LTE is Catalyst for Macro Base Station Market Growth, but Multi-Standard Capability is Pre-Requisite

While LTE is driving the deployment of new and refurbished base stations, support of multiple airlinks and radio bands has become the central driver in the macro base station market, a market that is projected to grow to nearly 7 million deployed base stations by 2014,  according to In-Stat (www.in-stat.com). This new era of flexibility and programmability in base stations is driving more complex software-based QAM as well as MIMO antenna arrays.
 

Mobile operators have a set of baseline expectations for BTS manufacturers.  Support for multi-mode airlinks (GSM/ CDMA/ WCDMA/ HSPA/ LTE) is now requisite.  Programmable support for multiple bands, 900-3600MHz, and other variations, is also a requirement.  Multi-mode and multi-band standards will be ubiquitous and interchangeable in every base station moving forward.

Recent research found the following:

• WCDMA/ HSPA/ HSPA+ base stations remain the largest revenue segment through 2013.
• The transition between 2G to 3G, HSPA, and LTE air links will also require reconditioning or redeploying existing base stations. 
• Base station revenue for WCDMA/ HSPA/ HSPA+ technology in the Middle East & Africa (MEA) region will reach $3B by 2012.
• The average selling price for macro base stations will gradually decline.
• Downward pricing pressures in semiconductors will be offset by increasingly sophisticated software-based QAM, and increasingly more complicated MIMO antenna arrays.

New In-Stat research, Multiple Airlinks Simplify Macro Base Station Deployments: Five Year Analysis describes how improved semiconductor capabilities are transforming base stations.  The report also tracks key region base station deployments and reviews vendor strategies in regard to macro base stations.  All forecast are from 2008-2014.

The report also includes:

• Installed base stations by region and by airlink.
• Revenues from new base station deployments by region and by airlink.
• An estimate of base stations being converted to higher airlinks.
• Analysis on the evolution of semiconductors and how it will affect BTS development.
• Vendor profiles for: Airspan, Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, NSN/Motorola,  Motorola, Samsung, and ZTE.

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Cable Explores Next-Gen Video

For the past few years, cable operators have been getting increasingly anxious about the growing bandwidth shortages they face. Despite their collective $160 billion investment in new hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) plant and customer premises equipment (CPE) since 1996, their extensive upgrades have not created enough capacity to handle all of the new digital video services they want or need.

In fact, it's now clear that soaring consumer and competitive demand for precious bandwidth may far outstrip the industry's ability to meet that demand, especially in smaller and midsized markets. Due to a volatile mix of legacy analog channels, digital video networks, HDTV channels, video-on-demand (VoD) services, HD VoD programming, DVR applications, broadcast digital must-carry requirements, Internet video downloads, and other services, cable operators will need bigger and bigger chunks of bandwidth for video.

At the same time, the competitive challenges to cable's 60-year rule of the pay-TV market are multiplying and intensifying. In the US, for instance, such prime cable rivals as DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE: DTV), Dish Network Corp. (Nasdaq: DISH), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) are aggressively expanding their digital video, HD, VoD, DVR, mobile video, 3DTV, multi-screen video and other next-gen video offerings.

Moreover, a bevy of popular "over-the-top" (OTT) video providers – including Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) TV, Hulu LLC , Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX), Roku Inc. , and Boxee – have emerged to lure viewers away from the TV screen altogether. Unlike cable's other rivals, these OTT players are trying to entice cable subscribers to cut the cord not only on their cable video subscriptions, but on all pay-TV subscriptions.

As a result, even the smallest cable operators know they must carry more "bandwidth-hogging" video services to remain competitive. So they are now scrambling for ways to deliver more digital cable networks, HDTV channels, VoD programming, HD VoD choices, advanced time-shifting options, mobile video services, and multi-screen video offerings. Many cable providers are also looking to offer a raft of other advanced video services, including interactive TV (ITV) applications, 3DTV, Internet video, targeted advertising, and even IPTV.

In a new Heavy Reading report, "Exploring Cable Next-Gen Video Services & Strategies," we chronicle the advanced video services that cable operators are seeking to offer. Based on an exclusive worldwide survey of cable providers, the report ranks the video services in order of popularity and outlines the benefits and challenges of each service.


For instance, the survey found that cable operators are more interested in adding new HDTV channels than any other advanced video service. Nearly five sixths of operators said they plan to introduce more HD channels over the next two years. Only one other video service, VoD, comes close to matching HD's appeal.
Large numbers of cable operators also want to offer more ITV and multi-room DVR services. In the survey, slightly more than two thirds of cable providers said they plan to offer more interactive applications to subscribers by mid 2012, while nearly three fifths said they intend to introduce whole-home DVR service.

The report also focuses on the bandwidth-management strategies that cable operators plan to use to create more spectrum for advanced video services. Based on the same worldwide survey of providers, the report ranks the strategies in order of popularity and outlines the benefits and challenges of each strategy.

For example, analog channel reclamation ranks as the leading bandwidth optimization method that cable operators are exploring to expand video capacity. In the survey, nearly three fifths of cable providers said they are considering or pursuing analog reclamation to boost their available bandwidth. Only one other strategy, switched digital video (SDV), drew votes from more than half of the respondents.

— Alan Breznick, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading

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IPv6 Address Design : Don't Let a Bad Design Sabotage Your Deployment Project

There are a few culprits that regularly contribute to delayed or failed IPv6 deployment projects, such as poor DNS planning, insufficient testing, unanticipated application behavior, and poor IPv6 support in peripheral support, management, or security systems. Many deployment projects suffer temporary halts when the original IPv6 address design is found to be inadequate – in a few cases, the address design has had to be reworked more than once.

Even worse that an IPv6 address design that halts a project is a design that is just good enough to allow the project to proceed, but bad enough that it will saddle the network with expensive operational difficulties for years to come.

The address design should be considered from the very beginning of the planning phase for IPv6 deployment. This article discusses some of the factors you should consider when creating an IPv6 address design.   

This is Not IPv4

Most network architects are too young to remember when IPv4 address space was not considered a limited resource. We are all sensitive to any sign of waste in an IPv4 address design, and approach new designs expecting to carefully analyze each network segment and provide just enough addresses to meet requirements. Variable Length Subnet Masking (VLSM) is essential, carefully carving out enough subnet space while trying to insure enough host addresses in each subnet.

Abandoning many of those conservative design ethics is one of the hardest parts of performing an IPv6 address design. Take, for example, the commonplace issue of making every subnet in an IPv6 network a /64, including point-to-point links. The advantage of doing this is the one-size-fits-all consistency in your subnetting, doing away with the headaches of VLSM. But it invariably makes people itch: The idea of having a subnet with 1.8446744074 x 10¹⁹ available addresses and only using two of them – and knowing that you will never, ever need more than two of them – seems mind-bogglingly wasteful.

