Brix Networks

The Quality Imperative - From Carrier Ethernet to VoIP and IPTV

Brix Networks — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:50:25 GMT

Pulver Media has just created a new Web 2.0 community called PulvermediaCommunity that is designed to bring the company and people who are involved in Pulver events together to discuss the future of the industry. Carl Ford created this community on the social networking platform ning (www.ning.com).

On the site, Carl started a discussion called "Is Ethernet our only landline future" which asks:

With so many home and enterprise networks adopting WiFi, is it logical to expect that the future interface to fixed line network will be Ethernet?

In the discussion, he references a presentation from the Fall VON given by Charlie Baker, Director of Product Management at Brix Networks that goes over the need for quality of service (QoS) to be implemented from the Ethernet core all the way through to advanced applications such as VoIP and IPTV.

The presentation is available on the site, but you'll need to register. But don't worry... registration doesn't start a flood of spam messages to your email inbox. And, there's some great information about assuring services from the core all the way down to the individual user.

The Importance of IPTV Endpoint Monitoring

Brix Networks — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:08:03 GMT

The trade press is all abuzz about user quality of experience for IPTV services. Everybody agrees that it’s important, but what nobody’s talking about is how to actually deliver it to customers.

Well, let’s go ahead and buck that trend. What IPTV service providers need is visibility all the way to the subscriber home network.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that quality starts with in-network monitoring – at IP ingress points, stream manipulation points, and then downstream. Service providers absolutely need to know that the content they're pumping out to subscribers was good when they acquired it, and that the network didn’t do anything to degrade that quality.

But, the need for visibility into the home is just as critical – there's no getting around it.

Today, the best way to achieve this visibility is via a lightweight software agent that resides on the customer's set top box (STB). This STB agent has got to provide continuous visibility into subscriber behavior and received performance, as well as the ability to perform directed diagnostics to that home when troubleshooting.

The alternative? IPTV service providers can keep rolling those expensive trucks and paying those expensive techs to sit and watch TV with my 3 year old and the dog when I call to tell them the quality of my picture has gone bad. Everybody knows toddlers won’t tolerate macroblocking during Barney in HD, but you do not want to be messing with video quality when my fussy little Chihuahua settles in on the couch for her hour with the Dog Whisperer.

Ok, enough on the dog….

This STB agent must have an “always-on” mode, allowing it to monitor audio and video performance in real-time to catch common video impairment favorites like jerky video, blocking or dropouts, mosquito noise, complete audio or video loss, or loss of synchronization. The software agent should also monitor interactive requests, like changing channels, to ensure the user is receiving timely responses. The value of subscriber behavior data extends beyond the realm of performance – service providers can easily determine the popularity of programs in their line-up.

In response to automatic threshold exception alerts or an irate customer call, the STB agent must also be able to perform a variety of proactive tests to support troubleshooting, by validating network and infrastructure connectivity and performance – like packet loss in the last mile or an inability to connect to the middleware.

If service providers want to answer questions like these...

Is the problem specific to this subscriber’s home or are all the neighbors having the same problem (imagine knowing that before they call too…)?
Is the problem in the last mile network or is it likely caused by problems in the content service itself?
Do I have to roll a truck or can I fix it from here?

... they not only need a STB agent like I’ve described, but they also need a centralized analysis and reporting engine to make sense of it all. Because, it’s no small task monitoring thousands, or even millions, of subscribers.

Looking 18-24 months out, I expect there to be standards-based complements to the STB agent. For example, there is a good deal of work in the DSL Forum with WT-126 (video quality of experience guidelines) and WT-135 (set top box object model) that specify the kinds of quality and performance metrics STBs will report via TR-069.

Until then though, service providers need to nod their heads knowingly about user quality of experience and start developing their home visibility strategy.

Laura Holly
Direct, Video Service Assurance
Brix Networks

IP Peering Service Assurance: The Key to Delivering End-To-End Service Quality

Brix Networks — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:33:13 GMT

Over the past six months, Brix Networks has had significant discussions with our Tier 1 carrier customers about using service assurance tools to monitor IP Peering applications and services, such as voice over IP (VoIP) and wholesale VoIP services, as well as other IP-based data and bandwidth services. As these Tier 1 carriers continue to roll out these IP-based services, it becomes increasingly important to guarantee service quality as transactions are handed from one carrier to another (i.e. as a VoIP call is transitioned from time-division multiplexing (TDM) networks to IP).

In the case of VoIP, effective, well managed peering arrangements allow VoIP services to exceed the quality expectations of public switched telephone network (PSTN) customers while delivering a feature-rich offering at a much lower cost. But even though existing IP-to-IP network peering arrangements can help solve some of the issues involved in cross-carrier VoIP delivery, there are challenges to overcome as communication service providers look to roll out and expand high-quality IP services.

Using IP data peering arrangements as the model, CSPs are creating peering agreements to deliver true, end-to-end VoIP calling services. However, since VoIP demands a higher quality of service (QoS) than data, communication providers need to address end-to-end service monitoring and service performance issues in VoIP peering arrangements.

Peering partners must guarantee QoS levels and adhere to service level agreements (SLAs) to avoid customer churn and costly SLA violation penalties. To meet these requirements, providers need the ability to share service assurance responsibilities and performance information as IP-based services traverse each other's network domains, allowing them to consistently ensure a high quality of experience (QoE) for subscribers.

