consolidating vod and ip multiscreen delivery · ip multiscreen delivery in next generation pay-tv...

Consolidating VOD and IP Multiscreen Delivery in Next Generation Pay-TV Services A Single, Efficient SDN Processing and Distribution Platform to Drive MSO Service Acceleration

Video Consolidation Platform Technical Whitepaper

Consolidating VOD and IP Multiscreen Delivery in Next Generation Pay-TV Services / Whitepaper / © Edgeware 2014 / V 1.1-Sept 2014

Table of Contents

............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 1

Consolidating VOD and IP Multiscreen Delivery in Next Generation Pay-TV Services ............................ 1

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................. 3

The Critical Need for Service & Network Consolidation ........................................................................................... 5

The Future-Proof Video Consolidation Platform (VCP) ............................................................................................ 7

The Consolidated Network Hardware Solution ....................................................................................................... 7

The Software-Defined Capabilities of the VCP ......................................................................................................... 9

VCP Edge – Unified distribution of IP & legacy transmissions ..................................................................... 9

VCP-Core – Overcoming Inefficiencies at the Head-End ...............................................................................11

Video Ecosystem Integration ....................................................................................................................................12

Hierarchical Support for Time-Shift Services ....................................................................................................12

New Efficiencies through Advances in Load Balancing .................................................................................14

Facilitating Quality-Assurance Analytics .............................................................................................................15

A Cost-Saving Business Model ............................................................................................................................................16

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................................................16

About Edgeware ...................................................................................................................................................................17

Contact Edgeware ...............................................................................................................................................................17


Introduction

As pay TV distributors intensify service expansion, the costs of maintaining separate legacy and IP

infrastructures must give way to consolidation of operations onto a unified, software-managed

video processing and distribution platform.

MVPDs (Multichannel Video Programming Distributors) need to make a solid business case for

satisfying consumer demand for access to pay TV services on IP-connected devices while

continuing to deliver linear and on-demand content to traditional set-tops. This requires cutting the

costs of sustaining the existing network while scaling the IP service to deliver higher volumes of

linear and on-demand content to ever more subscribers on an ever expanding array of devices.

Operators also need to leverage the IP infrastructure to drive new revenue through enhancements

such as network-based catch-up TV and DVR (nDVR) and advanced advertising while laying the

foundation for capping and eventually eliminating the legacy head-end and customer premise

equipment (CPE).

Standards-setting bodies and individual MVPDs have devoted much effort towards an integrated

infrastructure. However, it’s generally perceived that operators would have to live with appliance

sprawl in their central head-ends and edge distribution points for some time to come before they

could move all their processing, storage and transmission requirements onto a hierarchically

integrated infrastructure. Fortunately, this is no longer the case.

Significant strategic initiatives such as consolidation of geographically dispersed networks, VOD

expansion, TV Everywhere (TVE), IP migration and network DVR (nDVR) that have been moving on

diverse technology procurement tracks within most organizations can now be executed at

unprecedented economies of scale on the new network consolidation platform developed by

Edgeware. By leveraging proven technology that has evolved to meet service requirements in

deployments worldwide, Edgeware has addressed operators’ needs for a virtualized network

architecture to achieve the levels of multi-purpose functionality that are essential to driving silos

and costs out of service expansion.

Unification and scaling of the packaging, storage, multi-protocol distribution and other processing

capabilities associated with these goals requires two major elements:

1. Extremely dense, efficient hardware appliances, purpose-built for accelerated recording, caching, and streaming;

2. Use of an SDN (Software Defined Networking) architecture to create an extensible operations platform that combines the management of these appliances with dynamic use of commodity servers for processes with lower performance requirements

These are the core elements that comprise the next-generation Edgeware Video Consolidation

Platform (VCP). Edgeware has greatly expanded the capabilities of its widely deployed and proven

Convoy Management Software to serve as an SDN management platform, performing all the control,


configuration and monitoring functions for assigning application-specific processes both to

Edgeware’s purpose-built Orbit servers and commodity hardware resources.

