video service assurance across hybrid transport networks

Dimetis Whitepaper

for the Television Broadcast Industry (working draft, incomplete)

------------------------

“Assuring End-to-End Broadcast Video Quality over Next Generation Networks” ------------------------

ABSTRACT

A tectonic paradigm shift in network transport techniques is rocking

the broadcasters’ confidence in the transmission quality of mission-critical television

streams. Broadcasters are unsure of when of if their media streams are receiving

priority treatment and transport service providers are themselves unable to answer these

questions. Yet the implementation of hybrid, unmanaged Next Generation Networks

(NGN) continues to proliferate, jeopardizing the broadcasters’ ability to guarantee

delivery of broadcast-quality payloads even for their premium HDTV content.

Dimetis provides a next-generation Broadcast Operation Services and Support toolset

which simplifies this NGN chaos in a uniform manner, restores confidence in the integrity

of broadcast transports, and then lets broadcasters leverage these disruptive changes to

their advantage.

Adoption of Internet Protocol has reached an inflection point – based on recent MPLS /

LSP advances for broadcast traffic – and its momentum will now only increase. Dimetis

is showing broadcasters how its Broadcast OSS strategy can ease this inevitable

migration and help them forge a robust Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) to exploit

end-user demand for mobile media delivery.

1st Rough Draft - 7/30/2008 CONFIDENTIAL for review only pg. 1 of 29

Table of Contents

I. Your Broadcast Business currently employs a hybrid of multiple transport networks to deliver media payloads:

SERVICE ASSURANCE PROBLEMS AND EXCESSIVE COSTS WITH CURRENT LONG-HAUL SERVICE PROVIDERS

MPLS IMPROVEMENTS IN IP TAGGING SCHEMES

ATM-GRADE PERFORMANCE OVER IP CORE BACKBONES

“BOUTIQUE” Carriers Are Mpls-Savvy

MANAGING MEDIA DELIVERY QUALITY ( SLAS, QOS) OVER HYBRID NETWORKS

II. Unified Control over Hybrid NGN Transports - The Key to ReEstablishing Media Payload Assurance

BRIDGING THE GAP – WHY MANAGEMENT IS THE KEY

CLOSED LOOP FULFILLMENT ASSURANCE – HARNESSING FRAGMENTED NGN TECHNOLOGIES INTO A COHERENT OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

CURRENT HETEROGENEOUS TRANSPORT NETWORKS CANNOT BE CENTRALLY MANAGED END-TO-END

Current EMS tools

Current OSS tools

BOSS – THE BROADCAST OPERATIONS AND SUPPORT SYSTEM

MORE THAN TRANSPORT MANAGEMENT IS REQUIRED FOR END-TO-END PAYLOAD ASSURANCE

MANAGEMENT SCENARIOS INTEGRATING BROADCAST CONTRIBUTION ELEMENTS

III. Managing Complex Hybrid Networks is Now Easy with Dimetis BOSS IV. BOSS is a standards-based management tool that can Grow and Adapt with Your Network Evolution – SID model, SOA, ESB etc see shahin V. You may want to migrate to a consolidated, homogeneous network strategy. BOSS provides a logical path for Migrating to Homogeneous Next Generation Networks VI. BOSS can Help You Migrate to a Robust Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for Integrating Media Distribution over IPTV, Broadcast, Video-on-Demand, Webcast, & MobileCast – all with Realtime Payload Assurance


I. Your Broadcast Business currently employs a hybrid of multiple transport networks to deliver media payloads

The broadcast business has always relied on the effective application of cutting-edge technologies. But today’s challenge of network evolution may be stressing the your ability to manage change. Disruptive trends reshaping transport network operations may leave you feeling adrift, so Dimetis is providing this logical overview of key industry trends that will be shaping your future operating practices. Hopefully this study will illuminate a rational migration path for coping with and exploiting these accelerating technological advances.

As a technology-centric operation, broadcasting currently relies on a dense web of transport networks to carry mission-critical video, radio, and data streams.

regional contribution o In-Studio Gb LANs o Editing Bay WANs o Satellite Links o Microwave Truck Remotes o Transmitter Links

global distribution o realtime o file transfer

on-demand, event transmission

Some of these networks are owned and managed in-house, some by contract suppliers, and some by telecom service providers (carriers).

The matrix at right maps the scope of this complexity facing today’s broadcaster.


This explosion of media transports has resulted in a plethora of options which are utilized in an unmanaged way – leaving the broadcaster exposed to:

Unmonitored corruption of media quality & service outages

No automated Failover or Failback capabilities

Excessive cost for legacy network leases

Unmonitored waste of under-utilized transport capacity

Excessive downtime & cost for diagnosing & repairing transport outages

No Comprehensive Service Quality Assurance for mission-critical payloads

No comprehensive view over transport operations, utilization, & options

This uncontrolled expansion of transport options is understandable, occurring over decades as broadcasters added network functionality as needed. But now this jumble of disparate network gear and protocols has created a hybrid of heterogeneous, unmanaged complexity that can marginalize both the broadcasters’ profitability and service quality.

• Black Frame• Audio Loss• I-Frame Bit Error• P-Frame Bit Error• Freeze Up

• Black Frame• Audio Loss• I-Frame Bit Error• P-Frame Bit Error• Freeze Up

QoS degradation of Media Payloads has become more common and more frequent

with today’s next-generation networks

SERVICE ASSURANCE PROBLEMS AND EXCESSIVE COSTS WITH CURRENT LONG-HAUL SERVICE PROVIDERS

In addition, the service providers you use for long-haul distribution has also been affected by the creep of heterogeneous transport protocols into their operations resulting in a similar unmanaged level of operations that can and often does directly impact the quality and reliability of your media payloads across their networks.

