Abstract
News editors obtained the following quote from the background information suppli ed by the inventors:“A service provider delivers services to users (e.g., custo mers) by deploying customer premises equipment(“CPE”) devices at the users’ pre mises and connecting the CPE devices to a network or infrastructurecorrespondin g to the service provider. Examples of such services include multimedia, audio, video, telephone,data communications, wireless networking, and wired networking services. For example, a cablecompany can deliver media services to a user by connecting a CPE device, such as a set-top box or a cablemodem, located at the user’s premises, to the cable company’s network. However, due to some service degradation, CPE devices are often swapped and exchanged because it is perceived t hat the CPE devices aredefective while the cause of the service degradation is another problem in the network and not the CPEdevices themselves. Therefore, th ere is a need in the art to better assess CPE devices.”
NETL
NSTL