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CNN Field Trial for Multicasting Broadcast Video Over IP a Success

Nov 8, 2001 12:00 PM

SAN DIEGO (Nov. 7, 2001) -- CoreExpress, Inc., and Path 1 Network Technologies Inc. today announced the successful conclusion of a 90-day field trial with CNN to test multicasting of broadcast quality video over an IP network.

Coordinated by a team of leading technology companies, the field test has shown that IP networks can be used as a high-quality and reliable means for exchanging live and taped news material between CNN affiliated stations. The field test, which linked stations in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, and Atlanta, required coordination by seven companies: BellSouth, CoreExpress, Path 1 Network Technologies, Leitch, Cisco Systems, Pixelmetrix, and Tandberg Television.

"The possibilities yielded by this field test are very exciting," said Tony Seaton, vice president corporate technology and standards, Turner Broadcasting System. "The trial achieved the desired level of multicast capability, latency, and video quality, and delivers the level of service we need to exchange news with CNN affiliates ranging from large metropolitan to small market stations. In fact, during the first days of coverage of the September 11 attacks, we were able to use the IP circuits to deliver material from Washington D.C. and Los Angeles to Atlanta for live news coverage."

Each trial participant provided a key technology or service piece integral to building a video exchange service using IP multicast:

BellSouth provided project management expertise and BellSouth's Metro Ethernet Service, running at speeds up to 100Mbps. BellSouth recently announced the availability of Metro Ethernet Service with speeds up to 1Gbps as part of its Metro Ethernet Service portfolio.

CoreExpress provided a nationwide private, quality of service-enabled IP network capable of delivering MPLS Fast Re-route, and guaranteed service level agreements over multiple ISPs. The company also provided lead technical project coordination and network monitoring.

Path 1 provided first-of-its-kind video gateways that convert MPEG-2 video to IP and support multicasting, and acted as lead technical coordinator and support arm for the project.

Cisco Systems provided routers and switches.

Leitch provided servers and business and technical coordination for non-realtime file transfer tests.

Tandberg Television provided MPEG-2 encoders and decoders.

Pixelmetrix provided the monitoring and validation of Transport Streams and Picture Quality performance assessment.

"We leveraged a unique combination of technologies and products to demonstrate that a carrier IP network can be a reliable transport of live broadcast quality MPEG-2 video," said Mike Brown, lead product developer from CoreExpress. "The use of IP multicast for the MPEG-2 video demonstration proved that high volumes of video traffic can be cost effectively delivered to large numbers of affiliates."

There were many firsts demonstrated with this trial, including:

- Inter-carrier delivery of live MPEG-2 video at 30Mbps without ETR-290 errors
- Simultaneous transfer of both realtime and non-realtime (file transfer) contents
- End-to-end QoS on an IP network that guaranteed the delivery of MPEG 2 4:2:2 traffic
- High availability of an IP backbone (99.9%)
- IP multicast over a carrier MPLS backbone using Juniper and Cisco equipment
- Protection switching of IP multicast traffic using MPLS Fast Re-route in less than 15 milliseconds
- Exceeding SLAs (in jitter, latency, loss, burst loss duration, re-order rate, etc.)
- Adapting MPEG-2 to IP without undue degradation of jitter characteristics
- Remote monitoring and control of multiple vendor's video and LAN equipment (gateways, video servers, analyzers, LAN switches, IP routers).

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