OVERCOMING NETWORK MONITORING CHALLENGES ON THE WAY TO IP WORKFLOWS
By CHARLIE DUNN , VIDEO PRODUCT LINE GENERAL MANAGER , TEKTRONIX
The broadcast equipment industry is in the process of making the transition to IP based transport for video , audio and data . This has led to development of a suite of standards including SMPTE ST 2022-6 for encapsulation of uncompressed SDI within IP packets and SMPTE ST 2110 for live IP production carrying separate video , audio and data packets .
Although these standards open the door to an all- IP infrastructure , many broadcasters are looking at a steep learning curve as they begin to adopt IP technologies for live production . IP introduces many new technical and skills challenges . These include jitter , latency and the risk of dropped packets and network asymmetry that results in different path delays upstream and downstream . IP is a complex set of bi-directional protocols requiring knowledge of both the source and destination before deployment .
Deploying IP for live video production applications is effectively the collision of the two worlds of video and network engineering . Video engineers are comfortable with the use of SDI , coaxial cable , patch panels , black burst and tri-level sync for timing and above all , monitoring signal quality . The challenge for the video engineer is to understand IT technologies and impact of an IT infrastructure on the video .
On the other hand , network engineers are familiar and comfortable with , IP flows , protocols , network traffic , router configuration , Precision Time Protocol ( PTP ) and Network Time Protocol ( NTP ) for timing . The biggest difference however is that in most data center applications , lost data can be re-sent – this is not the case with high bitrate video . The challenge for the network engineer is in understanding video technology and its impact on IT infrastructure .
NO EASY TASK The ultimate goal is an end-to-end IP infrastructure , but getting there will be no easy task , and few if any broadcasters are going to tackle it all at once . Huge investments in existing technology and workflows mean that video and network engineers will need the tools to diagnose and correlate both SDI and IP signal types . Some monitoring equipment converts IP inputs signal directly into an SDI signal at the front end , but such an approach lacks true IP media analysis and the ability to examine the data packets to diagnose IP traffic issues .
The ideal monitoring solution for a hybrid IP / SDI network is one that can perform a diverse variety of IP layer measurements as well as monitor video and audio content . Monitoring and ease of use are critical to ensuring QoS levels across complex broadcast environments that typically involve compressed and uncompressed video transmissions through SDI and IP signal paths . This challenge gets far worse if multiple tools are needed to test mixed SDI- and IP-based workflows due to
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