IPTV Deployment:

Performance Planning and

Management Architecture

Alan Clark
CEO, Telchemy

1 Internet Telephony - Fall 2005

Internet Telephony - Fall 2005
 Outline

• IPTV Delivery Architecture

• Problems affecting performance

• IPTV performance management architecture

2 Internet Telephony - Fall 2005

 IPTV System Overview

Customer Premise
Video stream - H.264/MPEG 4 or VC1
At 500kbits/s - 6Mbits/s+ IPTV
Set top
VOD Server

Residential
Gateway
In-home
IP wiring
Broadband

Real
Time
Encoder

Service provider responsible

for IP service quality

?
UDP or TCP transport path

3 Internet Telephony - Fall 2005

 Potential problem areas

Customer Premise

Home LAN
speed/ link
quality

VOD Server

VoD Server
Congestion Access Link
Congestion
Congestion or
shaping within
IP network. Use
of RED by routers.

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 Delivery Models

MPEG Transport over UDP

Packet loss leads to video
quality degradation

TCP Streaming
Packet loss leads to gaps in
video playout.
Set top box needs more buffer
memory.

Bulk download
Delay in starting playback.
Set top box needs mass storage.

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 Effects of packet loss on decoded video

Anchor
Interpolated
frames
frames

Packet loss affects Interpolated frames after

part of frame damaged frame are impacted

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 Codec Performance vs Packet Loss

35

30 Better Codecs

25
PSNR (dB)

20 Problem area
15

10

5 Worse
Codecs
0
0 5 10 15 20
Packet Loss (%)

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 Impact of loss/congestion on video stream

Video over UDP - impact of lost packets on video quality

Video over UDP - server congestion leads to gaps in playout

Video over TCP - impact of lost packets leads to gaps in playout

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 Example Packet Loss Distribution

200
Burst weight (packets)

150

s
los
ive

100 e burst)
pars
ut

y (s
ec

ensit
t d
ns

t burs
en
Co

perc
50 20

0
0 100 200 300 400 500
Burst length (packets)
One second

9 Internet Telephony - Fall 2005

 Leads to time varying quality (or gaps for TCP)

5
Base quality level depends on frame rate, codec type, bit rate
Mean Opinion Score

3
Average can be
misleading
2 Impact of Burst of
Packet Loss

1
0 5 10 15 20
Time

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 Perceptual effects of changing quality

Good quality most

of the time

5-8
seconds Reported
15-30 Call quality
seconds

Poor quality during burst of

loss/discards

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 IPTV Performance Management

Customer Premise

IPTV
Set top
VOD Server
Q

Q Q
Q User
Broadband In-home “QoE”
IP wiring
Q

Real
Time
Encoder

Non-intrusive IPTV performance

Q management function
- IPTV video transmission quality
- IPTV control function performance

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 Video transmission quality monitoring with VQmon/SA-VM

Burst packet
Perceptual model
loss rate
Calculate
Ie mapping
V factor
Gap packet
loss rate
V Factor - measures “Video
Transmission Quality”
Video Codec &
Parameters Degraded Quality Events

VQS Score - reports “Video

Frame Rate Objective Quality”
Calculate
Bit Rate Vo, Vs
Calculate
Video Content VQS score
Calculate
Factor VQSsc

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 Content dependency

• Motion vs bandwidth or distortion

– High motion = higher bandwidth or more blur

• Visibility of impairments
– Small impairments less visible in certain types of
video stream

• Emotional aspects
– Final ball in final game in MLB playoffs

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 Summary

• Successful IPTV deployment requires a focus

on Quality of Experience (QoE)

• Need to
– Measure video transmission performance at key
points along the transmission path
– Measure IPTV control protocol performance

• One key group working in this field - ATIS

IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF) QoS task
force

15 Internet Telephony - Fall 2005