The Orbit 3080 is the latest generation appliance which supports wire speed processing at 80

gigabits-per-second and delivers up to 128,000 concurrent streams to any combination of IP and

legacy QAM connected devices from a single Rack Unit (RU). This equates to a ten-fold increase in

throughput per RU compared to the highest performing generic servers.

These advances are built on a product foundation that has become a leading resource for service

expansion by major MVPDs world-wide. Over 10 million subscribers are now connected to

Edgeware-supplied networks, including those served by the leading MSOs and Telcos in Europe and

Asia.. These include Belgacom, the dominant Belgian telecommunications provider, Ziggo and KPN,

respectively the leading Dutch cable and telephone companies and ComHem and Telia, repectively

the leading Scandinavian cable and telco.

The Edgeware VCP encompasses a wide range of innovative approaches to network management

that can be implemented gradually in head-ends and edge locations to address MVPD needs in the

most cost effective ways possible. Operators are assured that they are deploying a solution that can

easily be expanded and scaled to support immediate as well as future needs on a pay-as-you-go

basis.


The Critical Need for Service & Network Consolidation

An integrated approach is obviously required for service expansion. MVPDs have consolidated

geographically dispersed networks by eliminating multiple head-ends in favor of centralized

content operations with distributed network sites. IPTV and the need to support multiscreen

devices means the costs of deploying and maintaining separate equipment within these sites in

order to process and distribute content in different formats is becoming untenable.

Consolidation has become especially challenging in distribution hubs, where ongoing service

expansion requires ever increasing, power-hungry servers and the space to accommodate them.

What began as a need for distributed storage and streaming to support high-volume VOD services

has expanded to include caching and streaming support for IP content delivered as part of TV

Everywhere (TVE) services.

In addition, operators are trying to figure out how to support the short-term storage and

distribution requirements of time-shifted start-over and catchup TV services in both legacy and IP

modes. Then there is the added massive and longer-term storage and distribution requirements of

an nDVR service that provides every subscriber network storage comparable to their home-based

DVR.

Finally, the overarching question is “How to accommodate migration to all-IP services with

minimum disruption to existing facilities and architectures?” MVPD service expansion agendas vary

greatly, no more so than in North America. However, containing costs while remaining competitive

in turbulent markets applies equally to smaller regional operators and to national operators

serving millions of customers.

Some operators in smaller markets may still be struggling with building a viable VOD service with

enough HD content to counter the appeal of Direct-Broadcast Satellite (DBS) services. The challenge

is to add or expand VOD services immediately but with with future-proofed network investments to

cost effectively support new services.

Today’s solutions must support efficient distribution of popular titles, combined with long-tail

content, in a hierarchical deployment of core and edge servers. They must also be able to serve

future needs of storage and streaming IP content and TVE services from the same infrastructure.

For operators that are acquiring complete cable operations cross diverse regions, disparate

networks must be consolidated intelligently to centralize and automate operations whilst keeping

future expansion in mind. These MVPDs must consolidate with solutions that minimize the costs of

service expansion and maximize their flexibility to expand their footprints. With the right

architectural choices, operators will be free to acquire systems wherever they see good

opportunities, knowing they can incorporate them into a unified service platform whether or not

they’re contiguous with previously acquired systems.


Tier 1 network consolidation agendas are underway in tandem with aggressive service expansion.

Along with delivering live channels and thousands of VOD options to every type of connected device

in and outside the home, many operators want to incorporate offerings from OTT sources into their

service lineups. These MVPDs are likely contemplating nDVR, start-over and catchup TV services

that can be accessed from IP devices as well as legacy set-tops.

New revenue generation is key and operators in all these categories are looking for ways to add

Revenue Generating Units (RGUs) with their service expansions. Maintaining robust quality of

experience during this expansion is of course, fundamental, even when delivering TVE services to

multiscreen devices. TVE expansion even requires real-time performance metrics to assure rights

holders and advertisers that all contract requirements are being met.