And it is wasteful. But the IPv6 address space assigned to most networks is so vast, you can afford a shocking level of waste in exchange for consistency, simplicity, scale, and efficiency. If you have a /32 prefix, you can have 4.3 billion /64 subnets – as many subnets as there are addresses in the entirety of IPv4. Applying traditional IPv4 address conservation practices to an IPv6 design can be a bit like spending $200 to find a way to save $2.

What to Look For?

Although you can discard much of your concern for address waste, existing IPv4 address management should be assessed. There are two sides to this consideration. On the one hand, the more you can integrate IPv6 addressing into familiar practices, the easier you make life for your operations personnel. On the other hand, if your existing address management practices have been inadequate, this is the perfect time to make changes.

My own experience has been that many if not most of my clients are happy to abandon what they see as an inadequate, inefficient, or barely existent IPv4 address management workflow.

In addition to address management practices, any polices that filter on an IP address must also be analyzed. These include routing, summarization, and security policies. Again, your analysis should balance what is familiar and useful with what has long needed improvement.

And if you are one of the many network operators who still manages your IP addresses with spreadsheets, this is a good time to consider purchasing IP Address Management software.  Beyond a simple formula that converts decimal to hexadecimal within a single cell, Excel has no hex support. Hex numbers must be entered as text, and adding long sequences of hex numbers is tedious and mistake-prone. I have spent many a long night mindlessly typing out thousands of hex numbers into cells in developing IPv6 address designs for my customers.

A good IPAM package not only makes IPv4 and IPv6 address management easier and safer, it integrates DNS and DHCP management too.

Designing for Simplicity

Even with a nice IPAM application, engineering and operations personnel are still going to be looking at and trying to make sense of those ugly IPv6 addresses every day. The easier your addresses are to interpret, the more you can reduce routine mistakes.

Start by mapping out the bits of the address space that are available to you to work with. You will have some assigned prefix – usually 29, 32, 48, or 56 bits, depending on the size of your network – that are always the same. The last 64 bits, the Interface-ID, should usually be left alone except for certain classes of address such as loopbacks. The space between the assigned prefix and the Interface-ID are the bits you have to work with.

Obviously the 8 bits between a 56-bit prefix and the Interface-ID give you far less flexibility than the 32 bits between a 32-bit prefix and the Interface-ID. But if you have a 56-bit prefix you have a small network anyway, and there is little need for much meaning other than simple subnet numbers.

As you map out the bits of your workable space, group them by hex digit (four bits per digit). Then decide what “meanings” you need to have in your addresses for easy interpretation. Meanings might include geographic locations (such as region, city, POP, office), a logical topology (such as OSPF area or simple subnet number), a type designation, or a customer / user ID.

Then try to match your defined meanings to hex digits rather than to individual bits. This is the key to keeping your design simple: If your personnel can interpret the meaning of one or more hex digits without having to decipher the address to the bit level, time is saved and risk is reduced.

For example, suppose your network is constructed into nine regions, the largest region has 100 offices, and the largest office has 75 subnets. You might designate one hex digit as a Region ID (one hex digit is 4 bits, giving you 16 Region IDs), two subsequent digits as an Office ID (two hex digits is 8 bits, giving you 256 Office IDs per region), and two digits as a Subnet ID (256 Subnet IDs per office). Such a design will require a /44 prefix at minimum; a /40 will give you room to spare.

Your engineers will quickly learn to focus on just the hex digits that are meaningful to the task at hand – the digits between the assigned prefix and the Interface-ID. So instead of trying to take in 32 hex digits (128 bits), they are only looking at, for instance, the 8 digits following a /32 prefix, 6 digits after a /40, 4 digits after a /48, or 2 digits after a /56.

In larger networks requiring more design complexity, the format of lower-order bits might vary according to the “meaning” defined in higher-order bits. In the example above suppose you have, in addition to the nine regions, two data centers each of which have 2000 subnets. Region IDs E and F could identify the data centers, and behind those IDs instead of a two-digit Office ID and two-digit Subnet ID you could have a four-digit Subnet-ID (for 65,536 subnets per data center).

But don’t get carried away with adding too many “meanings” in your design. There is no need to add ten layers of hierarchy to your address design if four layers are enough to tell your engineers everything they need to know about an address. This leads to another way to keep things simple: Use strings of zeroes in your addresses as much as possible. 2001:DB8:2405:C::27 is a much easier address to read and record than 2001:DB8:2405:83FC:72A6:3452:19ED:4727. If the first address gives you enough information to manage your network, why use the second?

Designing for Scale

“Scale” and “scalability” might be two of the most overused words in the network design vocabulary; I’ve certainly contributed to turning those perfectly good words into creaky buzzwords. Nevertheless, the concept of scaling is crucial to good design, whether we’re talking about protocols, devices, logical topologies, or addresses. You don’t want something that cannot accommodate growth.

The amazing thing about IPv6 is that you can often afford to be wasteful in some respects, creating subnets with a vastly larger number of addresses than will ever be used, and at the same time allowing room for growth at the subnet level and above.

I mentioned that a  /40 prefix will give our simple (and admittedly simplistic) example design room to spare. I also said that you should use zero space as much as you can to shorten the overall address. The zero space should be designated as “Reserved,” and distributed in your design in such a way that multiple fields can expand into it if needed.

The example design requires 5 hex digits (20 bits) to provide the Region, Office, and Subnet IDs. If you have a /40 prefix, you have 6 hex digits (24 bits) to work with. Rather than making the 11^th hex digit the Region ID, the 12^th and 13^th digit the Office ID, the 14^th and 15^th digit the Subnet ID, and the 16^th digit Reserved, place the Reserved digit between the Region ID and the Office ID. In addition to making the Office and Subnet IDs fall on more tidy boundaries, the placement of the 4-bit Reserved digit between the Region and Office IDs gives you flexibility should you ever need it: Either the Region or Office IDs can grow into that space if you underestimated future growth, or you could use the space to add another layer of hierarchy should future requirements dictate it.

Designing for the Future

A challenge for any network design is attempting to anticipate future needs, when you don’t clearly know what the future holds. “Anticipating the unanticipated” seems to be an exercise in futility, and sometimes it is. But if you make good use of reserved space, well distributed, you stand a better chance of being able to accommodate future requirements with a simple expansion of definitions within your existing design rather than  having to do a complete redesign.

The large working space of most IPv6 allocations also help you to “future-proof” your address design.  Frequently you can reserve an entire space behind your assigned prefix, giving you the room to add a different format without abandoning your existing format.

