Monitoring and Control

The microVB™ is a breakthrough in both form-factor and functionality for real-time analysis of customer home network performance. This unobtrusive device provides deep packet inspection and end-to-end visibility in broadcast quality media delivery over any IP based infrastructure including OTT media in unmanaged networks. Combined with the Bridge Technologies server software, Operators can now maintain 24/7 confidence monitoring from head end to customer home. Forget those expensive truck-rolls and keep your Opex under control. Just pop a microVB™ into an envelope and mail to the subscriber directly. No setup knowledge is required because the microVB™ is literally plug and play. Upon installation the microVB™ is auto discoverable and your operations center will be ready to go. Once plugged in you need never touch the microVB™ again; just let it go on running. The microVB™, as its name implies is small, even down to its price tag. The microVB™ will give you instant performance feedback on video quality, packet delivery analysis and set-top-box performance and communications. Home networking environments are becoming more complex. This complexity makes it semi-impossible to identify whether the problems experienced are due to the home infrastructure or to the network. The introduction of new devices and new services (data, voice, video) compound the whole complexity and error identification process even further. The microVB™ is a revolution in thinking. Now, 24/7 monitoring at the customer site as a part of a network-wide monitoring process is an affordable proposition. Putting an engineer on-site assumes the problem will manifest itself during the customer call which is all too often not the case. The microVB™ sidesteps all of the legal, commercial and maintenance risks of hosting software, because it comes on its own hardware which is secure, low cost and non-service affecting. The microVB™ forwards alarm states to its own microVB™ server system. The whole process is automated and fits into the overall architecture of the total system. Not only will the Operator be able to look at the end-points in a network but by using the industrial strength VideoBridge IP-Probes will also enjoy a system-wide overview. Pinpointing potential and actual problems before they become service affecting is the only way to lower service costs and hinder subscriber churn. Packaged as a complete turnkey system, a microVB™ kit consists of microVB™ devices and the server software itself. The system can be expanded to an unlimited number of microVB™ devices. Each microVB™ system can be pre- or retro-fitted to any installation, irrespective of set-top box and network architecture.

The VB120 BROADCAST PROBE is a blade based platform for continuous digital TV monitoring, its modular concept providing the flexibility needed for a cost-effective surveillance system tailor-made for each operator. System scalability in terms of monitoring capacity, signal formats handled and functionality ensures a future-proof solution, an invaluable asset in an ever changing world. The ability to continuously measure all your media services makes the VB120 invaluable for confidence monitoring, thus facilitating a more rapid network expansion. The VB120 BROADCAST PROBE comprises a fully-fledged ETSI TR 101 290 monitoring engine used to monitor enabled inputs, one monitoring engine per input working in parallel. The basic VB120 monitors DVB ASI, IP monitoring is enabled through the IP Monitoring and Analysis option and RF inputs may be included by adding demodulator blades to the system. COFDM, QAM/VSB and QPSK DVB-S/S2 demodulators are available for use with the VB120. Each Bridgetech ETSI TR 101 290 engine performs Priority 1, 2 and 3 measurements in addition to monitoring vital CA parameters, CA monitoring being of vital importance as CAS errors may lead to equally severe impairments as ETSI TR 101 290 Priority 1 errors. The monitoring engine may also be configured to check signal scrambling. PSI/SI and PSIP tables are analyzed and presented as table summary and hex dump, the latter enabling analysis of proprietary descriptors. Bitrates are measured at TS, service and PID level, and the ETSI TR 101 290 engine also monitors RF parameters for optional demodulator inputs. Fully configurable round-robin functionality enables sequential monitoring of several transport streams per monitoring engine. The innovative RDP technology (Return Data Path) is one of the advanced features of the basic VB120, enabling easy re-routing of remote signals from regional locations into a central location for decryption and advanced signal analysis. RDP reduces the need for truck rolls and otherwise necessary on-site visits by skilled and expensive engineers. The VB120 recording functionality allows alarm triggered recording from any enabled input. The IP Monitoring and Analysis Option activates optical and electrical Gigabit Ethernet interfaces for connection to the video segment. The VB120 has been designed to support all modern encapsulation standards including ISO/IEC13818-1 Transport Streams and MFRTP. The VB120 continuously measures signal loss, packet loss and packet jitter for up to 10 IP multicasts. These vital parameters being presented through Bridgetech’s own patented MediaWindow™. MediaWindow™ allows for current and historical data to be displayed in an intuitive and visual way for easy understanding of the media flows in an IP network. Alarm handling is one of the main tasks of the VB120 BROADCAST PROBE, and all measurements are checked against user defined thresholds for alarm generation. A sophisticated threshold template system gives the user full alarm handling control at probe, TS, service and PID level, ensuring that only relevant alarms are displayed. Management and control for the basic VB120 is available through a separate 10/100 Mbps Ethernet interface, the IP-enabled VB120 may alternatively be managed in-band through the GigE video interface. Standalone access is achieved through the use of a standard web browser, avoiding the need for a dedicated client application. With SNMP trapping and XML export the VB120 IP-PROBE is easily integrated into existing NMS systems either directly or through the optional VideoBRIDGE Controller (VBC). The VB120 BROADCAST PROBE hardware is dedicated and built to telco-grade standards for maximum reliability and minimum maintenance. The VB120 is hosted in a 1RU 19″ chassis, each 1″RU chassis capable of hosting up to 3 x VB120 modules, or any combination of the VB120 with COFDM (VB250), QAM/VSB (VB262) and QPSK DVB-S/S2 (VB270) interfaces.

