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Cambridge

Newcastle

Edinburgh

Oxford

Glasgow

Manchester

Cardiff

Soton

London

Belfast

DL

RL Hinxton

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GridCastUsing the Grid in Broadcast

Infrastructures

BBC

Ron Perrott

Queen’s University, Belfast

{r.perrott@qub.ac.uk}

Belfast e-Science Centre

British Telecom

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The Grid Scenario: The BBC NationsBBC NI, BBC Scotland and BBC Wales

• BBC Nations provide customised services in each nation

• Television programmes are distributed to BBC Nations from BBC Network (London) using dedicated leased ATM circuits.

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Grid Infrastructure

• Technical– High-bandwidth

network connections inter-connect broadcast locations.

– Network bandwidth means geography is less of an issue.

• Organisational– Less centralised

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Overview

• To develop a baseline media grid to support a broadcaster– Manage distributed collections of stored media– Prototype security and access mechanisms– Integrate processing and technical resources– Integrate with media standards and hardware

• To analyse Quality of Service issues– Analyse remote content distribution infrastructures– Analyse remote service provision– To analyse reactivity, reliability and resilience

issues in a grid-based broadcast infrastructure

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Characteristics

• Stored media files are Gbytes and increasing– 1 hour ~ 200 Gbytes; distributes 1 petabyte /year

• Management and distribution is significant technically

• Metadata – location, timings, artists, storage formats etc. is an integral part of broadcast structure

• Content is a valuable commodity – access, modification, copying must be controlled

• High levels of quality required

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High level view of the Infrastructure

NetworkSchedule

BBC Network London

Controller

BBC NI Belfast

BBC NISchedule

Controller

TransmitterCable, Satellite, internet

BBC Scotland Glasgow

BroadcastOutput Controller

Live Content

BBCScotlandSchedule

BBC Wales Cardiff

Controller

Live Content

BroadcastOutput

BBCWales

Schedule

NetworkSchedule

BBC Network London

Controller

BBC NI Belfast

BBC NISchedule

Controller

TransmitterCable, Satellite, internet

BBC Scotland Glasgow

BroadcastOutput Controller

Live Content

BBCScotlandSchedule

BBC Wales Cardiff

Controller

Live Content

BroadcastOutput

BBCWales

Schedule

BBC Scotland Glasgow

BroadcastOutput Controller

Live Content

BBCScotlandSchedule

BBC Wales Cardiff

Controller

Live Content

BroadcastOutput

BBCWales

Schedule

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Broadcasting Grid Services

Each Broadcast site is definedby its collection of available services

•Control services•Content services

HighBandwidthIP Network

Local Content

Controller

LiveOutput

BBC NorthernIreland BBC Scotland

BBC Wales

Controller

LiveOutput

BBC Network

Network Content

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A Virtualised Infrastructure

BBC NI

BBC Scotland

BBC Wales

BBC Network

High BandwidthIP Network

Image Rendering Cluster

Video Editing Suite

Subtitling Engine

Sound Improvement

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Scenario

• A Network Schedule is defined– This schedule is the framework for Nation

schedules• Network Schedules are distributed to

BBC Nations– Usually via email

• BBC Nations formulate their schedule• A Schedule is Broadcast

– By programming local network and content control automation

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Model of Broadcast

• Automatic distribution of broadcast schedules– Management of schedule archives– Automatic notification

• Content is copied from archives to local content storage– Content distribution defined by schedule

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Broadcast grid issues

• Business change– A revised organisational model. Services and resources– Each broadcast location gains control….no network schedule.

• Resilience– Resource sharing and no single programme repository– A BBC Nation can be anywhere!

• Reliability– Use resources available in other BBC sites or from 3rd party

suppliers

• Cost– Better use of resources and less need for backup resources– Less dependence on particular vendors or suppliers

• Customisation– Schedule, local resources, local capabilities

• Interoperability– Business model facilitates sharing with other broadcasters

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Broadcast Schedule Services

• Services to control the exchange and modification of schedules

• Management of a distributed collections of broadcast schedules

• Services to plan transport of content between sites

• Services to deliver stored media to local sites

• Services to manage collections of stored media• Services to distributed content to facilitate

resilience• Services to prepare content for broadcasting

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Progress Assessment

• Software Development• Good experience of GT3• Understanding of grid service model• GT3 shifting sands has been good and bad

• Network Infrastructure– Essential network infrastructure in place

• BBCNI---BeSC link in place• Janet link complete soon

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Model: Grid Service Operation

• A schedule is registered with schedule (network) management service

• Schedule is automatically distributed to (nation) schedule management– Local controller receives notification of schedule

availability

• Nation Controller registers (nation) schedule with local schedule management

• Transport services develop a transport plan for content movement

• Scheduled transport service moves content as defined in transport plan

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Grid Service Operation

• Index services track grid sites and available services• Discovery services locate available copies of

broadcast content– Services for nearest, or least busy or …

• Discovery services identify best transport service to use– Cross mounted file systems, 3rd party or ftp-type

transport.• Transport services move work flows associated with

content– The necessary operation(s) when content is

delivered

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Grid Service Operation

• Transport planner incorporates a model of network load– High cost at peak times and low cost at off-peak– Other models in development

• Content archives are managed as replica archives– Content locations are tracked….content can be withdrawn

• Content archives permit automatic replication– For resilience and/or QoS

• Public and private services facilitate operation with public and private networks– Co-ordinating security policies with internal BBC policies