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Cable Modem Provisioning

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Getting your Sonar instance set up to use Cable Modem Provisioning is a straightforward process. Your Sonar instance will be able to natively integrate with Incognito in order to provide services and IP addresses to your customers using Cable Modems.

Incognito

Setting up Incognito is done in 3 steps - the first is configuring the integration, the second is configuring the Address Lists for customer access, and the last is configuring Inventory Models in your Sonar instance to work with Incognito.

Provisioner

  1. Go to Settings > Networking > Cable Modem Provisioning.
  2. Click "Create Cable Modem Provisioner".
  3. In the "Create Cable Modem Provisioner" modal that opens, enter the settings for your Incognito server.
    Incognito field definitions
    1. The Incognito Username, defined in your Broadband Command Center.
    2. The Incognito Password, defined in your Broadband Command Center.
    3. Your Incognito MPS port. In most cases, this will be 8996 by default.
    4. You Incognito DHCP port. In most cases, this will be 8998 by default.
    5. The name of the Incognito server, for identification within the Sonar interface.
    6. The Hostname of your Broadband Command Center. This can be either an FQDN or an IPv4 address.
    When configuring Incognito, Sonar uses both the DHCP and MPS API, and you must specify the port for each API endpoint.

Address Lists

Address Lists are defined in order to push account addresses to Incognito’s Broadband Command Center (BCC). They will reside in BCC under DHCP > Client Classes.

  1. In Sonar, go to Settings > Networking > Address Lists.
  2. Create Address Lists that match those listed as Client Class Names within your Broadband Command Center. Every Client Class Name needs a corresponding entry as an Address List in Sonar.
    The Address List names are case sensitive and must match those defined in BCC exactly. If your "client class name" in BCC is PLATINUM, then it must be entered into Sonar using all capital letters.

Inventory Models

In order to complete the configuration process, your Sonar instance must have inventory devices Incognito can provision.

  1. Create an inventory model, one for each type of modem you have, by going to Inventory -> Manage Items -> Add Model (see here for details).
  2. During the model creation, the 'Device Type" field should be set to "Cable Modem", as pictured:
  3. Next, you'll need to modify the individual hardware item fields. Select "Modify Fields" and ensure the primary value contains a "Type" value of "MAC Address" and a "Secondary Type" value of "Cable Modem":
    When configuring Incognito, Sonar won't make any model field changes to your existing modems. Changes will only be made in Sonar as they're made in Incognito's Broadband Command Center.
  4. When you add an item to this inventory model, you should see it appear in BCC under MPS > Devices.
  5. If you deactivate the account that owns the address that owns a Cable Modem inventory item in Sonar, the client class will be removed from the Services column in BCC’s MPS > Devices.
  6. From now on, when you add an inventory item to an account in Sonar, you should see the relevant information appear in BCC under MPS > System Root > Subscriber.

IP Assignments

Sonar will write static assignments into Incognito and will retrieve dynamic assignments from Incognito. If an IP address is assigned directly to the cable modem inventory item in Sonar, then Sonar will tell Incognito that this IP should be statically assigned, using the staticAddresses API endpoint. Conversely, if Incognito assigns an IP to a cable modem dynamically, Sonar will learn this data from Incognito and assign it to the cable modem as a soft assignment inside Sonar.

Endpoints Used

Sonar utilizes the following SOAP API endpoints via Incognito, and the user information entered into Sonar will need access to the following functions:

MPS
MPSService
> searchRecords
> updateRecords
> createRecords
> deleteRecords

IncEntitySecurity
> searchRecords
> updateRecords
> createRecords

IncService
> searchBasicRecords
DHCP
DHCPService
> searchRecords

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