Service Provider networks are not homogeneous. End-to-end transmission of Media Payloads is typically transported over a mix of disparate network protocols


Despite having contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with these carriers, their lack of (and incapability of providing) realtime Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring means they:

1) are often unaware of QoS corruption, 2) have no means of mitigating QoS degradation in realtime, and 3) you have no recourse for pro-actively assuring end-to-end QoS.

Until a downstream distributor or subscriber calls to complain about corrupt sound, image quality, or file transfer – you have no awareness of the problem because you (and your carrier) have no realtime visibility into the integrity of your media payload stream end-to-end.

These long-haul carriers are also struggling to integrate Next Generation IP networking into their transport mix. Unfortunately the excellent service assurance traditionally provided by ATM transports (defined in chart) is no longer the operating norm. Because today’s new IP networks offer the carrier lower equipment cost and lower operating expense, they are compelled to add IP transports into their long-haul architectures.

Now the IP protocol is in an important transitionary phase – offering powerful QoS advantages for broadcast streams while suffering a lag in advanced service quality implementation. It’s appeal and advantage over ATM is that it is a “connectionless” protocol. IP traffic runs in a mixed mode with multiple user streams competing for passageway - maximizing inherent utilization efficiency in the transport pipe and lowering operating costs compared to ATM. This strategy is ideal for data traffic which has no realtime performance constraints.

UNFORTUNATELY THE EXCELLENT SERVICE ASSURANCE TRADITIONALLY PROVIDED BY ATM TRANSPORTS IS NO LONGER THE

OPERATING NORM

But for realtime video streams, the “connection-oriented” nature of ATM means that each user’s stream was assigned a permanent portion of the transport pipe for the duration of the transmit session – thus guaranteeing 100% QoS when using ATM’s “Constant Bit Rate” (CBR) feature. However, the cost of provisioning each user’s stream or “Private Virtual Circuit” (PVC) incurs a higher OPEX penalty compared to IP.

The carriers’ migration away from ATM reliability is not based on abandoning legacy ATM components, but rather by adding IP transports into portions of the backbone which they find useful. Thus their backbone is no longer ATM-homogenous and can no longer ensure end-to-end ATM QoS assurance.


MPLS IMPROVEMENTS IN IP TAGGING SCHEMES

IP NOW HAS AS GOOD A TRAFFIC ENGINEERING CAPABILITY AS ATM. BUT THE PROVISIONING SKILLS AND ADEPTNESS OF CARRIERS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE ADVANCES HAS

NOT KEPT UP

The good news is that the IP protocol is continually improving on its connectionless model, and is actually moving closer to ATM’s connection-oriented SLA approach. IP’s original SLA

tiers were based only on DiffServ tagging of the data packets. However the needs for video and VoIP QoS urged the improved “MPLS” tagging scheme which improved traffic resiliency for media streams.

One important MPLS feature has tamed a specific need of broadcasters for point-to-multipoint distribution. Traditionally a broadcaster will distribute programming to a dozen regional head-ends nationwide using simultaneous satellite feeds, requiring only one upload stream to the distribution node. However, this “Multi-Casting” via IP was a challenge until the Label Switched Path “LSP” was aggressively implemented recently by Juniper and others.

LSP moves IP from the pure connectionless model toward ATM’s connection-oriented advantage for video. Without LSP and its destination / connction taggin, IP networks had to duplicate a separate copy of each stream to each distribution head-end. Thus point-to-multipoint (P2MP) distribution of a 300Mbps uncompressed HDTV signal yielded a 3 Gbps load on the IP backbone – inefficient and error-prone. Now with LSP tagging, only one stream is carried on the backbone and its destination / connection tagging then replicates and routes duplicates only at the destination edge of the network.

ATM-GRADE PERFORMANCE OVER IP CORE BACKBONES (adapted from Juniper Networks)

Since video is so loss-sensitive, it requires that service providers specify point-to-point worst case latency/jitter bounds and packet loss metrics that can match those of ATM services. From a network-architecture perspective, that requires IP routers to guarantee worst case latency and jitter bounds on a per-node basis for premium traffic in the presence of background best effort data traffic. In addition, IP routers have to guarantee bandwidth for each premium application on an end-to-end basis.

“Carriers don't like the idea that their "premium traffic is just floating around out there," he says. "What you're going to see in the industry is an increased drive by the IP players to deal with premium traffic without having everything fall into the best-effort hole."

- Tom Nolle, president of consulting firm CIMI Corp.

To ensure the deterministic delivery of video the IP network must also support rapid recovery from a failure. Reducing outage times to subsecond intervals is critical to sustain high levels of video quality and minimize error recovery dependencies. MPLS resiliency is on a par with SONET/SDH recovery times, but has the added ability to recover from an outage using local repair techniques. MPLS also can reallocate lower traffic class bandwidth resources to video in a converged core, so that an entire duplication of capacity is not held in reserve (as it is with SONET rings). This reduces the number of idle links in the network while maximizing revenue potential.

Another key benefit of IP/MPLS over pure SONET/SDH transport for video distribution is the ability to grow the network rapidly and easily as site count and content capacity increase.


http://www.lightreading.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=7380

Core routing platforms now scale into the terabit-per-second range with wire speed and low-latency forwarding. Weighed against the disadvantages of a traditional SONET/SDH solution, IP/MPLS emerges as a compelling choice for video distribution when implementing a robust, large-scale backbone.