Clearly, any video processing and delivery platform that can accommodate all these requirements, whether incrementally or all at once, will also serve as the framework for migration to all-IP services,

Use Case Edgeware VCP Key Features Key Benefits

Legacy VOD expansion Highly distributed caching support Avoid expensive IP core network capacity upgrades

Live TV Everywhere expansion

Caching efficiencies in delivery to any device

Deliver large peaks in live & VOD traffic on broadband network

Multiscreen origin expansion

Superior ingest, recording and distribution performance

Remove load balancers + reduce packagers + use lowest cost storage

Legacy VOD & Multiscreen consolidation

Distribution via a single edge platform

Remove duplicated VOD and CDN caches

Start-Over, Look-back and Cloud DVR

Hierarchical caching and long-term storage

Reduce latency and maximize cache efficiency

Centralization of network operations

Diverse network support with service expansion at all origin / edge locations

Reduce complexity and duplication of operations

SDN Management Orchestration

Virtualized control plane + accelerated data plane

Rapid service agility and expansion

Figure 1: Edgeware VCP Use Cases. By using Edgeware’s technology, products and deployment success

to maximize efficiency in any one application, operators position themselves to achieve the highest level

of efficiency in all the others


The Future-Proof Video Consolidation Platform (VCP)

Edgeware has developed a flexible, multi-service processing and delivery platform that is suited for

the smallest to the largest operators.

These capabilities are market-driven software enhancements to Edgeware’s widely deployed

Distributed Video Delivery Network (D-VDN), an MVPD-optimized CDN caching and distribution

solution for a wide range of service applications. The D-VDN solution was developed with an

understanding that the variety and scale of storage and processing functions to be supported in

space-constrained facilities requires levels of processing density and power efficiency that are

beyond the capabilities of commodity hardware.

Edgeware has advanced and expanded the flexibility of the D-VDN solution to support increasing

service requirements. To optimize processing and distribution efficiencies end to end, from the core

to the edge, operators need to orchestrate purpose-built and commodity hardware to maximum

advantage in a virtualized software operations environment. The Video Consolidation Platform

(VCP) is Edgeware’s response to these needs.

The Consolidated Network Hardware Solution

Edgeware designed the super-dense, Orbit applianc as a multi-purpose device with both near-term

and long-term needs in mind. As a result, operators can deploy Edgeware Orbit servers at great cost

savings over alternative hardware for incremental service enhancements with the assurance that

they will be able to lower the scaling costs even further as new services are added.

Figure 2: Delivering up to 80Gbps and supporting 128,000 concurrent streams, the Orbit 3080 delivers

ten times the processing capabilities of the most advanced COTS (Commodity Off The Shelf) server

blades.


Edgeware built the Orbit server architecture from the ground up using FPGAs (Field Programmable

Gate Arrays) running purpose built Edgeware embedded code to optimize processing resources

specifically for the video ingest, storage and transmission requirements of a multi-service pay TV

environment. The Orbit appliances provide operators the flexibility to achieve industry-leading

processing densities in very small increments with great savings in power and space consumption.

The widely deployed Orbit 3020 supports up to 24 terabytes of low-power flash storage and

sustains 20 Gbps deterministic, wire speed transmission performance with up to 32,000 concurrent

unicast video streams. Fully configured, the Orbit 3020’s peak power consumption is just 100

watts.

The latest version of the Orbit platform, the 3080 (Figure 2) delivers four times the throughput of

the 3020 at up to 80 Gbps and 128,000 concurrent streams,. It also increases the ultra-low latency

flash storage capacity to 32 terabytes with peak power consumption at just 340 watts.. These

performance parameters make the Orbit 3080 ideal for applications in head-ends and large

distributed POPs.

The highly deterministic throughput of the Orbit appliances is critical to reliable operations.

Sustaining performance in a distributed network that consolidates the video processing and

delivery of legacy and broadband video, whilst providing recording and trick-play support for

millions of customers requires constant load-balancing of critical resources in order to achieve the

quality per stream required for pay TV operations.

