Switched Digital Video Test Bulletin
Testing the Switched Digital Video Network Pre-Deployment
Overview Switched Digital Video, or SDV, is a technology that enables increased efficiency of network bandwidth for service providers. Studies show that 80 percent of video subscribers watch the same 20 percent of programming channels. In the traditional video delivery model, all channel streams are delivered to the end user’s set-top box, regardless of whether they are being watched, resulting in wasted bandwidth along the last mile of the network.
In a network leveraging SDV, only the requested content is sent to the viewer’s home, rather than hundreds of streams of unwatched channels. That increased RF bandwidth efficiency enables the network operator to provide more services, including more Video On Demand (VOD) channels, more HDTV channels, increased channel capacity and improved viewer experience.
These advantages, however, come with a significant increase in network and video delivery complexity including:
In order to insure superior video quality, it is imperative that these complexities are comprehended and managed, not only during early stage design, testing and deployment, but also during normal operation of the system. This requires capabilities for testing the network and its components prior to deployment, as well as the implementation of a true, end-to-end Quality & Service Assurance solution to provide the capability to monitor, analyze, fault isolate and troubleshoot a switched digital video implementation.
IQPinPoint™ Supports SDV from the Test Lab to Network Deployment IneoQuest’s IQPinPoint™ is a quality and service assurance solution for SDV networks. IQPinPoint, is comprised of the powerful SingulusTM Lite family of network probes and the award-winning IP Video Management System (iVMS), and is the only quality and service assurance system with the purpose-built capability to provide continuous testing, monitoring, reporting and troubleshooting for providers using SDV technology—from the test lab to the last mile.
Switched digital video technology expands programming choices by saving network capacity
SDV Test Solution
Because the implementation of SDV technology places new and complex requirements on the video delivery network, testing and verification of the system are more important than ever to ensure that SDV may be activated without experiencing periodic packet loss in the transport network. With a SDV deployment, the simple act of changing from a common to a less viewed channel or even to a video on demand movie is non-trivial. For a channel to appear “instantaneously” a complicated process of control and data interaction is required. This is a very dynamic process that deviates from the traditional delivery method to the home, where predetermined channels are sent via static RF carriers. The complexity of multi-plexing different channels on the same RF carriers, while provisioning bandwidth for added subscriber services, increases the probability for errors—the types of errors that cause MSOs to experience customer churn and worse.
Stress Testing of the Network Pre-Deployment Instantiating IneoQuest products are the ideal way to test your SDV implementation both pre and post-deployment. The same equipment used for testing can be used in the QoS, end-to-end solution of a live infrastructure, enabling the MSO to leverage the equipment investment across both engineering and operational divisions.
Figure 2 outlines an example SDV test setup with the Singulus G1-T is being used to generate up to 2Gb/s of video test traffic emulating hundreds of switched video and VOD streams for the Edge-QAM devices under test. Another Singulus G1-T can also be used to either monitor the performance of the Edge-QAM device or optionally replace up to 6 Edge-QAMs for testing of the video content IP network. The Singulus Lite Crickets can also be used to optionally replace STBs for SDV transport tests.
Example use cases of the Singulus G1-T and Singulus Lite Crickets include: Generate hundreds of SDV and VOD test streams for stress testing of the network
Figure 2 Test Setup Example
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