Here are two possible IP peering service assurance models:

In a cooperative IP peering model, both peering partners share service performance metrics to establish and enforce SLAs. If key performance indicator (KPI) thresholds are exceeded during simulated testing or live service monitoring, a central management and correlation engine can trigger an alert to each provider. In the cooperative model, problems are quickly pinpointed through proper network segmentation, significantly reducing the mean time to repair (MTTR) and before service levels are compromised and subscribers are impacted.
In a uni-directional IP peering service assurance model, the access provider deploys a service-monitoring resource in the wholesale provider's network, and uses a central management and correlation engine to monitor and measure the performance and quality of its service as it traverses the wholesale provider's network. This model allows access providers to ensure end-to-end service performance while identifying where problems are occurring, whether on their own network or the wholesale provider's network.

Additionally, IP peering service assurance solutions give wholesale providers the ability to monitor service quality and share performance information with select customers via secure, manageable portals. Wholesale providers can now extend visibility as a premium service to preferred customers, offering the following benefits:

Eliminate finger pointing by segmenting the network effectively to pinpoint issues between the customer's access network and the carrier's core network.
Offer a mechanism (a custom portal) for customer satisfaction, fast problem resolution, and providing an incremental revenue source for the wholesale provider.
Deliver real-time access to network performance information and service quality verification -- customers and peering partners can see exactly what they are paying for.

With service quality requirements heightened by interactive IP applications and elevated customer expectations, partnered service providers need end-to-end performance and quality visibility across peered networks. IP peering service assurance monitoring between peering partners builds successful relationships that directly translate to higher quality services and a more informed, collaborative partnership.

Bob Travis
Director, Solutions Marketing
Brix Networks

Some Closing Thoughts from the Spring VON 2007 Show

Brix Networks — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:21:20 GMT

Here is a quick video interview (just 2 minutes) of Charlie Baker, Brix Networks' Director, Product Management, on his closing thougths about the Spring VON show held in San Jose, CA last week (March 20 - 22).

Observations from the IPTV World Forum

Brix Networks — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:40:05 GMT

With 3,500+ attendees and over 100 vendors in the two story exhibition hall, last week's IPTV World Forum event in London had all the earmarks of an event on its way up. There was a palpable buzz -- with good coverage by the international press and analyst community and speakers and attendees from a variety of North American, European, and Asia-Pac carriers. Lots of ad-hoc and earnest hallway conversations.

One attendee told me that the show felt like the "early days of VoIP." It's true....it's like the "wild-wild West" out there. An almost dizzying diversity of implementations, architectures, vendors, approaches, subscriber and revenue projections...and everybody's running hard.

Speaking of subscribers and revenue. While the commercial deployments in Europe lead those in other areas of the world, most are still trying to find their stride when it comes to subscribers and service revenue. Aside from a few of the big names, like Telefonica and France Telecom, most are still struggling to break out of the ranks of friends and family.

So, how come? IPTV, the third jewel in the wireline providers' triple play crown, the service that was meant to silence the competition, isn't delivering. Of course, there are a number of contributors from content availability and acquisition costs, complex architectures with dozens of barely interoperable vendors, unproven business models, to customers unconvinced IPTV is better than what they already have.

But one that we heard about repeatedly over the course of the week was this...service quality. Providers acknowledged that they had little to no visibility -- they don't know if the content they're receiving into their networks is good, they don't know how their networks effect the content, they're worried about whether their infrastructure and middleware can scale as their customer base does, and they don't know what their customers are experiencing at their TVs, until the phones in their customer care centers start to ring.

Before the show, we read a report from Accenture that said the single most important obstacle to IPTV adoption over the next 12 months was, not surprisingly, quality of service issues. We'll second that....

Laura Holly
Director, Video Service Assurance
Brix Networks

Some Observations from VoiceCon Spring

Brix Networks — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:28:00 GMT

Before heading off to VoiceCon Spring in Orlando last week, I took a look at the VoiceCon Spring website and was surprised to see that voice quality was one of the major topics of the event. Included in the "Key Questions to Be Addressed at VoiceCon Spring 2007" were:

What level of performance—e.g., latency, voice quality and resiliency—can IP-PBXs deliver?
What QOS (quality of service) mechanisms are most effective for handling converged traffic on both the LAN and WAN?
Is "five nines" for voice network availability a necessity or a luxury?

I didn't find any silver bullet answers to address these quality assurance topics, but I did see a number of vendors discussing different ways to mine data and help determine the voice quality of their IP network. In my interactions with attendees and other exhibitors, the possible solutions that most strongly resonated were the penetration of standards-based technology like media loopback and RTCP-XR (RFC 3611).

In addition, there was a lot of buzz at this year's VoiceCon Spring around unified communications, as well as some of the keynote speeches that were used for product launches and competitive benchmarks. I found a great blog posting on these topics by Irwin Lazar on his blog. There's also some great info on VoiceCon at Network World's VoiceCon HQ.

Next Up: I'm off to VON Spring in San Jose next week (March 19 - 22). There are a number of quality discussions in the VON Expo Theater and I'll watch for the quality message on the floor. I'll post to the blog as soon as I can.

Charlie Baker

Director, Product Management

Brix Networks

See Brix Networks Live

Brix Networks — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 21:37:07 GMT

Brix Networks is exhibiting at two trade shows beginning next Monday - one in London, England and the other in Orlando, Florida. Here's the details:

	IPTV World Forum 2007 March 5-7, 2007 Olympia 2, London Booth: 123
	VoiceCon Spring 2007 March 5-8, 2007 Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center, Orlando Booth: 428

If you are at either event, please stop by and visit!