Orbit appliances take solid state memory to a new level by avoiding the need for extraneous

components for SSD (Solid-State Disk). Processing-intensive functions such as streaming and

shaping the video streams are implemented directly in hardware while an embedded Linux

platform hosts higher function control-plane tasks such as the RTSP server, firewall, configuration

interfaces and other commonly needed management functions.

The key to this versatility is a purpose-built file system and network processor which enables

acceleration of a virtually endless array of video applications . For example, the system supports all

the links required for trick-play functions, including pause, rewind and skip, allowing the data to be

read and transmitted by low level hardware with no processor involvement.

Extremely fast channel change is another function built into the system, overcoming a troublesome

gap between IP multicast and traditional TV services. With the built-in capability to record live TV

channels directly into flash memory, the system allows operators to implement a wide range of

time-shifted services including catchup, start-over , trick mode and nDVR with either single or

unique copies.

Edgeware’s file system support for full random access to the blocks in flash memory is crucial to

enabling the introduction of these new services without the need to continuously rewrite files to


MiddlewareCMSEncoders Origins

Multiscreen

Legacy STB

MultiscreenHead-End

LegacyServers

IP Network

MiddlewareEncoders

OriginsCMS

TVHead-End

MiddlewareEncoders

OriginsCMS

OTTHead-End

Broadband Access

Cable / Telco Access

OR

MultiscreenHead-End

CONVOY

OTTHead-End

CONVOY

CDN Control

Config Session Mgmt

Analytics

OR

avoid fragmentation issues. Operators can build and add systems to run simultaneously without

having to go through defragmentation, garbage collection and other steps every time new

functionalions are added.

The Software-Defined Capabilities of the VCP

Edgeware maximizes the flexibility of the hardware platform through Software Defined Networking

(SDN) via the Convoy Management Software. Convoy is able to orchestrate the use of Orbit servers

independently or in conjunction with commodity servers to achieve unprecedented levels of

efficiency in all applications related to pay TV service expansion.

As shown in Figure 3, Convoy abstracts software functionality as an architectural tier that can be

managed independently so that all the control and intelligence runs in fully shared, virtualized

datacenters.

Figure 3: The VCP platform is a vehicle for network and service consolidation end to end with

implementation of the SDN-enabled Convoy Management Software to orchestrate applications across

Edgeware and commodity appliances in all locations.

VCP Edge – Unified distribution of IP & legacy transmissions

Convoy dynamically configures use of the processing power in clusters of Orbit appliances to

support all the caching and streaming requirements of a consolidated edge platform. The VCP Edge

clusters simultaneously cache and stream video in all the major legacy and IP formats, including:

• MPEG-2 TS • MPEG-4 AVC


• Microsoft Smooth • Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) • Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) • MPEG-DASH • Progressive download

Streams can be delivered in either CBR (constant bitrate) or VBR (variable bitrate) mode at rates

ranging from 96 kilobits per second to 50 megabits per second. The software allows operators to

concurrently cache and deliver content to:

• Legacy STBs (set-top boxes), such as those connected to QAM tuners, • Hybrid QAM / IP STBs • IP STBs • Smart TVs • Smartphones • Tablets • PCs • Games consoles • Other devices connected via the broadband network

As illustrated in Figures 4 and 5, these capabilities afford operators two approaches to

consolidating legacy and IP services for unified delivery; either through use of the Orbit appliances

as caching and distribution servers for already- installed live and VOD servers or as full

replacements.

C

Middleware

Multiscreen

Legacy

MultiscreenHead-End

Multiscreen Cache

VODPump

HFC Network

MiddlewareEncoders

OriginsCMS

CATVHead-End

MiddlewareEncoders

OriginsCMS

OTTHead-End

y g

CMSEncoders Origins

CLOUD

QAM

DOCSIS

Unified Caches

Signaling

UDP

HTTP

Figure 4: Placement of Orbit appliances in conjunction with existing live and VOD facilities provides a

means of caching and configuring streams for legacy VOD and IP ABR (adaptive bitrate) distribution on

the same platform.


