Patent ID: 7539145

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 adapted for: 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; applying a first normalization factor to the first ranging offset value to obtain a first normalized ranging offset value and applying a 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 whether the delta offset value exceeds a predetermined threshold; sending an alert to the co-location alert manager if the delta offset value exceeds a predetermined threshold; acquiring a first cable MAC domain identifier associated with the first DED and a second MAC domain identifier associated with the second DED: determining whether the first MAC domain identifier differs from the second MAC domain identifier; and sending an alert to the alert manager if the first MAC domain identifier differs from the second MAC domain identifier.