The VB220 PROBE is the flagship monitoring platform for all applications in any network where digital video is carried across an IP infrastructure. Built specifically to high-end industry needs, this network service tool is ideal for both pure IPTV networks and hybrid networks with IP transport cores (such as digital cable and terrestrial networks). The ability to monitor continuously 260 streams makes the VB220 blade just as powerful as its portable version, the VB20. 3 x VB220 blades can be placed in one 19″ 1RU chassis, giving a total of 780 streams monitored in a small form factor. With full support for both the MPEG-2 TS and MFRTP encapsulation standards carrying all modern coding formats, the VB220 is perfect for network core and region use. This is an invaluable helpmate for any network engineer attempting multicast detection on multiple VLANs or in the process of IGMP tracking. Fault finding in complex IP networks just got a lot easier. The monitoring of critical parameters such as loss distance measurements and detailed jitter values will give operators invaluable and precise feedback of network performance. With the patented MediaWindow™ historical data can be easily accessed for meaningful visualization of media flow in IP networks. Whether establishing or modifying service settings on complex routers and switches, the VB220 facilitates the whole process. The power of confidence monitoring is further enhanced by continuous monitoring and alarming for vital parameters like bandwidth overflow/underflow, RTP errors and signal loss. Based on a highly sophisticated threshold template system alarm granularity can be set to reflect actual status, irrelevant alarms being effectively masked. The unique FSM™ framework also allows checking and continuous monitoring of middleware and network services vital to customer QoE. The VB220 may be used with optional demodulator interfaces, resulting in a very compact monitoring solution particularly suited for systems that use IP distribution to regional nodes. The VB220 monitors IP, ASI and optional demodulator inputs simultaneously, and the transport stream and service compare mechanism makes it easy to validate correct local insertion at regional head-ends. SNMP trapping and XML export enable the IP-Probes to be implemented in any NMS system with alarm generation; either directly from the probes themselves, or via the VBC server for advanced alarm correlation and filtering. Each VB220 contains the Eii (External Integration Interface) API for seamless and easy integration into any 3rd party system. Each IP-Probe runs an HTTP server with the client as a web browser, so no need to install custom software on computers needing access to the measurement data. Modern web 2.0 techniques such as AJAX are used to facilitate advanced interface behavior in a standard web browser.

The VB242 ASI input option card allows operators real-time high density ASI monitoring or switched ASI round-robin monitoring for remote or head-end applications. With up to 13 ASI inputs in a 1 RU chassis in combination with the VB220 or VB120 controllers, the VB242 is perfect for existing infrastructures in the head-end and the regional edge-multiplexer/modulator/transmitter site. The VB242 complements the already extensive range of input interfaces for the VideoBRIDGE series probes. The VB242 interface module can operate in two different modes: either two of the inputs are monitored full time with continuous ETSI TR 101 290 analysis, or its inputs are sequentially monitored in a round-robin fashion. Using two VB242 interface modules in a 1RU chassis allows full time monitoring of five ASI streams in parallel – two streams from each of the interface modules and one stream from the ASI input of the controlling VB120 or VB220 probe. This high density solution is very useful for monitoring in head-ends where ASI infrastructure is used. It is also possible to combine a VB242 with a different input interface module, for instance one of the demodulators in the VideoBRIDGE interface product range. The monitoring unit is controlled as part of a system via the VideoBRIDGE Controller, as a stand-alone unit using a regular web-browser or even by a 3rd party management system.