Middleware

Multiscreen

Legacy

MultiscreenHead-End

MiddlewareEncoders

OriginsCMS

CATVHead-End

MiddlewareEncoders

OriginsCMS

OTTHead-End

HFC Network

CMSEncoders Origins

CLOUD

DOCSIS

QAM

Unified Caches

Signaling

UDP

HTTP

Figure 5: The immense processing power of the Orbit apliances allows operators to create a unified

delivery platform without requiring other appliances.

VCP-Core – Overcoming Inefficiencies at the Head-End

Capabilities intrinsic to the flexible Orbit architecture can be used to vastly accelerate third-party

origin and application servers used in the packaging, storage, manifest manipulation and streaming

of IP content from the head-end. The cost benefits of commodity infrastructure are exploited while

greatly reducing the number of servers required for any given processing volume. Figures 6 and 7

illustrate the complexity of an IP, multiscreen head-end along with the consolidation available from

the VCP Core.

Figure 6: The complexity of an IP multiscreen head-end


Figure 7: The Edgeware VCP Origin provides massive consolidation and cost reduction

Video Ecosystem Integration

The multiple software modules available in the Convoy suite come with APIs that allow operators

to integrate the Edgeware platform with third-party content management and business intelligence

systems and to add new account functionalities to those systems as new opportunities emerge. This

commitment to integration and interoperability with leading technology providers extends to many

key components of the ecosystem, including client devices, Web portals and other applications

management systems, ensuring that operators can maintain state-of-the-art performance with

feature-rich functionality.

Anchoring this flexibility is a system of stateless video session managers which take requests from

all video devices and direct them to specific assets within the operator’s ecosystem, whether they

are assets directly controlled by the operator or those of third parties such as the operator’s

wholesale customers. Consequently, the super-dense ingestion, caching and distribution

capabilities of the VCP can be utilized in coordination with commodity servers running third-party

applications to continually maximize efficiencies as new features are introduced.

Hierarchical Support for Time-Shift Services

Demand for time-shifted services puts massive pressure on head-ends, requiring them to record

and store more content in more bitrates and formats than ever before. While origin servers have


been enhanced to record, store and serve programs in the different formats, these systems still face

major issues with costs and efficiency as the number of channels, recordings and networks served

increase, especially when the predictable performance requirements of a pay TV service come into

play.

As the requirements increase, higher volumes of recording and playout must be assigned additional

processors and storage resources or virtual servers must be over-provisioned in conjunction with

utilization of expensive load balancers to prevent congestion. The use of Orbit servers to overcome

these limitations significantly reduces complexity and performance requirements and therefore

costs of origin servers by accelerating both ingest and playout capacity.

The VCP Origin solution accelerates content ingestion and distribution by offloading and load

balancing all origin ingest and playout functions onto these Orbit servers. A Convoy module

devoted to content and playlist management provides an ingest path and management system for

assets whether they be physical files, live TV streams or virtual assets in playlists. The system

supports compatibility checking, configuration of automatic ingest and management of metadata,

along with proactive warning of any condition that could impact service.

Operators can support a highly integrated, hierarchical approach to offering start-over, catchup and

nDVR services. They can coordinate how the flash memory capacity in edge clusters, including

third-party CDNs as well as their own VCP Edge resources, is used in conjunction with the VCP

Origin’s enhanced ingest and distribution capabilities. Content can be moved seamlessly from

short-term storage for start-over services at the edge to longer term catch-up and nDVR storage at

the core.

This hierarchical, SDN-managed platform allows the operator to automate the transfer of content,

For example, the operator can set a policy that would keep the most popular requests in flash

memory for one week, after which the files would be moved to commodity Network Attached

Storage (NAS). When delivering content in such setups, the Edgeware Orbit appliances act as caches

in front of the disk repository where all assets are retrieved when needed.

Recordings are intelligently written across multiple NAS devices with a replication factor that can

be set to achieve desired performance, storage utilization and redundancy criteria. Instead of

storing each ABR segment in individual files the VCP Origin enables aggregation of all fragments

into a single archive file. It also automatically generates a hierarchical directory structure on the file

system, to limit the number of files per directory. This dramatically increases performance and

simplifies management of large volumes of assets on the commodity NAS devices.

