On the Tube: News from Alcatel, Cisco and F5 Networks

Alcatel-Lucent Buys Interactive TV Software Vendor

Alcatel-Lucent has acquired London-based interactive TV vendor Tamblin for an undisclosed sum.

The privately owned company’s primary product is i-ZoneTV, an application creation and management system developed for the TV broadcast industry. It was designed for producers and editors who need to manage and control interactive content from multiple sources published out to multiple platforms.

Tamblin’s clients include broadcasters, network operators, brands and media and advertising agencies such as the BBC, BSkyB, Bubblehits, Channel Five, The Community Channel, Disney Channel UK, ITV, Flextech/Telewest and Sky Media.

Alcatel-Lucent plans to use the technology in concert with its IPTV middleware solution. Tamblin’s 13-person staff will join Alcatel-Lucent’s convergence business activities within its multimedia and payment team.

F5 Goes Multimedia

F5 Networks Inc.’s BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is now multimedia-capable. The latest software release of the LTM supports SIP (for voice), RTSP (for video) and SCTP (Layer 4 for media gateways) protocols.

The LTM, which became generally available in October, was designed to ensure that applications and networks can scale to millions of users while maintaining reliability.

According to Gartner, F5 is the leader in application delivery control.

Cisco Delivers MTU Solution, Service Assurance Tools for IPTV

Cisco Systems Inc. has unleashed a flurry of residential broadband access and IPTV-related news, including the introduction of an FTTH access solution for multitenant buildings. Cisco also unveiled a Carrier Ethernet troubleshooting tool.

Along with this new product news, the company announced it now can deliver SONET-like 50ms resiliency from the network core to customer premises, end-to-end IPTV visibility and service assurance, and has received independent validation on the scalability of its IP NGN Carrier Ethernet Design and Cisco Video Quality Experience technology from the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC).

The MTU FTTH solution is called the ME 3400-24FS. The Carrier Ethernet troubleshooting tool is called the Embedded Event Manager. It is an IOS feature included in many of Cisco’s higher-end solutions and sold as an adjunct to its lower-end solutions. This allows service providers to address unanticipated network problems proactively. For example, a service provider can use the event manager to monitor CPU utilization and if it goes over a certain threshold, the event manager sets certain processes into motion to address the event before it adversely affects service.

As for the EANTC, that test loaded the Carrier Ethernet network with 1 million emulated subscribers, 200 standard-definition channels, 20 high-definition channels and showed “excellent performance and rapid network failure recovery,” according to Cisco. “The test for VQE focused on video error repair resulting in perfect and consistent video quality even with 10 percent packet loss. This is a 10-times improvement over DSL alone,” according to Cisco.

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