Quality of Service: Jitter is an especially important consideration. For instance, a one-second delay in a television program is not important to the end user. However, variances in that delay will be experienced as frame freezes, asynchronous dialogue, or slight omissions from the program. The loss of even a handful of packets can result in a noticeable—and unacceptable—blip on the TV screen. The QoS abilities of legacy routers have historically been an issue in transitioning to an IP solution. Improved queuing mechanisms for guaranteed QoS have helped to resolve this issue, along with the ability to take better advantage of MPLS features such as Resource Reservation Protocol traffic engineering (RSVP-TE) and DiffServ TE.

Resiliency: Expected failover for video is on the order of that provided by SONET/SDH (50 ms). This is achieved through the use of MPLS Fast Reroute (FRR).

Replication - For bandwidth efficiency, it is necessary to perform an efficient replication within the network to eliminate duplicated traffic over the same link.

These new MPLS schemes now mean the IP protocol inherently has as good a traffic engineering capability as ATM. But the provisioning skills and adeptness of carriers to take advantage of these advances has not kept up. Frankly carriers have just been too busy meeting the revolutionary demand for streaming web content, IPTV, and mobile media convergence to focus on the QoS needs of broadcast television customers.

CARRIERS HAVE JUST BEEN TOO BUSY MEETING THE REVOLUTIONARY DEMAND FOR STREAMING WEB CONTENT, IPTV, AND MOBILE MEDIA CONVERGENCE TO FOCUS ON THE QOS NEEDS OF

BROADCASTERS

COSTLY “BOUTIQUE” CARRIERS

While today’s “common carriers” struggle to digest the impact of Next Gen Networks on their core businesses, there are boutique carriers like Level3 and MediaXstream whose core business model is to service the niche needs of QoS-dependant clients like broadcasters. They are up-to-date on the latest IP advances and more importantly have customized and implemented advanced management systems which fully leverage the advantages of Next Gen Nets to their customers’ advantage. However, broadcasters must pay an arm and a leg to carry their payloads over these boutique service providers.

Dimetis is in the business of showing broadcasters how they can:

1) Use common carriers at lower cost to achieve the same premium QoS results as boutique carriers for long-haul video transport

2) Achieve advanced QoS management and provisioning benefits over their own in-house networks and transports


MANAGING MEDIA DELIVERY QUALITY ( SLAS, QOS) OVER HYBRID NETWORKS

So if IP/MPLS transports are now capable of ATM-grade performance, what’s the problem? Simply put, while properly provisioned and managed IP can now deliver broadcast-quality service assurance, transmission networks are:

1) not homogeneously using advanced IP/MPLS gear

2) not operated and managed with optimal IP/MPLS parameters

3) not operated with homogeneous transport protocols.

Thus transport streams must survive multiple hurdles across divergent network standards, fragmented protocols, and un-coordinated carrier operating standards.

Clearly there is a paradigm shift with Next Generation Networks that can benefit broadcasters. Yet you still wonder about end-to-end media delivery quality over mixed hybrid transports and networks. And, as long as you are lacking absolute metrics from realtime performance measurements, one cannot and should not be certain about media stream integrity. Dimetis is in the business of helping broadcasters leverage this paradigm shift to their advantage by:

1) consolidating and delivering realtime QoS performance metrics from any point in the contribution or distribution network using any existing monitoring gear from any vendor over any network

AS LONG AS YOU ARE LACKING ABSOLUTE METRICS FROM REALTIME PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENTS, ONE CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT BE CERTAIN ABOUT MEDIA STREAM

INTEGRITY

2) providing automated, non service-interrupting fail-over and failback protection for network resiliency over any mix of transport protocols or service providers

3) guaranteeing end-to-end broadcast-quality QoS over any network transport or carrier

4) supporting on-demand provisioning of any network to support broadcast quality television transmissions from event-based venues

5) assuring point-to-multipoint distribution quality


II. Unified Control over Hybrid NGN Transports - The Key to ReEstablishing Media Payload Assurance

The NGN resources that now exist are technologically capable of delivering payload assurance adequate for assuring broadcast-quality transmission. But the missing link is the management capability to uniformly weld these components into a seamless and coherent operating environment. Present Methods of Operation (PMO) for these heterogeneous resources do not provide a centralized operational environment capable of enabling centralized, uniform, and realtime control over the QoS and SLA parameters that can guarantee payload integrity.

NGN ADVANCES HAS CREATED A FRAGMENTED MOSAIC OF HYBRID TECHNOLOGIES FOR WHICH THERE IS NO UNIFIED MANAGEMENT

TOOLSET

BRIDGING THE GAP – WHY MANAGEMENT IS THE KEY

The legacy ATM transport environment gave carriers a centralized management toolset with which they could assure broadcasters reliable broadcast-quality links over a homogeneous network. But the emergence of NGN advances has created a fragmented mosaic of hybrid technologies for which there is no unified management toolset nor over-arching method of coherent operation. With the rapid advance of NGN technologies, the existing management tools have simply not kept up:

1) PMO provide no end-to-end, realtime monitoring metrics readily available to provide visibility into the integrity of media payload streams

2) PMO cannot identify locations and sources of unplanned network congestion in realtime

3) PMO cannot centrally control the QoS parameters for every router, switch, satellite, encoder/decoder, and transport link that carries your broadcast stream

4) PMO do not provide realtime failover mechanisms or strategies for every router, switch, satellite, encoder/decoder, and transport link that carries your broadcast stream

5) PMO do not let the broadcasters establish transport links on-demand capable of supporting remote events. Maintaining the exorbitant cost of satellite trucks is evidence of this need.

