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| Whitepapers/The VideoBridge concept Chapter 5 of 8 The VB220 IP-PROBE  Figure 3 - 3 * VB220 in the 1"RU chassis The VB220 IP-PROBE from BRIDGE Technologies is a 1"RU rack-mountable unit offering continuous monitoring of TV signals in any network where video is carried over IP frames. A single 1"RU shelf equipped with up to 3 * VB220 IP-PROBE cards is capable of verifying the signal integrity of up to 512 individual TV multicasts in parallel, making it a cost-effective and compact solution particularly suitable in fibre and DSL triple-play networks. The VB220 IP-PROBE ensures continuous and cost-effective monitoring in any IP network used to carry MPEG-2, h.264/AVC or WM9/VC-1 signals. Revealing parameters such as IP packet jitter and MPEG-2 Transport Stream packet drops are measured and recorded continually and fed back to a central server application for further correlation and analysis. The operator accesses all parameters by opening a web browser towards the IP-PROBE. Basic setup can be performed locally through RS232 or remotely via TELNET. Central management and alarm/statistics collection are achieved by deploying the VBC (VideoBridge Controller) Server software. A parallel XML-based machine interface in addition to the web interface is available, making it easy to extract data into overlying 3rd party control systems (e.g. InterMapper or HP OpenView) in addition to standard SNMP traps. Each Monitoring Module has a dedicated auto-sensing 10/100/1000T Ethernet interface for connection to the network. Each module also has a separate RS232 port for initial configuration. A composite video and stereo audio output is available for decoding of one selected IP multicast. A user-interface exists for explicitly joining the multicasts. This is useful for pulling down particular IP multicasts from the network at strategic core access points in the network. The Fast Ethernet interface of each IP-Probe Module by default operates in Promiscuous Mode and will automatically discover all multicasts received.
Figure 4 - The VB220 web-based user interface showing an analysis situation where 4 IP multicasts are being analysed. The analysis engine inside the IP-Probe Module is optimised for performing real-time measurements of relevant parameters for video over IP services. Specifically, the analysis engine is capable of receiving up to 180 different IP multicasts, each with a typical bandwidth of 5 Mbit/s. The IP packet inter-arrival time for each of the IP multicasts received is continuously measured. Maximum, minimum and average values are presented and logged. Continuous measurement of the IP multicast bandwidth is performed. Maximum, minimum and average values are presented and logged. A dedicated readout of the individual MPEG-2 Transport Stream PIDs for each IP multicast is presented. Each IP-Probe Module has a built-in alarm logging feature. Each module can also be configured to forward alarms and events to a central server using the standard SYSLOG framework. The modules also have SNMP functinality for easy integration with existing NMS systems.
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