Cisco Tackles IPTV Providers’ Channel-Changing, Distribution Challenges

Cisco Systems Inc. has developed a technology that will enable telcos to speed channel changing and more quickly spot and fix problems on DSL lines, as well as a content delivery system – which is designed to help providers more effectively deliver IPTV services.

The news was announced today at the ITU TELECOM WORLD conference in Hong Kong.

The technologies start as part of outboard appliances located adjacent to Cisco’s 7600 series routers, which are widely used in the carrier’s metropolitan networks, and will eventually be integrated into the router itself at a time that has not been specified by the vendor.

The Cisco IPTV advancements use direct, two-way communications between the 7600s and set-top boxes manufactured by Scientific-Atlanta, which the networking vendor acquired earlier this year in an effort to build a telco TV strategy supported by core products.

Though the value of the functionality supported by the Cisco technologies appears clear, one analyst believes the vendor’s opportunities to attract customers will be restricted to those providers that are displeased with their current suppliers, and those that have yet to begin an IPTV rollout.

“In theory, both Cisco concepts would improve IPTV reliability in copper or hybrid copper/fiber plants, but the differences alone are not compelling in my view unless you assume that the incumbent vendor is in trouble,” said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp.

He believes that there’s as much strategy involved in the Cisco technologies as there is functionality.

“I think they've worked hard to come up with a strategy that will displace Alcatel-Microsoft at AT&T and that they're focusing on issues that are relevant to AT&T,” said Nolle. “I do think that Cisco believes the Alcatel-Microsoft axis is vulnerable at AT&T, likely in part because of the suit that indicates the partners are probably headed for a breakup.”

Nolle is referring to a pair of lawsuits filed nearly two weeks ago by Alcatel against Microsoft – the two being high-profile IPTV integration partners – that focused on intellectual properties.

Vendor battles aside, Nolle believes the technologies do hold promise for IPTV-deploying telcos.

The Technologies: VQE

Cisco’s new Visual Quality Experience (VQE) technology is designed to improve the quality of video service and viewing experiences by enabling network-based rapid channel-change and video error repair, two significant challenges in the development and delivery of IPTV services.

Suraj Shetty, director of Cisco’s service provider routing technology group, said these two tasks, which often take several seconds, can be accomplished in less than one second for telcos that employ VQE with their 7600 routers and Scientific-Atlanta set-top boxes.

VQE rapid-channel-change technology accomplishes this, Cisco said, by initiating video streams less than 100 milliseconds after a request is made. The result is transparent to the viewer, who sees an uninterrupted channel change followed by successive video motion.

VQE can also detect copper-line degradations and initiate corrective actions. With this technology, a set top box that detects packet loss may request a retransmission while holding the video sequence in queue. The vendor said the network automatically repairs the error by transmitting the missing packet, which is re-sequenced by the STB without interruption. The entire error repair cycle takes less than 100 milliseconds to complete.

“Three-hundred milliseconds is the barrier beyond which customer will experience pixelization in their picture,” said Cisco’s Shetty.

While many telcos pre-qualify DSL lines before running video over them to customers, Shetty said a number of factors, including bridge taps, bad weather conditions, the length of the copper loops and even the gauge of the copper wire can cause post-deployment problems with video services.

VQE will begin as an outboard appliance, with Cisco planning to integrate it with the 7600 series routers at a later date. The vendor has already integrated a number of video-enabling technologies into this product line in the past year.

The Technologies: CDS

Cisco described its Content Delivery System (CDS) as being based on a network of appliances known as Content Delivery Engines (CDEs) which implement content ingest, storage, distribution, personalization and streaming capabilities. The approach is more network-centric as opposed to the centralized, server-based products available now.

Programming is preserved in a common, shared storage array that is instantly accessible for streaming anywhere in the network, while intelligent caching automates delivery of the content to the network edge by responding dynamically to viewer demand.

This, Cisco said, results in the most popular content at any point in time being cached locally on CDEs at the edge of the network. The vendor said the results include a decrease in bandwidth demand on the network backbone that helps providers lower costs and improve scalability.

“Having the distributed CDS work as one virtual server goes a long way to helping service providers better manage the delivery of their video, wherever it is, to wherever it needs to go,” said Shetty.

In different combinations of content delivery applications (CDA), the vendor said, CDAs enables service providers (telcos and cablecos) to deploy multiple services such as targeted ad insertion in broadcast and VoD, program time-shifting, local and so-called “long tail” content, as well as public, educational and government channels.

Regardless of system size and the number and mix of CDEs deployed, the CDS (in centralized, decentralized or hybrid configurations) operates as a single logical system for ingest, storage and streaming. However, Cisco said, by physically separating ingest/storage and streaming into separate CDEs, each function scales independently of the others.

In related news, Cisco announced its integrated session border controller function into its 7600 line of routers.

Cisco Systems Inc. www.cisco.com

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