Cisco Traffic Forecast

I have posted an article on Cisco's latest IP traffic forecast on my Telco 2020 blog. Cisco's forecast highlights the growing importance of video traffic on IP networks.

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.

Is Pay TV Pricing Itself into a Corner

It has recently occurred to me that the Pay TV operators may have made their services too expensive. I have to confess that I have not used Pay TV services for the last 5 years. I have an older house without a functional coax plant and cancelled my Comcast service because I did not have a cable connection where I wanted to put my TV.

The last couple of years I have been watching digital terrestrial over the air stations. I am quite close to the transmission tower, so I get excellent reception with a good Terk indoor antenna. I just bought a new Vizio 42" HDTV and am very happy with it. It is better at pulling in a full range of stations than my older Sharp 32" set. The Vizio even has a functional electronic program guide that lets me see all of the programs in the next several hours on a channel by channel basis. It also has great HD reception and presentation. I can really see the difference with the 1080i broadcasts on the Vizio compared to the 720p broadcasts on my 32" set.

My only disappointment has with the over the air digital was when my local PBS station moved PBS Life and PBS Kids from San Francisco to San Jose, which is too far for me to receive. We had become hooked on both and would love to get them back. I am not a big sports fan, so I do not miss ESPN.

It would cost me between $60 and $90 per month for a good range of digital basic and premium programming. From what I can see, I don't think that what I would get from such a subscription is just not worth the price. I would subscribe to ATT's U-verse, because of my interest in IPTV, but ATT has given up on trying to offer it in San Francisco. The city would not accept the VDSL cabinets on its sidewalks. Frankly, I think the city is right. The boxes are just too big and wood impede pedestrian traffic. I see a lot of two wide baby strollers around that just would not be able to get by one of these boxes.

What intrigues me is bringing over the top Internet content to my TV. I can do that through Netflix, Amazon, and a number of other sites. The new Cisco home media devices that have just been introduced, among others, look like a great way to go. I am pulling in my belt this year to get through the tough economic times, so I will not do anything this year, but prices should go down and functionality should go up next year. We will see then.

Please make your comments. I would like to see if I am alone or not.

Cisco Connected Entertainment Products

I have made a post on my Telco 2020 blog about Cisco's announcement of a range of connected consumer entertainment products. It looks like these products will give Internet delivered content a big boost.

Telco IPTV Network Architecture

I just published a post on my Telecom 2020 blog that you may find interesting. It discusses the new IPTV networking announcements by Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco and their limitations.

Cisco Introduces IPTV Enabled Edge Router

Cisco introduced its Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 9000 that will provide significant increases in performance over its work horse 7600 routers with a total of 6.4 terabits per second of capacity.

The ASR 9000 incorporates the Cisco Advanced Video Services Module (AVSM) with 4 terabyts of flash RAM storage that offers content caching, ad insertion, fast channel change and error correction of video streams. Fast channel change and onboard error correction for both unicast and multicast video traffic helps ensure that errors can be detected by any set-top box and retransmitted within milliseconds.

The AVSM capabilities of the AVSM provide similar capabilities to Alcatel-Lucent's TPSDA 2.0 approach that provides similar capabilities. Both approach will require support from the IPTV middleware to get their full effect.

The 4 TB of storage will be enough to store about 1,000 hours of HD content. This will be enough for the most popular video on demand assets but not for the long tail of for an extensive NPVR service. Cisco will have to add a lot more storage to really offload video traffic from the network as it is currently claiming. I will write a column for my Telco 2020 blog that will discuss this issue in more detail in a couple of days. I just don't think that a distributed approach will hold up over the long term.

ATIS Validates IPTV "CableCard"

ATIS'x IP-Based Separable Security Incubator (ISSI) has proven the viability of an access card broadly compatible with set-top boxes and televisions that enables IPTV providers to ensure the security of high-value content. The VueKey™ is an enhancement of the CableCard® standard to enable IP flows that are network-technology-agnostic. ATIS stated that the time and cost for adaptation will be minimal for vendors creating the components that will deliver IPTV because the card utilizes the existing CableCard design,

Recently held interoperability testing conducted by ISSI members CCAD, Cisco, and Motorola found the VueKey™ solution is a viable approach to meet separable security directives set by the FCC in Docket 97-80. It accomplishes separable security and is harmonized with, and backwards compatible to, the existing unidirectional CableCard standard.

There were important details that were not discussed. It is important that the VueKey be a two-way approach. The original one-way CableCard failed in the market because it did not support important functions such as the interactive program guide or video on demand.