Integrated just-in-time packagers from leading suppliers further minimize the volume of stored

files. Each piece of recorded or VOD content can be stored in a single mezzanine format which is

then formatted for the specific devices on-the-fly for each user session. The VCP Origin intelligently

load balances these packaging requests and caches the output ready for delivery to any other user


requesting the same content on the same device. This provides massive, cost effective acceleration

of the packaging function.

The combination of high recording and storage capacities and cloud-based orchestration creates an

nDVR architecture that’s well suited to the needs of operators in the U.S. Unlike Europe, where a

single, stored file can be accessed by multiple users, U.S. regulations currently require that each

customer be allocated personal storage space for recordings of their own copy in the network.

By employing the virtualized Convoy software for control and management of those individual

recordings with clusters of multiple Orbit servers, the VCP Origin provides a very scalable and

efficient recording and delivery system that meets these challenging requirements. .VCP makes it

possible for operators to support all the caching and streaming requirements for millions of

simultaneous users accessing live as well as on-demand content in IP and legacy modes while, at

the same time, providing support for all the recording and storage required for start-over, catchup

and nDVR services.

New Efficiencies through Advances in Load Balancing

The amount of content being streamed at any moment from any origin server is escalating rapidly

with higher content volumes, longer catchup TV recording windows and greater usage by

subscribers. While CDN edge servers can handle the most popular content, the “cache miss” count,

i.e. the volume of requests for un-cached content going back to the origin servers, is rising rapidly.

The introduction of live channels in multiscreen services greatly expands how much content each

origin server must simultaneously ingest and deliver with very low latency and this often creates

bottlenecks in the delivery of premium multiscreen services.

The Edgeware VCP load balancing mechanism allows operators who deploy VCP Edge

infrastructure to avoid capital-intensive network upgrades as they scale to ever higher content

volumes. Using a combination of site URLs and DNS (Domain Name System) data, the VCP Edge

clusters detect when a given piece of content is available from multiple origins, allowing the edge

servers to pull the content from origins in a balanced fashion to avoid overloading any particular

origin server or backhaul link.

Load balancing among Orbit servers within a VCP Edge is also critical to maximizing network

efficiency. This is achieved through “content aware clustering,” which ensures that a client request

for specific content is directed to a specific server within the cluster. A replication factor can be set

to balance these requests across two or more servers for cache redundancy. With the ability to

intelligently distribute content and client requests over multiple servers, large-memory cluster can

be built enabling the operator to increase the cache hit rate and reduce the use of the backhaul

network for cache misses.


Facilitating Quality-Assurance Analytics

Convoy also provides a highly efficient quality assurance platform for monitoring system usage and

fine tuning clusters for optimal use of network resources.

Until now, one of the key stumbling blocks in MVPDs’ deployment of premium multiscreen services

has been the absence of a comprehensive, cost-effective means of maintaining a quality of user

experience that satisfies content providers’ and advertisers’ requirements for TV-caliber services.

Edgeware has eliminated this barrier with an innovative means of monitoring and analyzing end-

to-end Quality of Experience (QoE) from the performance of origin servers through to how each

stream is delivered from edge caches.

Convoy provides a Web-based user interface that gives status reports and statistics for ongoing

operations and serves as a central portal for accessing the configuration tools of each server.

Operators can access these tools to look at information from individual servers or aggregated data

from a multi-server system encompassing both live status and historical views.

As part of this, Edgeware has developed Active Video Awareness (AVS), a protocol that allows

users’ devices to efficiently generate monitoring information back to the OSS in real-time, for

compilation into useful views of what’s happening across the access end points. With AVS, the

system turns the incessant flow of brief ABR streaming segments into virtual video sessions of

longer duration that can be read and processed holistically and in real-time for service assurance

purposes.

