The Video Service Assurance (VSA) Platform

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The Video Service Assurance (VSA) Platform — MultiscreenScalable, virtualized solutions providing comprehensive network intelligence and visibility for adaptive bit rate services

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The VSA Platform — Multiscreen

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The VSA Platform

Video service providers who ensure quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) face substantial challenges. With exponentially increasing traffic and few corresponding increases in revenue, they must:

• Increase internal efficiency and productivity

• Decrease OpEx and shorten mean-time-to-repair

• Launch new services faster

• Leverage and monetize a vast amount of network, service, and customer intelligence

• Converge legacy video with high-speed IP data networks

The traffic/revenue disconnect

How customer experience impacts customer satisfaction

Yet providers and operators need more. Visibility into a subscriber’s quality of experience is key to reducing churn by providing improved customer service, the primary factor impacting customer satisfaction. Networks must also yield actionable intelligence for marketing new services and offers tuned to demographics and, ultimately, individuals.

• End of “unlimited” plans

• Revenue increase: sharing business models and tiered service introduced

• Moore’s law: lower cost/bit

Traffic vs. Revenue Growth

Voice era

Data era

Traffic

Revenues

Revenues and traffic gapnarrow

Video MOS Score Quality Defect Perception

5

4

3

2

1

Imperceptible

Perceptible

Slightly Annoying

Annoying

Very Annoying

Key Benefits

• Maximize revenue — minimize churn; use customer intelligence to target new products and promotions; speed time-to-revenue; prevent billing system errors

• Reduce OpEx — identify problems before subscribers are impacted; reduce MTTR; verify content delivery networks (CDNs) are performing per service level agreements (SLA)

• Reduce CapEx — scale with software rather than hardware, leveraging commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers to take advantage of the quantum leaps in performance available every year; support multiple services with one system

• Add value to in-house systems — quickly integrate any data source or KPI to correlate results; view real-time events and statistics

Key Features

• Simultaneously monitors thousands of programs using off-the-shelf hardware

• Reveals multiscreen end-user QoE and identifies impairments with video MOS

• Assures services end-to-end

• Monitors performance and troubleshoots anywhere in the network

• Presents insights in an integrated and visually-relevant way

• Streamlines in-house systems using the open platform’s powerful API

The video service assurance (VSA) platform is a highly cost-effective, scalable solution for multiscreen services that gives visibility at every strategic and critical network location. It combines video assurance monitoring software with commercially available, off-the-shelf hardware to create easily deployable points of presence in headends, networks, and end-user devices.

The platform addresses the most demanding assurance and analytics applications requirements. Its extremely efficient data collection, state-of-the-art flow, and transaction analytics engine, combined with in-memory processing for all analysis and correlation functions, add unparalleled scalability. Extremely flexible service modeling and policy management capabilities let VSA components easily scale as needed when adding new network device types, types of services, or service level agreements (SLAs).

The VSA multiscreen application

Video Service Assurance Solution

IPTV Cable TV Multi-Screen TV (ABR)Multiscreen

Live, time shifted, VoD

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Additional features include:

• Ad validation

• CDN certification

• Service tier adherence

• Parental control checking

• Packet retransmit monitoring

• Support for SDN/NFV architectures

End-User QoE

VSA Embedded performs end-user QoE to proactively measure customer experience. This helps reduce churn, localize issues for faster repair, and ends finger-pointing about SLA performance.

Reported data includes:

• Fulfillment success rates and error distributions

• Content availability and integrity

• Response time conformance

• Localized issues causing packet loss in home, Wi-Fi, 4G/LTE, DSLAM/node, hub/CO, metro or core

• Ad insertion failure rate

• Real-time ad avails for sales/marketing monetization

Applications

The VSA platform supports three primary applications.

Content Ingest Validation

The VSA Streaming component validates content ingestion with pre-and post-packager monitoring for live video content. It ensures that live content is not impaired by the active devices at the ingest, reducing the analysis burden on the end device to determine video quality.