Another factor to consider is that at some point in the future – no one can say for sure when, but I think it will be sooner than most people expect – IPv4 will become obsolete. The catalyst for accelerated IPv4 obsolescence will be the expense, risk, and difficulty of running two versions of IP in a network. The only direction forward is to IPv6, so at some point network operators will make a deliberate effort to push IPv4 out of their network.

Given that assumption, do not make IPv4 addresses an element in your IPv6 design unless there is a strong reason for doing so. For example, some engineers will designate the last 32 bits of a device’s IPv6 loopback address as the same as the device’s IPv4 loopback address. But does this really have any benefit? After all, the IPv4 bits will be encoded in hex, and not readily recognizable by operations staff: Given the IPv6 address 2001:DB8:1305:7C::C0A8:53E5, is it readily apparent that the last 32 bits are the IPv4 address 192.168.83.229?

An effort to “integrate” IPv4 addresses into your IPv6 addresses looks backward to IPv4 rather than looking to the IPv4-free future. If IPv4 is eventually removed from your network, a bad design could lock you into accommodating an obsolete addressing system.

Designing for Efficiency

Your preliminary analyses of routing, summarization, and security policies pays off in helping you to create an address design that maximizes the efficiency of any device that must filter on an IPv6 packet’s source or destination address. If a filter must scan well into the address to find the bits that trigger a “hit,” your list of filter rules can grow long. Take into account the number of potential addresses within your IPv6 prefix, and that list could become unmanageably huge.

So as much as possible, try to design your addresses so that any “bits of interest” to a filter appear early in the address (either the prefix part or the Interface-ID part), so that they can represent as many individual addresses as possible.

What About the Interface-ID?

Most Interface-IDs in your network will be 64 bits, with the possible (and arguable) exception of point-to-point interface addresses. If stateless address auto-configuration (SLAAC) is to be used anywhere in your network, it is particularly important for the Interface-IDs in those segments to remain 64 bits in order for SLAAC to work. But if you are assigning addresses either via DHCPv6 or statically, this is another opportunity to use plenty of reserved zero bits and simplify your addresses. You might, for example, make only the last 12 bits assignable and set all the preceding 52 bits to zero. That gives you 4,096 addresses per subnet – and isn’t that enough?

12 or 16 bits also gives you the room to include some randomization within your Interface-ID assignments, reducing your exposure to port scans that try to find working devices on a subnet by beginning at the lowest Interface-ID and working sequentially up.

At the same time, you might have need of some identifier digits within the Interface-ID, either for filtering at the subnet level or just for easy identification of device types within a subnet. In this case, use some of the leading bits in the Interface-ID, at the other end from the interface-specific bits, and again leave reserved zero space between. If you do use identifiers within the Interface-ID, they should be type identifiers. All location meanings should reside in the first 64 bits of the address preceding the Interface-ID.

The enormous 64-bit capacity of the Interface-ID leaves you plenty of room for identifiers, more than enough addresses per subnet, and the ability to keep your overall address manageably small.

Fun and Games with Hex

When I taught networking basics classes many years ago, I emphasized to my students that they should be careful about trying to interpret IPv4 addresses at the dotted decimal level; they should practice converting each of the four decimal numbers into their binary equivalent, until they became proficient at just looking at a number, say 240, and automatically seeing 11110000. The patterns of the bits tell you how a router interprets an IP address, not the decimal value representing the bits.

With a good design and no VLSM to obscure things, IPv6 is a bit easier to interpret at the hex level. But there are still plenty of good reasons to sometimes delve down to the individual bit values to look for a pattern. So the ability to quickly convert between hex and binary is just as important for working with IPv6 as converting between decimal and binary is for working with IPv4.

There are a few simple tricks that make these conversions fast and easy. (And no, you cannot count on always having a scientific calculator handy to do the conversions for you.) In the next post I’ll show you how.

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Cisco and Service Providers: Reinventing the Television Experience. Together

Introduction

Consumers have more media and communications choices than ever before, and more ways to access them. What they lack is an intuitive, unified experience that encompasses all of the content, applications, and devices they use, wherever they want to use them.

Now, service providers can bring order to this media chaos with Cisco^® Videoscape, the comprehensive solution for delivering the next generation of media entertainment. Cisco Videoscape brings together virtually infinite content and applications from pay TV, online, and on-demand sources into a unified, personalized experience that you can extend anywhere, across managed or unmanaged networks and devices. And, it takes advantage of Cisco intelligence throughout the cloud, network, and clients to deliver the premium quality of experience your customers expect.

Cisco Videoscape draws upon a proven medianet architecture to deliver this new generation of TV and media experiences. It integrates digital content on and off the network from a vast library of linear and on-demand sources, as well as third-party content and applications, and lets consumers easily search, purchase, and play any content of their choice. Consumers can also communicate, share and manage both their premium content and services and their personal content within the same immersive, multi-screen experience. Cisco Videoscape delivers this experience through an open platform that supports common industry standards, and does not lock you or your customers into specific devices or platforms.

By delivering a new world of cloud-based media across multiple screens, Cisco Videoscape helps to position the service provider network as the nexus between consumers, content providers, and web and entertainment applications. As a result, you can:

• Strengthen the value you provide to both consumers and content providers

• Deliver more intuitive, visual, social, and mobile media experiences

• Extend the service provider cloud to multiple IP endpoints, inside and outside the home

• Monetize online content more effectively

• Develop new markets and business partnerships

The Challenge: Navigating an Evolving Media Landscape

Today's media marketplace has entered the age of "more" - more video-capable devices, more video services, and more video traffic than ever before. The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) predicts more than 12 billion connected IP endpoints worldwide by 2014, with web content and services expanding across TV sets, tablets, game consoles, and other consumer electronics devices. (For information about the VNI forecast, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-481360_ns827_Networking_Solutions_White_Paper.html.) More consumer electronics manufacturers are positioning Internet-connected TVs and other devices as gateways to Internet content, and making significant investments in creating online video and application ecosystems.

At the same time, new over-the-top (OTT) online video services such as Netflix and Hulu are competing for the consumer's time and discretionary spending, creating a global online video community that now includes more than 1 billion users. Broadcasters and media companies are seeking to capitalize on this trend, embracing new distribution platforms and interactive content. Many are exploring Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) models, such as the CNBC Realtime App, which integrates customized real-time stock quotations and alerts with CNBC financial news shows.

These new devices and services are accelerating growth in Internet video traffic. (For more information, visit http://www.sandvine.com/news/global_broadband_trends.asp.) At peak times, Netflix already accounts for 20 percent of downstream Internet traffic in the United States. By 2014, the Cisco VNI forecast projects that online video will make up 91 percent of consumer IP traffic, generating traffic equivalent to 6 billion DVDs per month.