Assuming that ATIS has done this right, this will be a big step toward embedding IPTV set-top boxes into consumer products such as TVs or DVRs.

Cisco IP Traffic Study Says Video Will Dominate

Cisco held a webinar yesterday to discuss its Visual Network Index that measures the degree to which video traffic of all types is contributing to IP networks. The details of this work can be found on its website. This work includes information gathered directly from major IP network providers. Cisco plans to provide quarterly updates to this analysis.

This work is worth following. It shows how much traffic Telco IPTV services will contribute to IP networks, especially in the metro areas. It also confirms the traffic assumptions that we used in our report Networking Strategies for TelcoTV Services,

Cisco Introduces IPTV SLA

Cisco has introduced an IPTV SLA that is explained at this link. It provides monitoring of the IPTV broadcast flows through the IP network and delivers quality measurements, channel mapping, and route path analysis. It couples the multicast protocol with the video channel lineups in a monitoring system. It provides problem isolation by offering a common platform for network and video operators.

Cisco's IPTV SLA includes:

• IPTV Multicast Flow Tracing, which isolates IPTV multicast flows to the network segments responsible for transmission.
• IPTV Video-Quality Measurements for loss and latency that will result in video artifacts. This video measurement is correlated with the multicast IPTV flow tracing for problem correlation.
• IPTV Channel Mapping, which reports the channels that are carried in a multicast flow through the network in order to determine the impact of anomalies in the IPTV transport network.
• Health Checks based on rules created on a per flow basis. Violations to this rule set, such as path or pps, will result in notification to the network operator.
• IPTV-Related Multicast Flows, which automatically finds related multicast flows carrying similar video content to help operators isolate problems and determine their impact.
• Integrated Router Statistics provide multicast diagnostics is provided on a per-flow basis, including router and switch statistics.
• Northbound Notification, which integrates with the service provider's service manager applications by providing northbound trap notifications of IPTV flow alerts.

It appears that Cisco is providing some important capabilities for monitoring IPTV traffic. From this description, it is focusing on the network layer. Other approaches, such as those offered by Brix, Ineoquest, and Bridge Technologies provide monitoring at the video layer by decoding the MPEG packets and identifying the visual impact directly.

I think that Cisco's IPTV SLA is a useful tool, but I also think that video layer monitoring on an end-to-end basis will also be required to get a full picture of video quality.

Light Reading/Cisco IPTV Scaling Test

Light Reading published an article that describes the results of an IPTV network scaling test that shows that a Cisco network can scale to support one million IPTV subscribers with QoS and resilience.

Light Reading asked the European Advanced Networking Test Center AG (EANTC) to run an end-to-end IPTV test on Cisco equipment. Cisco passed, showing its gear can handle a 60,000-user POP and, by extrapolation, a 1 million-subscriber IPTV service. It also demonstrated features such as Call Admissions Control (CAC) and Video Quality Experience (VQE).

EANTC simulated various failures and fiber breaks, and Cisco's routers managed to restore TV service in 625 milliseconds, worst case. And in QOS tests, Cisco correctly prevented the TV streams from getting disrupted when other types of traffic threatened to clog the network.

These results are interesting, but not surprising. There is little question that Cisco's routers can support IPTV networks.

The more interesting question is if this is the best architecture for IPTV. Our recent report Networking Strategies for TelcoTV Services comes to the conclusion that IPTV traffic does not fit a Layer 3 IP network well and that a Layer 1 optical network will provide a higher level of service at a lower cost. The issue is how to handle the on demand unicast traffic that everybody expects to dominate these networks. We are offering a free white paper on this subject.

IBM and Cisco Partner for IPTV

IBM and Cisco have formed a partnership to address the Tier 2 and Tier 3 carriers implementing TelcoTV services in Europe. While the Tier 1 carriers in Europe have already set their strategy, the company sees significant opportunities with the smaller carriers, especially in Eastern Europe and the Middle East as we as some carriers in Scandinavia. Their first joint deal is with Dansk Bredband in Denmark.

Cisco sill provide networking products, Scientific Atlanta headend systems, Arroyo video on demand servers, as well as home gateways and set-top boxes from Linksys and Kiss.

IBM will provide business and technical consulting services plus a vendor finance package.
The two companies will also include middleware from Kasenna and content protection from Verimatrix as part of their TelcoTV offering.

IBM and Cisco have complementary roles, so this combination makes sense for both companies. However, while the Tier 2/Tier 3 market is quite active, the Tier 1 carriers will have most of the subscribers and will account for most of the spending in most product categories.