1

Managing IPTV and VoIP Service Quality: Using CPE based performance management

Alan Clark, Telchemy alan.d.clark@telchemy.com

IPTcomm 2009

2

Problem Statement

•  Emerging IPTV services are complex

•  Problems are highly visible

•  Network based test equipment •  Is expensive and, with the move to 10Gbit and

higher interconnect speeds, getting more so •  Can’t see into the customer premise

•  Need a cost effective and scalable solution that provides management to the customer premise

3

Residential Service Problems

Customer Premise

ONU

GPON

ONU

Customer Premise IP

WiFi

IPTV & VoIP Services

Head-end/ video encoding, softswitch, trunking gateway problems Access network

problems

Home network problems

4

QoE Monitoring using STB or ONU based Agents

Customer Premise

ONU

GPON

ONU

Customer Premise IP

WiFi

IPTV & VoIP Services

Management Middleware

Management Application

∂

∂

Agent in Set Top Box

“Push” model reports

Agents located in ONU/ Home Gateway

5

VoIP Embedded Agent

•  Accurate call quality metrics and diagnostic data •  Core technology used by over 60% of VoIP test equipment

vendors •  Key VoIP performance reporting protocols are based on

VQmon •  First introduced in 2001 – 8 years of field experience •  Report via……. SIP RTCP Summary Reports

VQmon

Burst loss rate

Gap loss rate

Perceptual model

Calculate R-LQ MOS-LQ

Calculate Ro, Is

Signal level

Noise level

Calculate Id

Echo Level

Delay

Calculate R-CQ MOS-CQ

Quality calculated separately for Bursts and Gaps, combined using a perceptual model

VQmon/EP

6

IP Set Top Box Integration

Network Interface IP Stack

MPEG Transport Demux

MPEG Decoder

Video output

CA/DRM Descramble

SQlive

7

IPTV Performance Analysis Agent

RTP /

MPEG Demux

Perceptual Quality Model

Playout Buffer

Emulator

I/B/P frame

detection

MPEG TR101290

Metrics

FEC and R-UDP Model

Per Frame Quality

I/B/P frame

detection

Codec/ Bandwidth

Model

MPEG TS PAT/PMT Decode

Agent size – 300kbytes code size & 0.5-2 MIPS

8

IPTV Metrics – Subscriber viewpoint

Subscriber watches one channel at a time (sometimes 2).

If they change to a channel with low quality, they will typically move on but may check back to see if the problem is still present

Need to aggregate metrics over a time period (say 15 minutes) by channel viewed

9

Aggregate view from many subscribers

Reports from STB’s or ONU’s Correlating data from individual reports identifies:-

-  Viewing activity – who’s watching what

-  Quality for each channel

-  Quality for each subscriber

-  Head-end problems for specific channels

-  Problems with specific subscriber access links

-  Problems with network equipment feeding specific groups of subscribers

-  Interaction problems between video bandwidth and subscriber access link speed/ in-home network

10

SQmediator

SQmediator Collector Servers

SQmediator Application Server

>250k reports per hour per collector

MTA’s, IP Phones, Set Top Boxes

11

Summary

•  Scalable, cost effective way to monitor residential service quality

•  Provides excellent insight into service quality and supports rapid problem diagnosis

•  Already in early stages of commercial deployment – proven approach

12

Demo

•  Demo 1 – VoIP performance management

•  Demo 2 – IPTV performance management

13

VoIP Performance Monitoring – MSO example

PSTN

IP

Softswitch

Media Gateway

CMTS

MTA HFC network

Local Loop

Analog phone

Analog phone

Head end

SIP RTCP Summary Reports, Collector

14

SQmediator

SQmediator Collector Servers

SQmediator Application Server

>250k reports per hour per collector

MTA’s, IP Phones, Set Top Boxes

15

SQmediator - Collector

Multiprotocol report parser

Correlate multiple reports

Create CQR’s

Data Aggregation

Threshold and alert

generation

CQR database

Real time Report dB

Alert database

Data verification and repair

TCP or UDP, push model reporting protocols

FTP poller

FTP based retrieval

SQmediator Collector

ODBC ODBC

16

SQmediator – Reporting Application

Dashboard Reports Call Analysis Alerting

CQR database

Real time Report dB

Alert database

Database access/ search optimization

SQmediator Reporter

Apache Tomcat

JDBC JDBC

JSP/ Ajax/ Flash SNMP/Email Web Svc API

SNMP Traps Email alerts Web based

GUI

17

SQmediator Demo

18

IPTV performance monitoring

Customer Premise

ONU

GPON

ONU

Customer Premise IP

WiFi

IPTV & VoIP Services

Management Middleware

Management Application

∂

∂

Agent in Set Top Box

“Push” model reports

Agents located in ONU/ Home Gateway

19

IPTV Performance Analysis Agent

RTP /

MPEG Demux

Perceptual Quality Model

Playout Buffer

Emulator

I/B/P frame

detection

MPEG TR101290

Metrics

FEC and R-UDP Model

Per Frame Quality

I/B/P frame

detection

Codec/ Bandwidth

Model

MPEG TS PAT/PMT Decode

Agent size – 300kbytes code size & 0.5-2 MIPS

20

IP Set Top Box Integration

Network Interface IP Stack

MPEG Transport Demux

MPEG Decoder

Video output

CA/DRM Descramble

SQlive

21

Questions?