Patent ID: 7839794

Claim:
A co-location processor for a hybrid-fiber-coax (HFC) cable network comprising: a co-location alert manager; and a co-location agent, wherein the co-location agent is configured to perform operations comprising: acquiring a first ranging offset value associated with a first DOCSIS-enabled device (DED) and a second ranging offset value associated with a second DED, wherein the first and second DEDs are associated with a subscriber account; acquiring a first ranging offset normalizing factor for the first DED from a normalizing factor datastore, wherein the first normalization factor accounts for a packet handling delay characteristic of the first DED; applying the first normalization factor to the first ranging offset value to obtain a first normalized ranging offset value; acquiring a second ranging offset normalizing factor for the second DED from the normalizing factor datastore, wherein the second normalization factor accounts for a packet handling delay characteristic of the second DED; applying the second normalization factor to the second ranging offset value to obtain a second normalized ranging offset value; determining a “delta” offset value equal to the absolute value of the difference between the first normalized ranging offset value and the second normalized ranging offset value; determining that the first and second DEDs are not co-located when the delta offset value exceeds a predetermined threshold; and sending an alert to the co-location alert manager when the first and second DEDs are not co-located.