These three trends - more devices, more online video services, and more Internet video traffic - are changing the media delivery landscape as we know it. But these trends are also creating a growing sense of frustration among consumers, content providers, and service providers.

• Consumer media experiences are increasingly fragmented. All the entertainment in the world seems to be available, but accessing it means navigating a complex web of devices, networks, billing models, and viewing experiences. Consumers want to know why they cannot get all the content they want across all their devices. Why must they constantly toggle between different menus and interfaces for all the ways they watch video?

• As content becomes more accessible, broadcasters and content providers must find ways to preserve the value of their content. The consumer appetite for more video over more platforms is insatiable, and broadcasters and media companies see tremendous opportunities. But current online video offerings diminish the value of content, offering no carriage fees comparable to those of traditional service providers, and lower advertising loads.

• The relevance of the service provider is increasingly questioned. For service providers, new competition means increased churn and increased costs to acquire and retain subscribers. Basic pay-TV services are no longer enough: multi-screen offerings have become a core requirement. But can basic two-screen services compete with OTT providers in a world where consumers already watch 14.4 hours of online video on average each month? (For more information about this comScore estimate, visit http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/10/comScore_Releases_September_2010_U.S._Online_Video_Rankings.) How can service providers fund major service upgrades, or even keep pace with the massive growth in IP video traffic, when they have no way to generate revenue from online video in the current media delivery value chain? More fundamentally, how can service providers demonstrate their true value to consumers, broadcasters, and online video partners?

The Solution: Reinvent the TV Experience

These trends present significant challenges, but they also offer a tremendous opportunity. All point toward a new era of media, where consumer entertainment breaks free from the limitations of closed networks and devices and becomes more visual, more social, and more mobile. Soon, consumers may be able to access all content, applications, and communications - on any device, over any network - as part of a consistent, unified experience.

Far from being minor participants in this new media model, service providers are ideally positioned to make the paradigm a reality. As high-definition quality and mobility become more important, the service provider network provides a nexus between consumers, content providers, and web applications that no other competitors in this environment can offer. Different OTT services can offer access to some broadcasters' premium content, but not others. Connected device content ecosystems are still linked to specific device platforms, with little or no portability between screens. And ultimately, consumer electronics device manufacturers may provide access to online content, but they are not able to control the delivery of that content or assure a consistent consumer experience.

Only the service provider - and the service provider network - can deliver the full range of cloud-based media and applications across multiple consumer screens. Cisco can provide a comprehensive solution to help service providers exploit the power of their networks to deliver new media and TV experiences, and create a more profitable media ecosystem.

The Cisco Videoscape Solution

Cisco Videoscape is both an experience and a solution purpose-built for delivering the next generation of TV experience, simplifying it for consumers, and transforming the opportunity for service providers. Cisco Videoscape joins virtually infinite content, applications, and communications from any source, including linear TV, online video, video-on-demand (VoD), and the user's digital video recorder (DVR), into an immersive, unified experience. Cisco Videoscape lets you extend this experience across any managed or unmanaged network, to any managed or unmanaged device. And, it draws on Cisco intelligence in the cloud, network, and clients to provide a premium quality of experience that best-effort online video services cannot match.

With Cisco Videoscape, you can deliver a consumer experience that is:

• More intuitive, with a consistent interface across multiple devices and universal guide and search capabilities across all content sources

• More visual, with seemingly infinite content and applications available from a range of sources, made easy to navigate on the TV screen or the customer's screen of choice

• More social, by integrating social networking and telepresence capabilities that let consumers show, share, and engage with video

• More mobile, with the ability to extend this unified experience over the service provider footprint or over unmanaged networks, to almost any managed or unmanaged device

For consumers, Cisco Videoscape positions the service provider as the gateway to a vast library of linear, on-demand, and third-party content. Consumers can communicate, share, and manage both premium content and services and personal content on multiple screens, and access an immense ecosystem of online content and applications. Your customers can buy content once and access it however they choose, without having to worry about which devices work with which content. They can see what their friends are watching and get recommendations from the people who know them best. And, they can take their own, personalized TV experience with them, wherever they go, on whichever screen they choose.

At the same time, Cisco Videoscape helps service providers unlock new revenue opportunities, monetize online video, and reinforce the value of their networks in the content delivery ecosystem. With Cisco Videoscape, you can:

• Assure a consistent quality of experience for consumers, no matter how or where they view content

• Bring web applications and online video to a broader audience by easily delivering them to the TV set

• Deliver new levels of interactivity with content using web and social attributes

• Extend services beyond any single device or platform (for example, Apple or Android ecosystem), with an open, standards-based software and hardware platform

• Preserve and extend the value of content by supporting existing carriage fees and advertising-based revenues, in addition to new online video subscription and advertising models

• Provide more value to media companies by offloading the burden of formatting content for a seemingly endless array of devices and screens

• Provide more value to consumers by extending the service provider cloud into the home network and enabling content sharing across managed and unmanaged devices

• Reach new markets by offering premium video services (and even linear TV channels) to new customers within and beyond the service provider footprint

• Exploit business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) services by opening the service provider ecosystem to deliver third-party web-enabled applications, including social media, lifestyle management applications, content marketplaces, home telepresence, games, and advanced advertising

Cisco: Your Partner in Reinventing the Consumer Media Experience

Cisco can provide the complete solution to deliver these capabilities and benefits (Figure 1). The Cisco Videoscape solution includes:

• The Cloud, encompassing solutions for the service provider's video back-office and data center

• The Network, including an end-to-end medianet optimized for video, and the Cisco Content Delivery System (CDS)

• Clients, including next-generation media gateways, set-top boxes (STBs), and software clients

• Services to help you develop and deliver new service capabilities more quickly and with less risk

Figure 1. Cisco Videoscape Solution

The combination of cloud, network, and clients, working together as one, sets Cisco apart in the marketplace. Other providers can address parts of the back office or offer solutions for the consumer home. Cisco has the technology and expertise to take a unified approach to evolving media experiences, and to bring the full power of the cloud to the customer TV (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Cisco Videoscape High-Level Architecture

Cisco Videoscape provides the following.

• A truly unified experience: Other entrants in the online video market can offer only a fragmented experience, delivered over discrete devices. Cisco Videoscape converges linear, pay-TV, and online sources into a personalized TV experience with universal search and navigation, and lets you extend that experience across multiple screens.

