Cisco IPTV Video Delivery Test

Light Reading published an 18 screen article describing a test performed by EANTC of the ability of a Cisco infrastructure to deliver high quality IPTV service. The conclusion was that the Cisco network performed very well.

This is a very interesting effort. It does a good job of characterizing the performance of this network delivering broadcast/multicast service with a modest amount of video on demand. This are realistic assumptions for most of today's IPTV networks.

However, I am aware of IPTV networks that support network DVR services that are experiencing 80 percent penetration of video on demand services during peak periods. This puts the network into an entirely new dimension. It would have been much more interesting if such a heavy video on demand load was tested as well. This is where IPTV networks are going.