Last month we profiled Cox's new network management system, which de-prioritizes certain types of traffic when the network gets congested. Unlike Comcast, Cox is targeting specific protocols, and any applications the company deems non-time-sensitive. Yet strangely, Cox tries to tell Cable Digital News that the new system "doesn't pick on particular protocols or applications." Cox SVP of technology Jay Rolls also insists it won't have to be used very often:Rolls is apparently making the media rounds, telling Multichannel News that Cox's first trial market (in Kansas/Arkansas) is live, and only upstream traffic is being tinkered with. "We only really have to battle this on the upstream," Rolls says. For downstream traffic, "it's my opinion that DOCSIS 3.0 will make that a non-issue as we bond downstream channels and increase overall per-node bandwidth capacity."

Multichannel news quotes Rolls as saying the trial could take up to six weeks to complete, and that Cox "may get into this and find out we may not be able to measure [certain applications] properly." We spoke briefly with Rolls to clarify what this meant. "We hope to have results in the next 4 to 6 weeks," he tells us, "unless we discover as we go over the data that the required telemetry data we need to draw conclusions is not properly provided by the vendor."