6) PMO do not readily provide point-to-multipoint distribution

What is needed for bridging this gap is a management toolset and operational methodology capable of implementing Closed Loop Fulfillment Assurance across the entire mosaic of hybrid NGN equipment and systems. The industry focus should now be on enhancing the operational capabilities that will harness new NGN systems to better serve the broadcasters’ needs.

WELDING HYBRID NETWORK ELEMENTS INTO A COHERENT OPERATIONS CONSOLE FOR

BROADCAST


CLOSED LOOP FULFILLMENT ASSURANCE – HARNESSING FRAGMENTED NGN TECHNOLOGIES INTO A COHERENT OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

The sheer scope of the management challenge can seem daunting, looking at the diagram below. Yet the key to streamlining operations across this mosaic is found by simply tapping into the management interfaces of every existing component and then consolidating those data and control parameters into a centralized, uniform management tool. This integration is precisely what Dimetis has achieved and Section III will describe the Dimetis BOSS management architecture. But prior to that explanation, a fuller understand if existing management approaches and tools should be helpful for the broadcaster.

HETEROGENEOUS TRANSPORT NETWORKS CANNOT BE CENTRALLY MANAGED END-TO-END USING LEGACY MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Two fundamental classes of management tools exist for the carrier:

1) Stand-alone Element Management Systems (EMS) supplied by equipment vendors which provide data interfaces for the remote monitoring and control of that equipment’s operating parameters

2) Highly integrated Operations Support Systems (OSS) that serve as sophisticated database engines that carriers use to operate and manage both their network operations and their back-office business applications.


Current EMS tools Looking at the first method, one can easily understand why stand-alone EMS tools were never built to integrate into a uniform, cross-platform operating system. So today’s broadcaster is typically faced with a barrage of fragmented management screens and tools which cannot quickly profile and characterize the realtime condition of his transport stream, much less provide a single console for realtime system-wide control.

Enter Dimetis, the proven leader in closed-loop performance assurance with a centralized management interface capable of polling and controlling every single piece of equipment in the broadcasters’ shop. By accessing and consolidating the operational parameters of every component, the broadcaster gains a single integrated console for monitoring and controlling his network performance.

Of course to achieve this cross-platform, cross-technology integration, the Dimetis platform is a hardware and software agnostic system. While it features interoperability with any existing piece of gear or network management tools, it’s agnosticism assures seamless integration with any future acquisitions to future-proof the manageability of your operational infrastructure.


Current OSS tools One might expect the large OSS tools to delivery highly integrated functionality – which they indeed do. But the scope of their operational advantage focuses on the back-office tasks. Originally developed as Billing Support Systems (BSS) they have evolved into sophisticated Customer Relationship Management tools for minimizing churn by improving subscriber loyalty. They also integrate EMS and provisioning capabilities for monitoring and controlling network components to assure QoS for VoIP and IPTV across the access network.

But with their focus on serving wireline and wireless subscribers, they have yet not tackled the management challenge of welding hybrid network elements into a coherent operations console for their broadcast clients. In short, the rapid advance in NGN options has culminated in a level of network complexity that has surged ahead of the ability of legacy toolsets to adequately manage it, resulting in a mission-critical performance gap for broadcasters.

Legacy OSS cannot monitor or provision end-to-end elements of hybrid networks

BOSS – THE BROADCAST OPERATIONS AND SUPPORT SYSTEM

Correcting the broadcasters’ performance gap using state-of-the-art management tools and strategies is the specific mission of Dimetis. To achieve this goal, we have developed a broadcast-centric management platform which we’ve named the Broadcast Operations and Support System (BOSS). Drawing on over 10 years of broadcast engineering and management expertise, we’ve assembled a team of world-class industry experts – drawn from notables such as Telcordia, Deutsh Telecom, and ADC – who have built their careers designing and implementing robust and elegant broadcast solutions


MORE THAN TRANSPORT MANAGEMENT IS REQUIRED FOR END-TO-END PAYLOAD ASSURANCE

And yet the challenge of managing complexity continues to expand when we include the contribution elements unique to the broadcasters’ fulfillment chain. A faulty encoder is as likely to disrupt the video stream as a network router and monitoring this node is a critical link in the broadcasters’ end-to-end fulfillment chain.

MANAGEMENT SCENARIOS INTEGRATING BROADCAST CONTRIBUTION ELEMENTS

The encoder failure scenario above is an obvious example of the value that stems from having a management system based on closed-loop fulfillment. Dozens of failure recovery scenarios can be played out spanning the transmitter link to the remote news truck to the satellite uplinks – all of which Dimetis systems are managing seamlessly today for our top-tier broadcast clientele.

But once a centralized monitoring and control system that integrates studio contribution elements is in place, significantly advanced operational capabilities can be further realized:

1) File transfers from video servers can be scheduled for automatic sending during off-peak hours

2) Scheduled event timers can automatically initiate camera feeds, telecine playback, etc.

3) Playout distribution can be localized with regionally-relevant titling using BOSS control of the studio titler

4) Remote control of studio switchers can initiate data crawls for pre-programmed content


Hopefully these brief examples characterize who the Dimetis BOSS platform can not only enhance the reliability of media stream transport, but can also contribute to the automation of daily operational chores around the studio.