• No endpoint limitations: Device manufacturers can offer a cloud-based video experience, but only on their particular devices and software platforms. Consumers, however, do not operate that way: They may have an IP-enabled TV set, an Android mobile phone, an Apple tablet, and a PC - all of which they use to consume entertainment, both inside and outside the home. Cisco Videoscape lets you create an experience that extends across the consumer's entire lifestyle, and even extend network-based DVR functions across multiple screens.

• Consistent, high quality of experience through an end-to-end IP video architecture: Cisco network, back-office, and client solutions integrate entertainment applications and communications into a unified cloud-based experience. These solutions allow you to build a medianet - a video-optimized, end-to-end network infrastructure - that eliminates current silos in voice, video, mobility, and data networks, and lets you deliver consistent quality across multiple screens.

• A clear migration path that protects your investments: Cisco recognizes that your evolution to the full Cisco Videoscape solution will not happen immediately. You have extensive video network, back-office, and client investments in place, and cannot simply overhaul the entire infrastructure in a single upgrade. That is why Cisco Videoscape is designed with the flexibility to be deployed over time and in discrete stages, according to your specific plans and infrastructure investments. Each element of the implementation provides immediate new revenue-generating service capabilities, while serving as the foundation for more advanced cloud capabilities in the future. No matter where you are starting from or which capabilities you want to bring to market first, Cisco offers a clear roadmap to get you to your destination.

• Ability to protect and strengthen the service provider brand: Other online video solutions dilute the service provider brand and diminish the perceived role of the service provider in delivering an immersive experience. Cisco Videoscape lets you deliver service-provider-branded user interfaces and experiences across all types of screens.

• Proven industry leadership: Cisco is an award-winning leader in video system, transport, and consumer client technologies, serving more than 200 million customers worldwide, including the world's largest service providers and broadcasters.

The following sections explore the Cisco Videoscape portfolio in more detail.

The Cloud

The cloud element of the Cisco Videoscape solution encompasses the service provider's video back-office. Cloud components include the Cisco Videoscape Media Suite, the Cisco Videoscape Migration Portfolio, and Cisco Conductor for Videoscape. Cloud solutions can be instantiated within a data center architecture composed of Cisco Nexus^® Family switches and the Cisco Unified Computing System^™.

Cisco Videoscape Media Suite

The Cisco Videoscape Media Suite is the intelligent cloud engine at the core of the Cisco Videoscape solution, providing full lifecycle content management to deliver immersive media and communications experiences. With this carrier-grade software platform, you can efficiently manage, publish, and monetize many types of content, and deliver that content across almost any screen: TV, PC, tablet, or mobile device.

The Cisco Videoscape Media Suite accelerates your transition to next-generation cloud-based services with a solution that has the following characteristics.

• Highly flexible: The Cisco Videoscape Media Suite supports multiple media types (including video, audio, applications, and images) and multiple delivery models (including download, streaming, Macromedia Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight). You can also implement multiple content business models, including advertisement-supported, purchase, rental, and subscription models.

• Fast to deploy and implement: The Cisco Videoscape JumpStart tool kit includes reference user interfaces for PCs, Macs, tablets, and mobile phones, and workflow template libraries for multiple bundle types, devices, and business processes.

• Pre-integrated: The Cisco Videoscape Media Suite metadata aggregation engine supports metadata from a variety of sources, and the included bundle designer simplifies bundle creation. The solution works with leading advertising engines, and billing and transaction services are structured to integrate with your existing operations support system (OSS) and business support system (BSS) infrastructure.

The Cisco Videoscape Media Suite also helps you differentiate the experience you provide from that delivered by peers and OTT online video providers, by supporting the following:

• Entitlement across multiple screens and content sources (for example, customers can buy content on their TVs and entitle that content for play on PCs and a mobile devices)

• A customizable user interface experience designed specifically for large-screen TVs and interaction without a keyboard

• Total media integration including linear, on-demand, OTT, and DVR content, and universal search, recommend, and sharing tools

• Enhanced VoD capabilities with virtual DVD experiences including menus, chapters, extras, and subtitles

The Cisco Videoscape Media Suite also provides peace of mind as a proven solution. The media suite technology is already used by four of the five largest North American wireline service providers and two of the five largest North American studios.

Cisco Videoscape Media Suite Components

Cisco Videoscape Media Suite is a modular solution, giving you outstanding flexibility to deploy customized cloud-based services adapted specifically to your current investments and your customers' needs. You can quickly start offering immersive cloud services and applications by deploying the entire product suite, or integrate individual best-in-class components with your existing environment.

The Cisco Videoscape Media Suite includes the following.

• Cisco Videoscape Media Suite Content Management System (CMS): The CMS handles all steps in the asset workflow, including metadata management, transcoding, encryption, and distribution to the network. The CMS can ingest and manage custom metadata in multiple languages, and transform metadata from a variety of formats into a common, normalized data set. This solution protects content with support for a variety of industry-standard digital rights management (DRM) and encryption methods. The Cisco Videoscape Media Suite CMS also provides a sophisticated media packaging and bundling system, allowing you to model, distribute, and monetize complex packages (such as virtual DVD, TV season, music album, and ringtone) as easily as single assets.

• Cisco Videoscape Media Suite Entitlement: The entitlement element provides a comprehensive framework for protecting, distributing, and monetizing content across multiple screens. It supports customized product rules and DRM use terms for subscription, rental, enterprise social technology, ad-supported, and entitlement models. You can authorize content access through conditional access or DRM license, and manage customer accounts, devices, domains, and entitlements in a universal "rights locker."

• Cisco Videoscape Media Suite Publisher: The publisher aggregates catalogs from a variety of sources (for example, the Cisco Videoscape CMS, Hulu, and CBS) and combines them into a single catalog with harmonized categories for search and recommendation. You can configure rules to automatically populate categories, set up and configure downstream advertisement servers and players, publish playlists for service provider-created channels and advertising content, and insert targeted advertising. You can also collect and publish user ratings for content and publish catalogs to multiple devices. The publisher also provides metering and reporting on content usage and advertising metrics.

• Cisco Videoscape Media Suite Streaming Player: The in-browser player supports Flash and Silverlight, with full trick-play (including pause and rewind) and playlist controls, support for multiple resolutions, and integrated social networking and sharing options to allow for and viral distribution. The players supports advertisement insertion, metering, and DRM, and embeddable widgets for catalog and channel browsing. A full software development kit (SDK) lets you customize players to provide a consistent, service-provider-branded experience across all devices.

For more information about the Cisco Videoscape Media Suite, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps11497/index.html.

Cisco Videoscape Migration Portfolio

Cisco recognizes that the transition to a full Cisco Videoscape architecture will not happen in a single migration. Even as you develop more sophisticated capabilities in cloud-based and consumer home services, you will likely maintain your installed base of existing STBs for several years.

