Technologies | IPTV

The industry-leading IPTV network infrastructure test solution

IPTV Delivery Infrastructure

The integration of video, data and voice services over a converged IP networks places significant demands on network infrastructure equipment from the access through the core. Triple play euphoria is driving network evolution and presents new test challenges to Network Equipment Manufacturers and Service Providers developing and deploying IPTV delivery equipment and services.

• Dominant multicast traffic requires upgrades to core and edge routers
• Service-aware edge routers must be able to guarantee per-service, per-subscriber QoS
• DSLAMs need IGMP snooping for bandwidth efficiency
• B-RASs have to authenticate subscribers
• Core routers must support high availability mechanisms to improve network reliability for mission-critical video traffic
• Access networks must be QOS-enabled
• Video servers should be robust and secured by firewalls

N2X: Validate IPTV Quality of experience with realism and scalability

The Agilent N2X offers service providers and equipment manufacturers a powerful solution for accurately measuring the functionality, capacity and performance of IPTV infrastructure devices, and characterizing end-user Quality of Experience (QoE) under realistic and scalable triple play network conditions. N2X provides a comprehensive solution so you can achieve all of the critical measurements required to a verify that a subscriber’s total quality of experience meets expectations.

• IPTV Channel Zapping Performance

• Video Media Quality (Video packet loss and jitter measurements) Metrics

• Network Reliability (High Availability) Measurements

• Network Security Verification

Testing IPTV Channel Zapping Performance with N2X

Part of IPTV QoE is how quickly and reliably users can change channels -- often called channel zapping delay. A key measurement is Multicast leave/join latency, measured using the IGMP protocols (for IPv4) or MLD (for IPv6). N2X measures channel zapping time through individual DUTs, such as B-RASs, DSLAMs and switch/routers, as well as through subsystems.

• Emulate traffic of 100s IPTV channels and 1000s of subscribers
• Define a unique channel zapping profile for each subscriber
• Simulate thousands of subscribers requesting the same channel
• Simulate thousands of subscribers cycling through multiple channels in sequence
• Identify how changing channel behaviors impacts the DUT/SUT
• Analyze accurate channel zapping delay statistics per subscriber & avg/min/max delay of subscriber groups
• Evaluate, troubleshoot and optimize the DUT/SUT

Testing Video Media Quality with N2X

Media quality’ refers to the visible and/or audio quality as perceived by the subscriber. Video traffic is extremely sensitive to network impairments, such as packet loss, latency, jitter, bit errors and out-of-sequence packets. These impairments can severely compromise the media quality viewed by subscribers and manifest themselves in terms of video blocking, blurring, edge distortion, judder, visual/audio noise, and lip-sync problems. Network Equipment Manufacturers and Service Providers must verify network equipment can maintain an acceptable level of media quality under increasing traffic loads and network volatility.

N2X is the only test system that combines the generation and analysis of thousands of video, data and voice traffic streams with the emulation of thousands of dynamic subscribers to test network equipment under real-world triple play network conditions. N2X can uniquely test the scalability limits of each network device, as defined by RFC 4445, by measuring Media Delivery Index (MDI) delay factor and loss metrics for tens of thousands of individual subscribers simultaneously.

• Emulate up to 2048 dynamic triple play subscribers per port
• Generate video, voice and stateful data traffic
• Validate IPTV and Microsoft TV (MSTV) service quality using scalable MDI metrics
• Measure the impact of channel zapping and other triple play services on IPTV QoE
• Capture, replay and decode IPTV and MSTV traffic for greater insight

Testing Network Reliability (High Availability) with N2X

Service Providers require a stable and reliable IP network to ensure timely delivery of delay-sensitive triple-play services like IPTV. Agilent N2X is the only solution to provide comprehensive coverage of all routing and signaling graceful restart protocol extensions and accurate data plane convergence measurements. The N2X provides the industry's most complete High Availability solution with scalable emulation software, a dedicated productivity application automating complex scenarios and a Graceful Restart Conformance Test suite.

Testing Network Security with NetworkTester

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and subscriber authentication, not an issue for traditional TV, are a threat to IPTV. Agilent's N2X allows you to test PPP authentication and DHCP Option 82 subscriber validation under load, while Agilent's NetworkTester verifies the ability of your firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems and Application Layer Gateways to secure your video sources at maximum capacity.

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