WHY BROADCAST OPERATIONS WOULD INVEST IN THEIR OWN NETWORK MANAGEMENT TOOLSET

The most obvious answer is that if network service providers are incapable of supporting end-to-end payload assurance, then broadcasters must shoulder that responsibility themselves. While Dimetis has made the installation of the BOSS platform a non service-interrupting management overlay, it also can also be implemented in a phased manner to initially solve only those most pressing problems unique to your specific operational needs. Individual management modules of the Dimetis BOSS platform can be purchased separately to support a pay-as-you-grow model.

Moreover, we can look at different classes of broadcasters to understand how each can benefit:

1) Many national broadcasters like Disney or CNN own and operate their own distribution networks. For these operators – who are already shouldering in-house network management – implementation of the Dimetis BOSS platform is a logical, painless, and profitable exercise for improving payload assurance and increasing efficiency of transport utilization while reducing operational costs.

2) Smaller broadcast operations wanting to better manage local contribution links and their regional LANs will find the value of BOSS worth the effort to install discrete BOSS modules which will improve payload reliability while simplifying operational tasks. Seamless monitoring and control over remote trucks, transmitter links, remote editing bays and in-house payload routing has proven a valuable investment by dozens of Dimetis customers during the last decade.

3) Playout centers and broadcasters wanting to automate scheduled control of contribution activities like . . .

4) Content originators needing to improve file transfer reliability – say more

5) Broadcasters wanting a coherent NGN upgrade path to consolidate legacy mixed transports into a simplified, homogeneous IP/MPLS network. Dimetis can help manage a planned phase-out of existing ATM service contracts, and retirement of costly microwave / satellite links with new NGN strategies and systems that will reduce operating and vendor costs while improving payload integrity.

6) Broadcasters wanting to minimize costly service contract with boutique carriers can alternatively implement direct QoS control over public carrier networks. Using the Dimetis management interface to control end-to-end QoS over a common carrier’s network can eliminate dependence on boutique carriers for assurance of payload quality. However one may ask - how can a carrier give broadcasters the permission to directly provision their network gear? The answer is that – while common carriers like AT&T have not kept up with advanced QoS provisioning and management capabilities themselves – they are willing to allocate and lease a portion of their backbone to outside control.


7) Event-based broadcast providers who contract their on-demand transport services. Upgrading operations to use Dimetis-managed NGN networks may significantly reduce both the CAPEX and OPEX of traditional satellite remote trucks. Dimetis’ ability to support on-demand provisioning of existing metro fiber rings means that adequate spectrum can often be located adjacent to event venues.

IV. Managing Complex Hybrid Networks is Now Easy with Dimetis BOSS The Dimetis BOSS platform is a hardware and software agnostic system, enabling interoperability with any existing piece of gear or network management tools. This agnosticism assures seamless integration with any future acquisitions to future-proof the manageability of your operational infrastructure.

Dimetis BOSSprovides a unified digital broadcast monitoring / management system, providing payload assurance across the entire network in an organized, structured hierarchy - from points of content origination to final customer distribution:

● Multiplex and Playout Centers (DVB-T, -S, -C, ATSC and IPTV)

● Broadcast networks (contribution as well as distribution)


Network visibility on a regional / country-wide level as well as site-specific detail

● Terrestrial TV distribution networks, from the Head-End to the final POPs (Points of Presence), including the transmitter, the Cable RF converters or DSLAM locations

The BOSS platform displays the whole transmission network in an easy-to-use user interface (GUI) where all faults and alarms are logged and collated at centralized management locations. Alarm filtering / correlation on defective equipment and/or out-of-specification signal parameters can next be performed, typically color-coded on overview screens / maps to highlight the source location of a problem. This ensures simple error recognition and fault isolation. Any operation to resolve the fault can subsequently be executed either automatically or manually.

The Big Picture View with Drill-Down Detail

Umbrella alarm management across various types of broadcast equipment

In the event of an error, a problem can progress through several downstream segments and trigger “cascaded” alarms in various other downstream locations.

An effective Broadcast OSS monitoring system must

reliably inform the operator about the root cause of the error along with all resultant consequential errors. Sophisticated alarm correlation techniques are therefore an important component of this type of system to assist in quick fault isolation / identification while filtering / screening secondary effects.


IPTV and DVB / ATSC Monitoring

IPTV Network Monitoring

In monitoring any type of complex broadcast network, a structured design and implementation approach is an absolute necessity in order to achieve overall system quality and efficiency. As faults and errors occur, targeted actions (initiated either automatically or manually upon alarm trigger) can be performed to eliminate and / or mitigate them. A structured and robust monitoring system will allow:

● all network devices to be defined and configured in a database.

● the recording of all performance information and alarms from devices / element managers, allowing a comprehensive overview of network status.

● provisions for n+1 back-up / recovery switching (for both video signals as well as equipment service profiles) based on error severity as defined through the correlation engine.

In the case of IPTV deployments, monitoring at the DVB / IPTV layer of the whole distribution network from Head-end to DSLAMs is important for complete system visibility. All Single Program Transport Streams (SPTS) across the entire network should be collectable and capable of having all data thoroughly analyzed via strategically placed IPTV probes and / or Transport Stream Analyzers / Recorders (Figure 3 and Figure 4).

Centralized DVB / IPTV Monitoring and Control For DVB / ATSC networks, localized monitoring and control of remote site equipment reporting upward to a higher level monitoring authority best suites the characteristics of this environment. Monitoring and control can include everything from playout devices to tower transmitters to entry door security.


the QOS agent in the BOSS Platform

various Transport Stream Recorders.

