Patent ID: 6915530

Claim:
A method for characterizing ingress events in a network environment having return path communications being accomplished in a plurality of frequency channels defining the complete return path frequency range, the method comprising the steps of: (a) detecting one or more ingress events in the return path over a pre-determined time period; (b) marking the frequency channel wherein each ingress event exceeds a pre-determined threshold; (c) marking each time interval within the pre-determined time period in which the ingress events exceeds a pre-determined threshold; (d) creating a time/frequency map of the ingress events, wherein the time/frequency map contains the results of steps (b) and (c); (e) summing the results of the marking process of step (c) across a plurality of frequency channels forming the entire frequency range within a specific time interval and comparing the sum to a predetermined wideband ingress threshold to determine the presence of a wideband ingress event.