more bandwidth available to cable subscribers. What split in node splitting isn’t the node itself, but the number of homes it serves: A 1,000-home node become a 500 home node, or a 500-home node becomes a 250-home node. Nor does node-splitting require a “really, really big splitter,” as one engineer joked when asked about what it takes to split a node.

What’s needed to split a node is another node: Double the optoelectronics, halve the number of home sharing bandwidth, the logic goes. The (circa 2005) rule of thumb on node-splitting: One person, half a day, about $1,000.

Undesired electrical, molecular, radio frequency or other energy that interferes with a signal as it moves from one place to another. Like cacophony is to the human ear — some flavors of acid rock, fingernails down a blackboard, each instrument in an orchestra playing a different song at a different tempo at the same time — noise is taxing to signal passage.

The IEEE defines noise as “unwanted disturbances superposed upon a useful signal that tend to obscure its information content.” Cable engineers use a more strict definition, classifying noise as “thermal,” meaning it is both unpredictable, and doesnt repeat.

Thermal noise is a function of HFC transmission characteristics and bandwidth-per-channel, and is usually expressed in decibels relative to microvolts (mV), or dBmV. When designing cable systems, engineers calculate the minimum thermal noise power figure, expressed as “the noise floor.” The noise floor in cable systems is generally recognized to exist at (-) 59 dBmV.

In general, when the noise floor rises, signals degrade or slow down (in the case of some digital transmission systems.) This is no different than driving on a heavily pocked and pitted road. It makes you slow down. The potholes, in this case, are the noise. On a smooth road — no potholes, no noise — you can go faster. Same idea.

Noise is also an element in two of the most commonly used design parameters in cable systems: The carrier-to-noise ratio (also known as “C/N” and “CNR”) and the signal-to-noise ratio (also known as “S/N” and “SNR.”) Carrier-to-noise ratio quantifies noise figures of individual amplifiers, input levels to each amplifiers, and the number of amplifiers in cascade, to come up with an end-of-line “budget” of acceptable CNR. SNR measures noises as a function of signal level, and is also used to calculate an end-of-line “budget” of acceptability.

Noise is particularly prevalent in the 5-40 MHz spectral area used by cable operators to send signals from homes to the headend. Here, two other types of noise enter the discussion: Impulse noise, generated by random bursts of unwanted electricity, and ingress, which happens when signals leak into a section of coaxial cable.

The processes and techniques used to shore up a signal against susceptibility to noise. Most noise mitigation techniques surface in the form of modulation — the way in which signals are imprinted onto communications carriers. In general, the faster the signal can move, the more susceptible it is to noise; the slower it goes, the more sturdy it is against noise. See “modulation.”

If noise predictably repeats, noise cancellation filters can be used to remove it. Usually, this is done by sampling the slice of noise, then inverting it by 180 degrees, and adding it to the original signal containing the noise.

In digital transmissions, some noise can be corrected through a technique known as “forward error correction.” Reed-Solomon encoding is one example of a forward error correction technique, which lets the receive end detect and fix mistakes to data packets, caused by noise, without requiring the transmitter to resend the packets.

A set-top box with a malfunction that makes it unable to reply to signals it receives, such as, “yoo hoo, you there?” Boxes are considered non-responders if they havent pay responded to a series of two or three “ping tests” a day, for a few weeks. They become non-responders for an assortment of reasons, mostly originating inside peoples homes. Maybe the set-top is plugged into the electrical outlet that’s wired to the wall switch, for instance. It becomes a non-responder every time someone flips off the light. Or, theres a cheap or loose fitting involved. Or, there’s a filter, also known as a trap, in the way of the signal path. Regardless, non-responders matter to the success of interactive services, and in particular, VOD. If a box can’t communicate back and forth over the network, it can’t perform its duties to fetch and retrieve remotely stored video.

An interim step on the route to full video-on-demand (VOD). Initiated by the cable and satellite industries to offer a more flexible method of on-demand movies than previously available with pay-per-view. Pessimists sometimes define NVOD as “not video on demand.”

Nonetheless, NVOD is an outgrowth of digital video compression, and works by reserving a chunk of spectrum such that the same movie can be ordered in 15-minute increments, making it more of a stagger-cast. Although NVOD doesnt generally include rewind, fast-forward or pause features (those come with VOD), the staggered start times let consumers wander away, then catch the movie at the next scheduled start time.