By its very definition, video is an unforgiving service. For real-time, non-streamed applications where retransmissions are impractical, variations in its timing and/or delivery sequence will most likely result in scrambled images and subscriber malcontent. Highly compressed video images will suffer even more from delivery aberrations. Additionally, the complexity and nature of the broadcast video delivery network may easily mask a problem’s root cause.

As a real time means to measure, assess, and manage video performance and quickly isolate problems in their early stages, Video Transport Stream Recording servers are recommended across various strategic points in the network. (Reference Figure 1) These specialized devices, while like normal servers in that they can record large amounts of video up to 40 Terabytes in capacity, have the added capability to analyze multiple format video transport streams in real time. The Stream Recorder should allow on-line analysis and visibility into PSI/PSIP, SI and PRT data tables and permit storage of complete or partial Multi-Program Transport Streams. Offline analysis of the recorded sequences should also be accommodated.

Slide 20

DVB-T

INPUT

INPUT

OUTPUT

OUTPUT

StorageTByte

Bypass

Record Retrieve

DVB-S

DVB-C

IPTV

DVB

IPTV

TByteTByte

Transport Stream Recording Server Architecture

Again, the rationale is to provide visibility and analysis into video information details not necessarily obvious in the viewed image. This allows for performance degradation identification and resulting fault isolation before a major problem occurs.

In block diagram form, the Transport Stream Recorder is show in Figure 2 below. An agile design allows the ability to process multi-format inputs and outputs (DVB, ATSC, GigE-IP, & DVD), providing network flexibility.

Various recording modes should also be available including: Continuous, Single Recording and Event Triggered.

From a control system standpoint, a Client/Server architecture is ideal. This allows for monitoring and control of all services from multiple servers from one centralized, or perhaps several other remote/redundant locations, via IP connectivity. This also supports file and system management as well as easy recording configuration of the entire network.


Additionally, specific recorded video sequences based on adjustable parameters from any networked server should be capable of easy retrieval for further analysis and inspection. For maximum flexibility, these video recording sequences should be available in a variety of output formats, including DVD-compatible and native Client/Server files, IP-streaming over GigE, & DVB streaming over ASI. Any additional formats like QPSK, QAM, and/or OFDM would be considered a plus.

Finally, all communication to/from the Transport Stream Recording servers should be performed via SNMP for maximum system flexibility and expansion. This provides a straightforward interface with next generation Broadcast Operation Support Systems that manage all service types, spanning legacy to next generation converged media services.

Additional features of importance in an effective broadcast network monitoring system are:

● Configuration of the entire network via a GUI interface with graphical elements

● Element manager support across multiple equipment manufacturers (i.e. performing as an “umbrella” management system for multiple pieces of dissimilar equipment)

● SNMP monitoring and control capability of all devices in the entire system

● Visualization of system status

● Centralized fault management with: - fault recognition / alarm processing - error correlation - user error messages (SMS, fax, e-mail, etc) - redundancy switching (manual or automatic)

● Disaster recovery

● Event logging of all events (alarms, user and system actions, etc.)

● Archiving / housekeeping

● User administration


V. BOSS is a standards-based management tool that can Grow and Adapt with Your Network Evolution – SID model, SOA, ESB Dimetis BOSS supports both the proprietary network technology such as DTM as well as standardized MPLS, PBT and IP over DWDM. Link Manager is a scalable solution based on a comprehensive video end-to-end service management platform. It supports both uni- and bi-directional, point-to-point and point-to-multi-point services for broadcast and telecom environment. It addresses one of the most critical issues of broadcast and telecom providers, how to get a compressed / uncompressed video signal across WAN based on customer definable QoS parameters.


Dimetis BOSS provides specific functionality to provide:

● Reduced network complexity and improved transport efficiency thru traffic engineering across multiple networks reducing the complexity of multiple element/network management system

● Design of network configurations for complex equipment and circuit layout records such as video routers, encoders, decoders, multiplexers, switches, routers, etc. using standard templates for the assignment of resources,

● manage current inventories of network resources and capacity, down to a port and virtual channel level,

● order and schedule future resources to meet expected demands,

● troubleshoot network outages.

● Complex end-to-end service activation/monitoring spanning multiple network elements/EMSs, encoders, decoders and video routers

● Automated, manual or assisted inventory reconciliation thru auto-discovery

● Automated fulfilment-assurance chain for fault resolution and service continuity

● SLA based service monitoring and charging

The BOSS Platform consists of the following modules:

● ESB

● Inventory

● Activation

● Broadcast Activation

● SLA Manager

● Performance Manager

● Fault Manager

● License Manager

● Security Manager

● Mediation


1. ESB: The Enterprise Service Bus with message-oriented middleware (MOM) and closely coupled with web services is the communication system between the Link Manager components. ESB includes services as coordination of business processes, or protocol transformation. The internal and external Link Manager solution is based on telecom standards of Tele Management Forum (TMF) e.g. NGOSS, OSS/J and SID. OSS/J is the leading industry standard, which provides a full range of API to external OSS components.

2. Inventory Manager: The inventory management system supports a very flexible schema where the end user can setup a network technology based on his/her needs thru simple administration. Furthermore the existing processes within a telecom/broadcast environment can be captured/modified or adjusted as per customer need thru a very powerful process manager. An innovative GUI based on latest SW technologies allows user to easily carry out their day-to-day job, by simply click and drag-and-drop elements into the GUI. Users can select between the mouse-driven approach vs. the traditional tabular screen.