VB252 is a dual input DVB-T/T2 input interface module that enables monitoring of digital terrestrial transmissions. Two modules may be housed in a 1RU chassis together with a controlling VB120 or VB220 probe, providing high monitoring capacity occupying a minimum of rack space. In addition to monitoring typical RF parameters, the monitoring solution optionally allows advanced analysis of the complex DVB-T MI protocol; signal integrity is verified layer by layer. This analysis functionality is complemented by the renowned Bridge Technologies ETSI TR 101 290 monitoring engine to ensure standards conformance at all levels. In a typical DVB-T/T2 system transmitter sites are fed via IP infrastructure or via satellite distribution. The Bridge Technologies range of interfaces and interface modules make it easy to monitor the complete signal chain end-to-end. The VB120/VB252 combination enables monitoring of up to 50 IP multicasts, thus monitoring IP network distribution together with DVB-T2 transmissions. It is even possible to equip the monitoring chassis with a VB270 satellite interface module, which is valuable if combined IP and satellite distribution to transmitter sites is used. Similarly the VB252 can be used with a VB242 ASI input module, enabling high density ASI and DVB-T/T2 monitoring. The basic VB252 supports one COFDM RF input. The second input of the VB252 can be enabled by the customer via a software licensing option. This flexibility allows probe capacity to be tailored to individual system needs, and increase as a monitoring system is expanded to include more transport streams. The Advanced RF Option adds impulse response graphing and analysis to the VB252, making it possible to check reflection conditions at the probe location. Configurable threshold limits determine when an alarm should be raised due to reflection changes in time or power.

The VB330 Probe is the flagship in Bridge Technologies product range. Equipped with up to two 10G Ethernet inputs, it is capable of monitoring thousands of streams in backbone networks and central head-ends. The VB330 utilizes the same visual and intuitive approach to monitoring and analytics as other probes. Measurement analytics are available via easy drill-down functionality and the patented Bridge Technologies MediaWindow™ technology renders monitoring and analysis of the complex much simpler. Three full VB330 Probes can be fitted into the EC 1RU chassis, offering the highest performance to form-factor available. At an early stage in digital television history Bridgetech developers recognized the need for easy-to-interpret monitoring GUIs, as the complexity in modern media transmission systems is formidable. Performing advanced measurements is not enough, the data must be presented in a way that ensures important error incidents are not hidden by irrelevant details. Development has led to several Bridgetech monitoring patents, based on experience from large monitoring systems worldwide. This technology is essential for surveillance of 10G media ports. When so much monitoring capacity is packed into one unit, redundancy becomes a serious issue. The chassis used to house the VB330 therefore includes a dual power supply, minimizing the risk of losing monitoring due to power supply failure. Furthermore, as goes for all VideoBRIDGE probes, dedicated telco grade hardware is used throughout, to ensure the longevity and stability needed for professional operation. The VB330 can be controlled directly via HTTP using a standard WEB browser, or it can be part of a VideoBridge Controller system which includes other devices. This makes the 10G VB330 the logical extension of the Bridgetech product suite.

Includes the following features:

• Slots Support Entire 1Gbps Product Family- VB120, VB220, VB242, VB252, VB262, VB270, VB280
• 100-240VAC Power Supply (Telco 48VDC PSU Option Available, Please call)
• Removable Rack Ears for Front or Back Mounting

Includes the following features:

• Slots Support Entire 1Gbps Product Family- VB120, VB220, VB242, VB252, VB262, VB270, VB280
• Fully Supports VB330 10Gbps Core Monitoring Blade
• Dual, Built-in Power Supplies With Automatic Redundancy Failover
• Active Temperature Monitoring with Variable Speed Fan Control
• 100-240VAC Power Supply (Telco 48VDC PSU Option Available, Please call)
• Rack Ears Can Be Removed for Front or Back Mounting

The Bridge Technologies PocketProbe contains the same OTT Engine found in the award winning VB1, VB2 and the 10G VB3 series probes and enables confidence validation and analysis of http variable bit-rate streams in your pocket. The FULL version contain the ability to validate HDS and SmoothStream manifest files and store 25 streams with all profiles.

