Last time I wrote about assuring quality of multi-media services such as IPTV by reserving bandwidth. What does it mean to reserve bandwidth? It all comes down to allocating bandwidth from the congestion points along the path that the IPTV stream flows. On the subscriber access side there is a hierarchy of devices with more sharing among customers as you work your way to the IP subscriber management platform. In the core network there are redundant paths that the traffic can take. How does the service assurance system keep track of all these congestion points? Having to provision congestion points for millions of subscribers would be a major operational expense. And what if the bandwidth changes due to a re-route or modem retrain? Read more...

Real-time multi-media services such as IP Television (IPTV) and video conferencing place difficult demands on IP networks. IP networks are inherently good at delivering messages on a best effort basis most of the time. But a late packet in a real time media stream is as good as a dropped packet. Read more...