As a major component of the Cisco Videoscape evolution strategy, the Cisco Videoscape Migration Portfolio provides cloud-based solutions to integrate live TV, VoD content, and online video into a unified and immersive experience, and deliver that experience even over older access networks and STBs.

With the Cisco Videoscape Migration Portfolio, you can:

• Increase customer loyalty by delivering a more compelling navigation, search, and content experience than existing pay TV offerings can provide

• Build a foundation for next-generation experiences by integrating online video content and social media applications from a broad range of sources into the pay-TV experience

• Develop your network intelligently, making value-wise investments and providing new revenue-generating services at each step in the transition

Delivering new cloud-based TV services does not require a major one-time upgrade to your network. With the Cisco Videoscape Migration Portfolio, you can develop your architecture incrementally, delivering more content and interactivity to customers with older STBs, and evolving your network to a full Cisco Videoscape cloud-based solution over time.

Cisco Conductor for Videoscape

A next-generation media architecture has many parts, but to deliver the full power of the cloud across multiple screens and networks, all elements of the system must function together as one. Cisco Conductor orchestrates the various services, devices, and subscriber management functions across clients, clouds and networks, including both those that are managed by the provider and those that are not. It provides a standards-based communications pathway to support presence, real-time application information, resources, and social networking, and support classic command-and-control functions (Figure 3). In essence, the Cisco conductor addresses four fundamental questions:

• Who is the user and do they have permission to access the content?

• What are the requirements of the network and devices?

• Where is the experience to be delivered?

• How best to orchestrate the delivery of the experience across all different technology elements and variables?

With Cisco Conductor for Videoscape linking all elements of the Cisco Videoscape solution, you can:

• Significantly scale services, extending cloud-based experiences to almost any device, across managed or unmanaged networks

• Manage Cisco Videoscape devices across the entire lifecycle, including activation, configuration, diagnostics, and firmware and software updates

• Deliver a new generation of cloud-based applications that integrate capabilities such as presence, social networking, session-shifting across devices, detailed customer usage tracking, and advanced advertising.

Figure 3. Cisco Conductor for Videoscape

Unifying Cloud and Client Architectures

Based on an Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) real-time messaging bus, Cisco Conductor for Videoscape provides a common communications platform and control services running on that platform.

The Cisco Conductor for Videoscape communications platform provides an infrastructure of reusable functions that make it easy to create services for the cloud, including:

• Service discovery

• Persistent data storage

• Administrative user interface and links to operational support, billing, and subscriber management systems

• Social networking infrastructure

• Scalable mechanism to extend cloud-based services to a wide range of managed or unmanaged clients, using common web protocols such as HTTP and XMPP) to access services

Conductor control services include:

• Client and network management

• Emergency Alert services

• Service orchestration

• Access, session, policy, and resource management

With Cisco Conductor for Videoscape combining all Cisco Videoscape components, applications, and services into a single system, you can deliver immersive cloud-based experiences anywhere, anytime.

For more information about Cisco Conductor for Videoscape, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns1109/networking_solutions_solution.html.

Cisco Data Center Solutions

An essential foundation of the Cisco Videoscape solution is an evolution toward cloud-based services, in which the definition, rendering, and composition of the user's experience happens in the service provider cloud, rather than on a STB. By transitioning to this cloud-based model, you can provide a more diverse media experience to your customers, extend that service-provider-branded experience to more screens, and deliver media services more efficiently and with greater scalability. To realize all of these advantages, however, the video back office must begin to take on many of the characteristics of a data center infrastructure.

Cisco provides industry-leading data center solutions in which Cisco Videoscape cloud elements are instantiated. Based on the Cisco Unified Service Delivery (USD) model, these solutions integrate server, storage, network, and virtualization resources into a single, unified Ethernet environment. As a result, you can deliver a more diverse range of media services and accelerate the deployment of those services, through a platform that reduces your capital and operational costs.

Cisco data center solutions that support Cisco Videoscape include the following:

• Cisco Unified Computing System: The Cisco Unified Computing System provides a common platform for the growing software-based functionality that is becoming critical to media delivery. Whether it's the unglamorous but critical tasks of applying detailed policy control and digital rights management, or the implementation of a new interactive widget for your user experience, the Cisco Unified Computing System offers an outstanding combination of computing power, manageability, and innovation, especially for virtualization. It provides an ideal compute platform to host a wide range of software-based media delivery functions, today and in the future.

• Cisco Nexus Family of data center switches: The Cisco Nexus Family offers the highest throughput available today to accommodate the accelerating growth of content and insatiable subscriber demand for an ever-higher quality of experience. These switches are engineered from the beginning with carrier-class availability and reliability features that set them apart from other products in their class.

For more details about Cisco USD and other Cisco data center solutions, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/usd.

Clients

Today, consumers want to be active participants in shaping how their entertainment, lifestyle applications, and communication experiences are created, managed, and delivered. But despite ubiquitous broadband access, growing social networking and communication options, and ever-expanding content choices, consumers are becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of connectivity across their devices. As technologies and media experiences become more sophisticated, customer demand for a more simplified, unified experience can only grow.

Cisco has the vision, strategy, and solutions available today to empower you to create differentiated consumer experiences and sustainable long-term competitive advantage, as well as to expand into new business models. And you can take advantage of these capabilities using your existing infrastructure. We call it "the Connected Life," which brings the human network together by unifying consumer experiences within and beyond the home.

The Cisco Videoscape Client Architecture

The Cisco Videoscape solution builds on Cisco's history of leadership and innovation in the home device market, including Cisco cable and IP STBs, gateways, and consumer electronics devices such as Cisco Linksys^® networking products, Cisco Flip^™ video cameras, and Cisco ūmi^™ consumer telepresence products. Expanding upon this tradition, Cisco provides a comprehensive client architecture to help you bring the Cisco Videoscape cloud into the consumer experience, at home or on the move, anytime, on any IP device.

Cisco Videoscape clients provide:

• An open, IP-based solution that supports delivery of cloud-based and premium video services across almost any consumer device or screen

• A common technology plane that gives you outstanding flexibility and interoperability

• Integration with Cisco Conductor for Videoscape, providing a real-time communication pathway between clients, the network, and the cloud

Cisco Videoscape clients include:

• Media gateways to create new service possibilities for consumers, inside and outside the home

• Set-top boxes that unify the video experience, integrating linear, VoD, and online sources

• Soft clients that bring the power of the Cisco Videoscape cloud to a broad range of consumer electronics and unmanaged devices

While Cisco Videoscape clients provide the most expansive capabilities and integration, the Cisco Videoscape solution can also support integration of third-party hardware and software clients.

