Cisco Cisco Video Assurance Management Solution 2.0 White Paper

White Paper

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IP Broadcast Video Architecture Overview

The video fault management system helps operators monitor and troubleshoot video quality

throughout the IP transport network, from the headend, through the core, to distribution and

aggregation, and eventually, the last mile to the customer premises (Figure 1).

Figure 1. IP Broadcast Video Network Architecture

The broadcast video network is comprised of equipment from many vendors. The IP network is

primarily comprised of optical routers and switches. Headends and hubs have specialized

equipment that captures or encodes video signals for insertion into the network and transport to

the customer premises. An effective video assurance management system can view, map, and

communicate with every component of this network. It must offer multivendor support and be

flexible to accommodate additions, changes, and upgrades to the network. For example, this

flexibility would recognize the addition of last-mile drop points to support new subscribers;

understand software upgrades in switches and routers; and accommodate new bandwidth-

management schemes over time.

Solution: Cisco VAMS

In response to the challenges of IP video assurance services, Cisco offers the Video Assurance

Management Solution (VAMS), a modular, extensible fault management architecture designed for

broadcast TV services over multivendor IP networks. This standards-based solution enables real-

time, centralized monitoring and management of multivendor, multitechnology backbone, regional,

and aggregation networks for broadcast video transport.

Cisco VAMS provides extensive topology-based fault analysis capabilities for rapid and extensive

fault detection, isolation, and root-cause correlation. Its Manager of Managers feature helps

operators focus on important network events, offering a combination of alarm reduction rules,

filtering, customizable alarm viewing, and partitioning.

This solution is comprised of the following components:

●

Cisco Active Network Abstraction (ANA) is the abstraction and mediation layer between the

IP network and OSS applications that collects an end-to-end view of the broadcast network

and enables fault correlation for rapid root-cause analysis.

●

Cisco Multicast Manager monitors and troubleshoots the video transport layer and multicast

pathways, collecting event and fault information from network elements and video probes

distributed throughout the network.

●

Cisco Info Center is the Manager of Managers from which operators view video service

status, collecting traps from all Cisco VAMS applications and components.

●

Third-party video probes are placed at demarcation points throughout the network.

Information from probes enables the Cisco VAMS to identify, isolate, and troubleshoot

video quality problems. Upon testing and validation, the extensible Cisco VAMS can receive

data from and communicate with any RFC 4455-compliant video probe in the market.