Features include:

• Video quality checking

• IP/MPEG monitoring

• Loudness monitoring

• Integrated on-demand troubleshooting

• Support for SDN/NFV architectures

Turn-Up and Service Testing

The VSA Agent performs turn-up and service testing using distributed software agents to monitor live and VoD services before and after launch. It simulates multiple users requesting live and VoD content, runs load tests to verify capacity, performs scheduled content analysis including authentication, authorization, accounting/billing (AAA) verification, and analyzes video MOS. It is easily deployable across the network for full visibility.

VSA components implemented for multiscreen services

Ingest Access SubscriberABR Work�ow

VSAe collector

MetroCore

Transcode Fragmentand DRM

Origin and caching servers

VSA Monitor

Live TV

VSA Streaming

VSAAgent

Active test

VSAEmbedded

VSA-RF100

RFMPEG

DOCSIS

VoD

General set-up issues, user

validation issues, low or �oating

resolution, pixelization, issues

with player, operating system

updates

Satellite receiver errors, program

availability, loudness,

transcoding errors

Bad end-point synchronization,

metadata/manifest inconsistency, disk

and streamer errors, policy issues

Network congestion, policy management, packet loss, streamer

hando� failures

Transport errors, modulator errors,

last-mile checkpoint

Multiscreen Impairments

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VSA Streaming

VSA Streaming is a real-time MPEG video analyzer for parallel troubleshooting and monitoring of multiscreen performance. It cost-effectively and scalably monitors:

• High- and medium-density transport

• The edge

• TR 101-290

• Program timing health

• High-density headend

• Audio loudness and closed-captioning (important for CALM compliance)

It supports unique thresholds per stream and program to minimize false alarms. In addition, it performs ingest and pre-/post-transcode for multiscreen video, displays video MOS for simplified results, captures multiple streams with pre-triggering, and provides remote video viewing.

VSA Streaming ensures that monitoring results are consistent with troubleshooting information, enabling a seamless transfer of information to Tier 2 and 3 groups. This prevents repeat investigations with different tools.

It scales across the network quickly, flexibly, and economically:

• 2X10 G ports → 5,000 programs

• 16X1 G ports → 4,000 programs

• Intel NIC → Low-cost edge monitoring

• ASI → IRD and legacy monitoring

VSA Components

The VSA platform consists of a number of components that scale to perform with virtually any network configuration.

Component Description Implementation

VSA Monitor Real-time correlation of video impairments and trends issues by category such as geography, asset, and device type

Software running on off-the-shelf server or virtual machine.

VSA Streaming Real-time protocol analyzer for parallel troubleshooting and monitoring of any video service

Software running on off-the-shelf server or virtual machine

VSA-RF100 Real-time monitoring and troubleshooting solution for radio frequency (RF), MPEG, and data over cable service interface specification (DOCSIS®) services which also carry multiscreen

RF probe with switches

VSA Agent Monitoring of multiscreen video using distributed agents to check authorization, authentication, accounting, availability, manifest file, service tier conformance, and video MOS

Software running on off-the-shelf server or virtual machine

VSA Embedded

End-user device measurements revealing true end-user video QoE

Software compiled into end-user video player applications

VSA Monitor

HTML5-based VSA Monitor is the element management system (EMS) for all VSA components. Supporting multiple workgroups, it provides remote access to historical and live displays of sites, test points, maps, programs, and assets in its event viewer dashboard. Alarming uses simple network management (SNMP) protocol trap forwarding, sending SNMP traps when alarm states change. Published APIs simplify customizing and incorporating external data sources .

VSA Streaming

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RF health summary

All programs on all streams all the time

VSA-RF100

The VSA-RF100 provides remote RF, MPEG, and DOCSIS® monitoring and analysis of forward path signals and is ideal for remote, unmanned hub sites and headends. It monitors service levels to identify packet loss, missing audio, and missing programs—not just RF health. And, it uniquely sees RF issues invisible to other systems, including bursty events and ingress under the carrier.