The inventory systems manages the following objects:

● Site: ● Equipment: ● Segment

(leased lines) ● Cables ● Service path ● Customer


Based on the above 6 objects, all current and future networks can be managed within a single centralized platform. Key functionality groups of the inventory system are:

● Bandwidth and resource management

● Traffic Engineering for both broadcast and telecom services

● Future service planning

● Flexible process support

● Template management

3. Activation: The Activation Engine has the functionality to configure different capability of Network Elements deployed in the network; the network element can be physical device or logical component. The Network Elements require initialization parameters for them to initialize and perform the services they are intended to. The Activation Engine Module handles configuration and activation of Product, Service & Resource and also executes the service templates. Activation Engine receives the clients request and validates the operation details and corresponding parameter details and accordingly calls the Device Adapter to communicate with the Network Element and process the execution output and send the response back.

Activation main capabilities are:

● Configuration of network elements

● Device adaptor toolkit: The basic functionality of this module is to separate the device specific implementation with the core device provisioning interface.

● Discovery manager: The discovery of network elements irrespective of the type of the network element.

4. Broadcast Activator: Broadcast Activation is a powerful engine to control and monitor broadcast specific devices, including:

● Encoder

● Decoder

● Video routers

● Multiplexer

Broad Activation supports a number of existing devices. In addition a flexible SDK allows for modification of existing adapters.

5. SLA Manager: The Service Level Assurance system, which monitors the network and associated devices in the network continuously. This system checks/collects the predefined and specific parameters from the network elements. The SLA system determines the specific fault condition of the network depending on the retrieved parameter value and accordingly takes corrective action such as activate the redundancy service path for the customer using the faulty path. SLA communicates with the Activation System to collect information from the network elements or components.


6. Performance Manager: The Performance management module involves the periodic collection of quality metrics that characterize the performance of the network resources over service intervals. It also facilitates the visualization of trends that can indicate periodic or gradual degradation of physical re-sources. The Performance management module is made up of three main functional components –

● Data collection and storage

● Monitoring

● Reporting

● Threshold calculation of performance counters and raise alarms

● Fault Manager: The basic functionality of the fault management system is to provide following –

● Detects, isolates, prioritize, and correct malfunctions in a telecommunication network

● Compensate for environmental changes

● Maintaining and examining error logs

● Accepts and acts on error detection notifications, tracing and identifying faults

● Carry out sequences of diagnostics tests, correcting faults, reporting error conditions, and localizing and tracing faults by examining and manipulating database information

When a fault or event occurs in a network element, the fault management system understands the same and accordingly correlates them, report the root-cause and then take corrective action. The fault management system has the following internal component to handle fault in the network:

● SNMP Trap Manager to receive and understand fault trap messages from the network element

● Passive fault component is done by collecting alarm details from the device periodically, and processes them accordingly.


● Active fault component actively monitors each configured devices and check their health status and determine the service availability.

7. License Manager: Independent service which provides the functionality to define the licensable features and other licensable components, encrypt/decrypt license contents and also validates licensable attributes.

8. Security Manager: This component will handle two types of functionality –

● User Management – this to define user and user groups

● User Access Control List – this to define and associate different user access rights. This also provides the functionality to validate and authorize different functionality per user depending on allocated user/group access rights.

9. Mediation: is a future module of the link manager solution. It provides the detailed traffic information which is traversing the networks from a point to multiple points. The mediation system feeds the captured data into billing system.

Dimetis BOSS HW and SW requirements

1) The Link Manager Framework should be compatible to deploy on different application servers, like – JBOSS, BEA, IBM, TIBCO, Tomcat etc.

2) Supported platforms – Linux, Solaris & Windows

Following defines the Hardware requirement to run the Dimetis BOSS solution:

Software Instance Hardware Required (Minimum)

1 Oracle 10G 2 GB memory, 80 GB HD (Scalable) with dual processor, server machine

2 Activation engine 2 GB memory, 80 GB HD with dual processor, server machine

3 Inventory engine 2 GB memory, 80 GB HD with dual processor, server machine

4 Activation and Inventory 2 GB memory, 80 GB HD with dual processor, server machine

5 Activation and Inventory with Oracle

4 GB memory, 160 GB HD (Scalable) with dual processor, server machine


VI. BOSS can Help You Migrate to a Robust Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for Integrating Media Distribution over IPTV, Broadcast, Video-on-Demand, Webcast, & MobileCast – all with Realtime Payload Assurance

To support the avalanche of mobile multimedia and home theaters a newer generation of OSS needs to be introduced, in order to support the concept of “Virtual Home Environment” or a “network agnostic kind of service at any time”. Crucial for a successful future scenario is an accurate inventory/Service Resource Management along with an on-line discovery system.

NGN is according to widely accepted ITU-T definition “a packet-based network able to provide services including Telecommunication Services and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions are independent from underlying transport-related technologies”. The end-to-end packet-based networks include both the transport and access networks, eliminating the need for converting packets into circuit and vice versa. Converged networks including UMTS, WiMAX, WLAN along with IMS are adding more complexity to the already mentioned requirements. The UMTS term “Virtual Home Environment” (VHE) is becoming even more important, since subscribers can use their “unified services” everywhere at any given time, independent from the underlying technology.


Requirements for new OSS to serve NGN

Various organizations such as ETSI, ITU and TMForum are developing standards in order to guide ISVs building modern OSS/BSS with a future proof? approach. TMForum’s TMF053 (NGOSS), GB922 (SID) and ETSI’s Tispan are activities with a focus on NGN requirements, independent from the standard body ISVs need to meet the general requirements of new networks. Because of the dynamic nature of the NGN and dynamic transient services, a different set of OSS/BSS applications are required. Some of the specific requirements from the OSS point of view are:

Split of converged services and underlying technologies,

Dynamic service-portfolio (self-configurable) based on broadband access,

Inter-networking with legacy environment,

Virtual (unified) home environment within converged networks (Fixed/Mobile).

