“We’re doing things on the configuration and encoding side to get multicast to work with OpenStack.” “Multicast is absolutely critical in the emerging cable video network, but it doesn’t work so well in OpenStack,” Salo says. While declining to discuss details, Andy Salo, vice president of product line management at RGB, notes multicast is one of the tasks associated with delivering IP video that isn’t addressed by OpenStack, a pan-industry template for virtualizing multiple types of applications in the datacenter environment. RGB Networks, too, is working on solutions to the cable multicast challenge as part of its OpenStack-based cloud service platform. But he acknowledges the company is paying close attention to what’s happening there. “We want to supply a tested, scalable multicast solution to the market.”įautier declines to say how closely Harmonic’s approach lines up to what’s emerging from CableLabs. “We’re doing load testing with operators to see how the technology works or doesn’t,” Fautier says. For example, Harmonic is formulating uses of multicast technology as part of its IPTV 2.0 agenda, with one component focused on the on-net segment of the cable network and another on the off-net segment. Now, much as was the case for telcos in their efforts to create a multicast solution for IPTV a decade ago, vendors are coming up with solutions which are feeding into CableLabs’ efforts to define the cable version. Nonetheless, because IGMP is based on the “pull” model used with unicast streaming, the client requests for content that cause clients to be “joined” to a multicast stream are being made with no awareness or control over what’s going on in the network at large.
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While unicast is fine for streaming live content to connected devices in the home from a new generation of transcode-enabled media gateways, the need to make live channels available over the DOCSIS 3.0 network to wirelessly connected subscribers outside the home places a simulcast bandwidth burden on the network that can be greatly alleviated through shared subscriber access to multicast streams.ĭOCSIS 3.0 specifications support the latest version of IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol, v 3.0), but IGMP is not suited to the fast-channel changes and consistent quality performance required in the pay TV market, although DOCSIS 3.0 added some improvements by introducing QoS and security functions onto the multicast streams. The reason for this new urgency in multicast is obvious: with live IP streaming coming into play as part of cable’s TV Everywhere agenda, reliance on unicast streaming can’t last.
“CableLabs is going to release a standard for multicast streaming of live content over ABR (adaptive bitrate),” says Thierry Fautier, vice president of solutions marketing at Harmonic. People in the vendor community, on and off the record, confirm that cable multicast has reached the specifications development stage at CableLabs. Content ingest, encoding, packaging and ways to support alternate content and ad insertion are also part of the cloud initiative, they said.
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In an update of R&D activity at the recent CableLabs winter conference in Atlanta, Matt Schmitt, director for DOCSIS, and Jesus Lopez, director of certifications, said multicast was among the initiatives related to development of an all-IP cloud-based approach to delivering pay TV service.
Thierry Fautier, VP, solutions marketing, Harmonic.Īs Cable Standard Takes Shape Akamai Pursues Broader Bandwidth Efficiency AgendaĪp– After years of languishing in the backwaters of cable industry tech discussions, a cable-optimized version of IP multicast has jumped to the front burner as an initiative at CableLabs and as a priority on the product development agendas of leading vendors.