• Fully automatic, input URL of stream and the PocketProbe finds all related
• profiles and validates consistency
• Displays profile programmed and actual bps
• Validates chunk size against download time
• Alarms on manifest oversizing
• Alarms on sequence age disparity and non-updates of sequence for live streams
• Graphic display of chunk behavior

Since the PocketProbe uses the exact same metric as in the hardware probes, the PocketProbe can be used by service engineers and operational staff to test real world behaviors post-cloud with various operators. Accurate status of bit-rates used and profile changes is displayed in real time giving instant understanding of provider delivery capability. Together with hardware probes used pre-cloud, the post-cloud location of the PocketProbe enables excellent correlative understanding of CDN and provider abilities. The FREE application can validate 5 HLS streams in round robin, analyze and alarm on manifest consistency, playback media in the various profile bit-rates and graphically display the actual chunk download patterns and bit-rates. The PocketProbe enables objective analysis of real network performance of streaming media in a very simple to use, easy to understand application.

The VBC – central management and status displaying of monitored services. The VideoBRIDGE controller (VBC) is a server application, its main purpose being to offer central control and management of all VideoBRIDGE devices. The VBC gives unprecedented insight into network health and the flow of media streams. Key elements in the VBC are: configuration management, stream status monitoring, service status monitoring, 4-day historical data-display with the Microtimeline™ technology, SNMP multi-destination trap forwarding, alarm logging and PDF report generation. The users connect to the server by using a standard web browser as the client. The VBC controller software is deployed in a Linux server environment offering powerful and standardized network access techniques such as SSH, telnet, FTP, XML, HTTP and SNMP. The VBC collects summarized data from probes and presents alarms filtered by user selectable thresholds and aggregation times, thus providing the high-level overview needed in a large system while still allowing drill-down for detailed alarm and measurement information. At high supervision level in a large system minor error incidents should be masked to avoid a confusing user interface. There is also the possibility of alarm storming due to a major error being reflected at several stages in the signal chain. In order to cope with these challenges the VBC uses two techniques: windowing functionality and alarm aggregation. The windowing functionality ensures that only persisting errors and errors occurring frequently will result in high level alarms. The total level of errors, summed over a specified time window, must exceed a threshold before a high level alarm is raised. Alarm aggregation merges similar alarms into one, thus making the user interface easier to interpret. Extensive use of links in the GUI ensures that it is easy to arrive at the right device views providing detailed information about a high level alarm. This ability to perform complete drill-down from top level to the individual IP-Probe and Content Extractor is invaluable in a fault-finding tool. The VBC provides multiple views to make it simple to obtain system status overview, and it makes previously unintelligible data meaningful. Error patterns are easily discovered, meaning that an error may be quickly pin-pointed and corrected. As the VBC can be used for both high level monitoring and detailed signal inspection, it provides a common monitoring GUI for both non-technical staff and system engineers; this facilitates communication within the organization. Multiple browser-based clients can connect to the server through HTTP. Full access control with individual user preferences and setup is available. Only users with administrator rights are allowed to define new equipment sites consisting of one or more VideoBRIDGE devices. Individual users are allowed to control already registered devices and to view gathered statistical data on a per site basis. Multiple site data views, combined with strict user access control, all add up to provide flexibility and uncompromising security The Reports option enables automatic or custom generation of enterprise level reports that visualize system performance trends in addition to presenting vital parameters such as service availability for both management and engineering use. The Reports option gives full SLA and proof-of-delivery functionality to the VBC system. With the TS service view option the VBC can present individual services from all probes for monitoring and comparison. The Service thumbs view displays thumbnail pictures for individual services, including services within an MPTS stream, provided that one or more VB280 Content Extractors are present in the configuration.

Harmonic’s DMS™ video distribution management system provides broadcasters and content providers with powerful control tools over large populations of Harmonic ProView™ 7000 and ProView™ 7100 IRDs. The software-based solution allows flexible device or group addressability, entitlements and authorization management as well as over-the-air (OTA) in-band control of content distribution network (CDN) elements. It’s ideal for applications such as content distribution to operators, affiliates and service providers, and distribution of digital terrestrial TV services. DMS enables secure broadcast of video content over satellite or IP delivery networks, helping content providers to deliver content to authorized recipients only. Based on open standards such as DVB SimulCrypt, DMS provides individual or group entitlements control with any DVB-compliant conditional access (CA) system. Decryption on ProView 7000 and 7100 receivers is based on DVB-CI modules.