Cisco Videoscape Media Gateways

Cisco Videoscape Media Gateways continue Cisco's tradition of innovation in the consumer home. The gateways integrate voice, linear and online video, high-speed data (HSD), mobility, and routing capabilities, providing a centralized hub to deliver entertainment, applications, and communications in the consumer's home network. Cisco Videoscape Media Gateways also support new cloud-based services such as video streaming across multiple applications and lifestyle management applications. Two gateways are currently available: the Cisco TES 301 IP Managed Services Gateway and the Cisco DRG 7000 Series Videoscape Media Gateway.

Cisco DRG 7000 Series Videoscape Media Gateway

The Cisco DRG 7000 Series is designed to be the consumer's central hub for multi-screen media and applications, and the managed services operator's (MSO's) gateway into the home network. The platform is optimized for the distribution of IP video and content assets across managed devices, including TV, PC, and mobile devices. The platform is designed specifically for the needs of cable service providers as they migrate to IP video networks.

To provide a comprehensive home solution, the Cisco DRG 7000 Series combines a DOCSIS^® 3.0 cable modem, a 2-line embedded multimedia and voice adapter with battery backup, multiple wired and wireless LAN interfaces, internal and external hard disk options, and dual universal series bus (USB) host support.

Ultimately, the gateway lets you do the following.

• Provide access to more content on more devices: The Cisco DRG 7000 supports the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) home networking standards, allowing delivery of content to a broad range of customer premises equipment (CPE) and consumer electronics devices in the home. Customers can even use the gateways to store and back up personal content from devices throughout the home.

• Deliver a more immersive multi-screen experience: The gateway provides native support for high-definition whole-home DVR distribution, whether DVR functionality is provided by a home device or by cloud-based services. Customers can pause and resume content playback across multiple devices.

• Take advantage of a solution built for cable operators: Channel-bonded DOCSIS 3.0 and 1-GHz tuning features give you tremendous speed and bandwidth optimization.

• Improve network efficiency through CDN intelligence: The Cisco DRG 7000 Series extends CDN caching into the home, letting you pre-position popular content, applications, and targeted advertising. The platform also supports multicast-to-unicast conversion of simultaneous MPEG-4 IP video streams. Together, these features improve network efficiency and optimize WAN bandwidth utilization.

• Use a common software platform to deliver advanced services: The gateway provides an application server in the home, allowing you to offer new IP-based revenue-generating services. The platform's open application development environment simplifies the development and deployment of new applications.

• Simplify home network management: By extending service provider cloud intelligence into the home network, you can make it easier for customers to add devices to the network and solve problems without calling technical support. You can also give customer service representatives visibility into the entire home network, allowing them to more easily troubleshoot and resolve issues.

TES 301 IP Managed Services Gateway

This application-centered gateway can be used by cable, telco, or wireless service providers to deliver new advanced IP services over existing HSD deployments and generate more value from your current investments. The gateway is optimized to deliver managed services and third-party lifestyle management applications that go beyond entertainment, such as home security, video monitoring, and energy management, all hosted by Cisco Videoscape cloud, and delivered to the customer's screen of choice. The TES 301 also supports Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), or UltraViolet, capabilities to link customers to a new open ecosystem of cloud-based content and purchasing options.

With the TES 301 Managed Services Gateway, you can deliver:

• Personal content sharing across screens and devices: The TES 301 provides sophisticated home networking options, using standards such as those developed by DLNA and Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HPNA). Interfacing with the Cisco Videoscape cloud, the TES 301 supports remote services management, providing both consumers and your customer service representatives with advanced service management capabilities.

• Voice services through SIP software for Voice-over-IP (VoIP): Standard capabilities include landline and foreign exchange ports for full analog telephone adapter capabilities. Options include subscriber identity module (SIM) security for 3-GB and 4-GB mobile networks, and the ability to connect handheld cordless phones with a USB dongle.

• DECE content ecosystem option: With the ability to integrate DECE capabilities into the gateway, you can provide search, fulfillment, delivery, and digital rights licensing for third-party content providers and retailers, across multiple consumer devices.

• Home security, video monitoring, and automation: You can allow customers to access third-party applications such as healthcare management, pet monitoring, security breach warnings, and video surveillance, from the gateway or remotely through the Cisco Videoscape cloud.

• Smart grid and energy management applications: Pike Research estimates that by 2015, 28 million homes will contain energy management displays. You can let your customers access third-party power management applications from their local utility or a third-party partner, both at home and on the go, to monitor and control their energy usage.

The Cisco TES 301 supports home security and energy management applications through Z-wave and ZigBee wireless signaling, the industry-leading protocols established for these capabilities. Both applications support comprehensive parental controls (such as time of day and website access) and multiple modes for consumers to use these services, including online and mobile notifications, and event alerts that can be sent as text messages, emails, pictures, or videos.

For more details about Cisco Videoscape Media Gateways, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps11501/index.html.

Cisco Videoscape Set-Top Boxes

Cisco Videoscape Set-Top Boxes help you redefine the TV experience. These STBs integrate premium programming, linear and on-demand TV, DVR recordings, and online entertainment - combining vast content choices with high-definition quality. The STBs also bring the Cisco Videoscape cloud into the family room, delivering Internet and web applications as part of a "lean back" TV experience.

Cisco Videoscape STBs help you bring the power of cloud-based services to your customers and deliver the following.

• A unified video experience: Linear, pay TV, broadcast, and premium content are offered with online entertainment on a single device, powered by the Cisco Videoscape cloud. You can deliver more than just the Internet on TV, and provide your customers with:

– Virtually infinite content choices, in high-definition quality

– Time-shifted video capabilities

– Integrated web content as part of a "lean-back" experience designed for TV viewing

– Easily accessible content with no keyboard required

– Optional full web browser capabilities

• Interaction with multiple devices: Cisco Videoscape STBs can share secure, authenticated video content with other CPE and consumer electronics devices, with distribution managed by the service provider. You can simplify the interactive entertainment experience for your customers and let them engage with media experiences anytime and anywhere, on any screen, through a single provider.

• More personalized, immersive video experiences: Give your consumers universal search and recommendation capabilities across all content sources, parental controls across all devices, local and cloud-based DVR storage, service provider-branded content stores, and other capabilities.

At the same time, Cisco Videoscape STBs help you to:

• Launch new cloud-based services such as universal search, remote scheduling, and home security and monitoring to differentiate your offering in the marketplace

• Support new services and business partnerships with an open ecosystem that offers cloud-hosted content and applications, an open, standards-based application framework, and support for multiple DRM technologies

• Enhance personalization and services over multiple screens with Cisco Conductor for Videoscape capabilities, including user profiles, device management, and presence

For more information about Cisco Videoscape STBs, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps11500/index.html.