Analytics can be applied to these virtual video sessions to aggregate and measure them many ways,

depending on what operators and their wholesale customers want to keep track of. For example,

parameters include average bitrate per session, degree of user engagement or instances where sub-

par bitrates persist beyond an acceptable timeframe. Actual delivered quality per session can be

compiled into real-time reports with grouping by for example device type, content name and

network segment.

AVS short-circuits what would otherwise be time-consuming crunching of raw data from millions of

devices in order to derive an accurate view of service quality. In essence, it makes it possible for

operators to deliver TV services to all devices with the same level of insight as they are accustomed

to in the legacy, pay TV environment, assuring an optimum user experience for all services and

applications, across all platforms.


A Cost-Saving Business Model

To ensure the most cost-effective approach to exploiting the processing power of the consolidation

platform for MVPDs of all sizes, Edgeware has established a pay-as-you-grow licensing system. Each

VCP system is licensed according to the peak, aggregate bandwidth it can deliver. This system can

comprise of multiple VCP Origin and Edge clusters which dynamically share this licensed capacity.

This means that an edge cluster in a specific region is able to burst up to the limits of the Orbit

servers installed in order to handle un-expected requests. The system-wide license can be

successively and instantly upgraded via simple software keys. Orbit appliances can be added to the

system and grouped into new or existing VCP Origin or Edge clusters without system down-time.

The local, flash memory on each Orbit appliance can be upgraded from 1 Terabyte to up to 32

Terabytes as recording windows and content libraries grow. By adding VCP Edge clusters at

capacity levels suited to immediate needs, operators can continuously scale their networks to

support ever greater volumes of traffic without upgrading expensive core and distribution network

connections.

Conclusion

MVPDs have an opportunity to pursue aggressive service expansion on a platform that will serve as

the foundation to a highly automated, consolidated operations environment through all phases of

service evolution. Under the control of the Convoy Management Software, the Edgeware VCP is a

virtualized Video Consolidation Platform that employs highly accelerated Orbit appliances working

in tandem with commodity hardware to consolidate the MVPD pay TV infrastructure into a single,

unified delivery and recording network.

As the cornerstone for multi-service expansion, the sophisticated asset caching and propagation

system configures and coordinates Orbit appliances into VCP Edge clusters to continually maximize

efficient use of network transport and server resources while ensuring the most popular assets are

distributed to servers with the closest proximity to subscribers. VCP Core clusters, combining

commodity processing and storage hardware with Orbit appliances are coordinated with these

VCP-Edge clusters as well as third-party CDN infrastructure to maximizes efficiency across multiple

applications, including all time-shift applications related to trick play, start-over, catchup and nDVR

services.

As a fundamental requirement to network consolidation, Edgeware has developed a foundation for

analysis of network performance and quality assurance that allows operators to organize raw data

into usable components for real-time analysis by third-party or in-house systems.


No matter what path MVPDs take to service evolution and network consolidation, they will be able

to ensure that the cost savings they achieve on the Edgeware platform will never come at the

expense of performance.

About Edgeware

Edgeware is the leader in video delivery networks, designed to allow operators to

monetize video services such as video on demand (VOD), time shift TV and Cloud DVR as

well as offering wholesale Content Delivery Networking (CDN) management services.

Edgeware provides the video delivery systems needed to offer video services across

managed and unmanaged networks, with the ability to reach any screen, at any time, with

any content.

Edgeware is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with offices in the United States and

Hong Kong.

Contact Edgeware

Headquarters

Edgeware AB Mäster Samuelsgatan 56, 4th Floor SE-111 21 STOCKHOLM Sweden Phone: +46 73 612 6840 [email protected]

www.edgeware.tv

US Sales Offices

Edgeware, Inc. 200 E. 5th Ave., Ste. 125 Naperville, IL 60563 USA Phone: +1 888 324-1970 (Toll Free) [email protected]

www.edgeware.tv

Hong Kong Offices

Edgeware Room 2503, 25/F, BEA Harbour View Centre 56 Gloucester Road Wanchai, Hong Kong Phone: +852 6491 0176 [email protected]

www.edgeware.tv

http://www.edgeware.tv/�

mailto:[email protected]�



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