Highlights

• Integrates with DVB scrambling solutions for secure content delivery
• Regional program switching and blackout control
• Facilitates maintenance with device grouping and bulk operations
• OTA firmware upgrades of single or groups of devices
• Integrated event scheduler allows automated operation

Harmonic’s NMX™ Digital Service Manager is a definitive video network management solution encompassing a powerful set of tools for monitoring and managing compressed digital video and audio services, as well as the systems through which these services flow. As a result, operators can run their technical infrastructure in a way that parallels their business – as a series of revenue-generating services, rather than as a set of discrete hardware components.

Highlights

• Centralized management of geographically distributed systems
• Service-oriented software works the way operators work
• Distributed processing for high availability
• “Input to output” GUI and functionality
• Template and wizard-based system setup
• Scalable to any size system

The Harmonic Iris® advanced video analytics software suite provides video quality, global channel availability and source profiling measurements for hundreds of compressed channels, both in real time and historically for up to one year. It works in tandem with the Harmonic NMX™ Digital Service Manager video network management system to collect data from Harmonic Electra™ and Ion™ broadcast encoders and present it as a comprehensive set of user-friendly charts, reports and dashboards. As a result, service providers can monitor and analyze their sources and programming over time; achieve better statmux pool balancing, bitrate allocation and homogeneity of video quality; and ultimately increase viewer satisfaction. Highlights

• Source profiling for better identification of channel complexity and bit requirements
• Reporting of statmux pool load factor for optimization of channel allocation
• Real-time and historical analysis of video quality
• Codec independence for flexible source and signal handling
• Scalable configuration of up to 250 channels per 1 RU
• Scheduled reporting and critical event notification

Source Profiling

Channel complexity varies across time, and a channel that may be easy to compress during a particular program might become quite complex during another. Iris profiles the sources of the entire lineup by aggregating information on source complexity, quality and availability. The system logs individual channels to assess frame-by-frame complexity over a given amount of time. As a result, users can compare days or weeks to identify recurring patterns and then make adjustments, as necessary.

Statmux Pool Load Factor

Harmonic DiviTrackIP™ technology works with Harmonic Electra and Ion encoders and the ProStream® 1000 stream processor to enable statmuxing in a LAN or distributed WAN environment. Iris monitors the DiviTrackIP system to help operators define optimal statmux pool allocations, determining pool load factor (PLF) as a function of channel compression complexity, codec and bitrate. With this information, you can better balance channels across multiple pools, and thereby modify compression rates to achieve best video quality.

Video Quality Absolute Degradation (VQAD)

By measuring the quantization of compression, Iris can report the actual degradation of video quality on channels or pools of choice. Operators can correlate this data with other metrics, such as source complexity or noise, to see how much the output video has degraded in comparison with the source, and then take corrective actions, such as optimizing video quality for a given bitrate or adjusting the bitrate to achieve a predefined video quality.

Simplified QoS

Iris is hosted on a 1-RU server and can be operational in a matter of minutes. Using Iris’ intuitive, web-based graphical user interface, operators can monitor their entire lineup behavior and video quality in real time, from anywhere with a network connection. Iris thus makes it easier to respond quickly to quality-of-service issues and achieve superior video quality at any given bitrate.

DigitalGlue is proud to be Bridge Technologies’ exclusive North American reseller. This impressive Norwegian company is award-winning for its innovation, and delivers intelligent solutions for monitoring, redundancy, and analysis for telecommunication. Their technology facilitates high Quality of Experience for end users by allowing management of network service quality. With continuous monitoring, potential problems can be detected and corrected as fast as possible, and by deploying the right equipment (the VB220 and VB120 IP-PROBEs), you can even continuously monitor TV multicasts cost effectively. Reduce churn in your subscriber base by ensuring the highest Quality of Experience possible. When your station is properly equipped to monitor and control data streams, you can drastically reduce service interruptions and improve customer satisfaction. A proactive visual overview of impending and actual problems helps reduce your operating expenses by reducing the number of trucks sent to problem sites. The family of monitoring and analysis products ranges from advanced network core monitoring systems for national and international networks to edge-specific, and even customer premises applications with central server-based correlation and aggregation. Leverage Bridge Technologies’ innovation and DigitalGlue’s expertise to create the solution that fits your needs.