The operation and maintenance of NGN in carrier-grade environment based on a dynamic underlying transport network (e.g. IMS, IP Multimedia System) requires a robust, scalable, flexible and open OSS architecture. A crucial part of the new OSS will be an accurate and always up-to-date inventory and service resource management. The inventory system serving as the database-of-record for network inventory provides the infrastructure foundation necessary to support flowthru provisioning and automated service delivery. Because of the possible changes of the underlying technology for the same service (e.g. by moving from a home cell to UMTS cell in a future scenario), the database of record needs to be updated and kept up-to-date on-demand at all time. This will enable other OSS applications such as Fault Management to provide a better end-to-end view of possible faults respectively all affected customers.

flexible inventory is part of the new OSS

While most carriers are implementing the Triple-Play services (voice, data and video) right now, future networks will support services beyond the traditional Triple-Play. In order to provide a network agnostic service, a flexible Service Resource Management (SRM) inventory system needs to model the objects in a way that services are independent from transport network. In order to support the flexibility of the platform during the operation, an extendable, easy-to-adapt data model is required. The associations between services and transport need to be pre-built and dynamically re-assigned during a user movement from one access technology to the other. Since the intelligence of dynamic routing resides in the network elements itself, there is no means to update the inventory data manually and/or as a batch process. The so called “online-discovery” needs to pull the data out of various networks, reconcile them and feed them back into SRM inventory on-demand. While reconciliation of a limited number of NE and the associated services are easy to handle, a carrier-grade environment pose a thread to the stability of the inventory solution.

As mentioned earlier a solid SRM inventory solution provides the foundation of the flowthru provisioning. In order to provision multiple services among multiple technologies, a powerful,


scalable and technology neutral process engine is required to activate services and the underlying transport networks in various domains, such as UMTS HLR, Radius-Server (or Diameter) and softswitches. In order to meet the requirements for a VHE, the same services need to be prepared in various domains, but the status needs only to be changed, once the service is really in use. In all the other cases, these unused resources (such as bandwidth for a leased line) can be shared with other users/applications and hence their status is defined as pending/unused. The multitude number of possible NMS/EMS or application transactions for a single user increases dramatically for hundreds of users.

In a highly heterogeneous environment, a flexible inventory systems needs to keep track of all ongoing activities in the network. While the inventory platform can keep the data in a centralised (or distributed) database, an activation/configuration engine needs to communicate with various subsystems, e.g. configuring a softswitch for a specific customer in IMS, registration in the HLR database and registration on the video application server. In order to provision the services properly and time effectively, at first all resources need to be allocated in the inventory system. Hereafter each target provisioning unit needs to be provided with the configuration information. At the end of this chain the status of the overall service package (e.g., “Cross-Technology Voice Service”) for that customer can be updated. Failing to miss one target platform will force the rollback of all activated services respectively changing the status of the service.

An accurate inventory platform as foundation for the new OSS

Other areas of interests for service providers are self-provisioning tools for value added services. In order to provide customers with the ability to create or upgrade an already provisioned service (such as upgrade one LSP from 1Mbit to 2Mbit), the Order Management System needs to forward the requests to the end-to-end-flowthru provisioning system. After the inventory search of the customer’s data, the associated bearer-service, e.g., MPLS LSP respectively bandwidth, can be checked and more bandwidth allocated. In this case the bandwidth order needs to be passed to the identified activation engine in the IMS network.


In order to manage various services in a technology-agnostic manner, the underlying data model needs to decouple services and technologies (good point!). Furthermore a flexible association between service such as “Voice Service” and the various underlying technologies such as MPLS, WiMAX and UMTS needs to be created. In order to keep the data accurate while still maintaining performance during the operation, the 1 to n association between service and the underlying technologies needs to be updated while the user is moving from one technology to another technology. This ensures an always accurate snapshot of all services (including all the linked technologies) and provide Fault and Performance Management application with the most recent data.

A carrier-grade, future-proof, scalable, flexible and open OSS is shown in Figure 2. Here a centralized and clustered Enterprise Application Interface (EAI) or a Java Messaging Services (JMS) can be used to glue all the OSS components of the new OSS platform together. The advantage of the centralized EAI bus as opposed to an overall point-to-point solution, is a more flexible and scalable approach. All the required OSS components can be used as plug-ins based on their standard-adapter (e.g. using SID – I don’t think you will get this from the SID). In order to distribute the load of computing among various servers, the following application, inventory, process engine and activation engines can be physically located on various servers. This ensures for a very robust and scalable solution, while maintaining the flexibility of the OSS. Online-discovery shall operate as a mega-discovery system connecting to various technologies and reconciling this information to a meaningful data set. In order to keep the data volume and the resulting computing resources as low as possible, the necessary data need to filtered and processed by the rule-based discovery.

Dimetis GmbH, headquartered in Dietzenbach, Germany, is a leading software and hardware Systems Integrator, providing standards-based and customized OSS solutions. Its BOSS

Platform is deployed in

various configurations at some of the world’s largest Carriers and TV Broadcasters. www.dimetis.de


video service assurance across hybrid transport networks

Documents

st1 rough draft

software agnostic system

integrating media distribution

based management tool

fault management system

network management tools

hybrid ngn transports

dimetis boss platform