• 44 dB MER analyzer-grade measurements

• Digital quality index (DQI) to identify bursty problems

• Packet identifier (PID) bit rate monitoring with scrambling/encryption detection

• Service level packet loss

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VSA Agent

VSA Agent represents a family of distributed and easily deployable software agents that enable active multiscreen service monitoring, verification, and load testing across the network. It integrates with authorization, authentication, and accounting systems for full service validation. The VSA Agent also checks availability, manifest files, service tier conformance, and video MOS.


• Packet retransmit monitoring

• Live/VoD content play-out verification

• Parental control checking

• Verification of program lineup changes

• CDN certification for SLAs

VSA Embedded

VSA Embedded Agent software is compiled into end-user video player applications. This enables real-time monitoring and reporting of multiscreen video service performance and customer experience for operators, segmenting issues affecting end-user quality. Embedded agents enable analyzing the impact of device operating systems and settings on performance. They also rank asset, access network, and content-delivery network performance .

VSA Agent

Active test

VSA Embedded

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The JDSU Portfolio for Turn-Up, Testing, and Assurance

JDSU products complementary to the Video Service Assurance platform include:

• ariesoGEO™ — geolocates customer-centric KPIs from every event of every customer call or data session, providing unprecedented insight into network performance as experienced by the end customer; ariesoGEO reveals problems impossible to detect using network KPIs, often suggests the best solution, and provides all the information needed to solve a problem

• DSAM digital service activation meter — this handheld field meter for DOCSIS/EuroDOCSIS cable modem installation helps cable installers deploy high-speed data and video services faster and more efficiently

• EdgeTrak CPE test agent — EdgeTrak is a signal analysis software agent built-into Broadcom-based CPE for qualifying and troubleshooting HFC network issues without interfering with customer service

• EtherASSURE™ — a next-generation Ethernet service assurance solution for managing the full Ethernet life-cycle. It is a fully integrated, highly scalable, standards compliant test and performance monitoring solution, with unique ability to monitor and segment performance in real time, using real subscriber traffic

• OneExpert DSL modular field test platform — OneExpert DSL helps field technicians get it right—the first time; a multitouch, user-friendly interface and OneCheck™ automated tests ease complex tasks with clear pass/fail results, and its future-proof modules ensure years of use supporting access and home networks

JDSU

NetComplete®

EtherASSURE ™


© 2015 JDS Uniphase Corporation Product specifications and descriptions in this document are subject to change without notice. 30176123 000 0315 VSAPLATFORM.BR.NSD.NSE.AE March 2015

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North America Toll Free: 1 855 ASK-JDSU (1 855 275-5378)Latin America Tel: +1 954 688 5660 Fax: +1 954 345 4668Asia Pacific Tel: +1 800 223 7070 Fax: +65 6602 8301EMEA Tel: +49 7121 86 2222 Fax: +49 7121 86 1222

• VSE-1100 — the industry’s first converged digital spectrum video analyzer and noise-troubleshooting platform meets the challenges of the converged cable access platform (CCAP) and remote PHY evolution

• xSIGHT™ real-time intelligence (RTI) platform — a carrier-grade platform that powers the cloud-based xSIGHT portal for all JDSU assurance and analytics applications; it also supports efficient, flexible, scalable, and configurable data collection and analysis to help CSPs adopt best practices and improve customer satisfaction, maintain profitability, and increase market share amidst extreme competition

• PathTrak™ return path monitoring system — monitors and troubleshoots a HFC upstream with simultaneous return path monitoring, live remote spectrum views, spectrum and data health reporting, upstream carrier analysis on field meters, node performance history, and automated node certification

• RANAdvisor™ and RANAdvisor TrueSite™ — the industry’s most customizable and scalable solution for optimizing wireless networks; TrueSite extends capabilities as a portable, Android-based solution, and includes a receiver that enables comprehensive testing of any indoor network; in addition to app and service testing, TrueSite supports voice quality metrics including VoLTE

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The Video Service Assurance (VSA) Platform