Cisco Videoscape Soft Clients

Cisco Videoscape Soft Clients reside on a variety of different devices, from televisions to tablets, and provide a common interface between managed and unmanaged devices, and the service provider cloud. These software clients can be embedded in Cisco CPE devices such as Cisco Videoscape Media Gateways and STBs, as well as IP-enabled consumer electronics devices, smartphones, gaming consoles, and more.

The Cisco Videoscape Soft Client for Unmanaged Applications is available now for PC and Mac through Cisco Videoscape Media Suite assets. This soft client will be available for Android, iPhone, and iPad applications in the future.

With Cisco Videoscape Soft Clients, you can:

• Provide a customized streaming and download experience today on unmanaged devices

• Extend the full menu of cloud-based content to any managed CPE device, including live and on-demand TV, premium high-definition video, online sources, and full trick-play and DVR capabilities

• Enable multiple content monetization models (for example, download to own, rental, and advertisement-supported)

• Give consumers an offline experience with download options

• Deliver an immersive experience with in-browser players in Flash or Silverlight that include:

– Full trick-play controls, playlist carousel, and multiple resolutions

– Social media tools with the ability to email content or links to a friend, post to social networks, or embed code in a blog

– Advertisement insertion and metering

– DRM support

• Integrate unmanaged devices into the cloud and the intelligent network, with support for device-specific content delivery

• Create catalog and channel browser widgets to provide intuitive navigation

• Customize the entire experience with a full software development kit

• Enhance home networking and connectivity by giving customers the ability to manage multiple devices and services through the service provider cloud

For more details about Cisco Videoscape Soft Clients, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps11502/index.html.

Cisco IP Next-Generation Network Solutions

Tomorrow's media experiences may be powered by the cloud, but delivering those experiences to consumers, efficiently and with high quality, requires an intelligent network infrastructure. Achieving consistently high quality, however, is not a simple task. Video applications have stringent performance and resiliency requirements. Even a single lost video packet may result in a visible impairment to the end user, especially in modern video services that use compressed video applications and compression algorithms based on frame prediction, such as MPEG.

To successfully deliver high-quality cloud-based media services, the network infrastructure must be a lossless video architecture: a highly resilient IP transport network that meets rigorous service-level agreement (SLA) requirements for video. This requires:

• Building the network with ample throughput and capacity

• Minimizing delay, jitter, and network congestion with video-optimized quality-of-service (QoS) and traffic engineering tools

• Eliminating packet loss with high-availability techniques

• Providing end-to-end service monitoring and management tools to verify that SLA requirements are being met and to help you quickly identify and correct problems

Cisco can help you meet all of these requirements with Cisco IP Next-Generation Network (NGN) Solutions. These solutions combine embedded video intelligence with exceptional scale, performance, lossless transport, and nonstop availability to provide immersive media experiences. The solutions let you create a medianet - an infrastructure that is network-aware, media-aware, and device-aware, and optimized for video applications and communications. As a result, you can:

• Assure a consistent subscriber experience over multiple endpoints

• Simplify operation with hitless switchover and inline video monitoring

• Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) through efficient service multiplexing (video, voice, data, and mobility)

Cisco IP NGN Video Optimized Transport Solution

The Cisco IP NGN Video Optimized Transport Solution provides an intelligent, highly reliable transport network for cloud-based media and applications. Built on a proven medianet architecture, this solution provides embedded media intelligence to let you extend any type of content, over any network, to any consumer device.

The Cisco Video Optimized Transport solution draws on the industry-leading scale, resiliency, and embedded video intelligence of the Cisco service provider IP routing and video back-office infrastructure portfolio. These advanced solutions provide:

• Industry-leading scalability and performance to support more high-definition content, more applications, and more immersive consumer experiences

• Nonstop availability with the Cisco IOS^®-XR carrier-class operating system in core and aggregation platforms, supporting lossless reconvergence and hitless in-service upgrades

• Lossless video transport for a high quality of experience

• Service flexibility with the ability to converge all video, data, voice, and mobile services in a single infrastructure

• Video-grade resiliency to assure consistently excellent quality

• Simplified operation with comprehensive management and inline video monitoring tools that eliminate the need for standalone probes

• Lower TCO through an end-to-end IP transport architecture that efficiently converges all services

The Cisco Video Optimized Transport portfolio includes the following.

• Cisco Carrier Routing System (CRS) Series Routers: These routers deliver industry-leading performance, advanced service intelligence, and carrier-class availability. As the core network foundation of Cisco Videoscape media delivery, the Cisco CRS-1 router provides outstanding resiliency and lossless video transport.

• Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers: Cisco ASR 9000 Series routers are engineered to provide a Carrier Ethernet foundation for video service delivery and to address the massive surges in video traffic through IP networks.

• Cisco 7600 Series Routers: The Cisco 7600 Series is the industry's first carrier-class edge router to offer integrated, high-density Ethernet switching, carrier-class IP/MPLS routing, and 10-Gbps interfaces, helping you deliver both consumer and business services over a single converged Carrier Ethernet network.

• Cisco DCM: Cisco DCM solutions provide a full range of advanced video processing, transcoding, and gateway functions to support the Cisco Videoscape solution, as well as hitless switchover.

• Cisco Video Assurance Management Solution (VAMS): Cisco VAMS is a standards-based solution that provides real-time monitoring, troubleshooting, and management of video services. The Cisco VAMS modular and integrated architecture helps to promote flexibility and growth to accommodate a broad range of current and future needs. Cisco VAMS combines management and monitoring tools for every layer of the transport network into a single powerful user interface to help you quickly isolate and address issues. For example, one of the defining features of Cisco VAMS is that it provides a direct correlation between the video and IP network identifiers for each program or channel. This allows operators from different disciplines to understand the event and initiate appropriate corrective action. Cisco VAMS is distinctive in its capacity to correlate network details for each channel in a single alarming system.

• Cisco Inline Video Monitoring: Integrated with Cisco VAMS, Cisco Inline Video Monitoring gives you full visibility into video quality across the entire transport network, including cumulative and historic video metrics on a per-port basis. This solution reduces the total cost of ownership of your network by eliminating the need to deploy and manage a system of standalone video quality probes.

To learn more about the Cisco IP NGN Video Optimized Transport Solution, visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns1110/networking_solutions_solution.html.

Cisco Advanced Video Services Module: Video Intelligence at the Aggregation Edge

To help you deliver Cisco Videoscape experiences more easily and cost-effectively, Cisco has embedded Cisco CDS intelligent TV and Internet content delivery capabilities in the Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Router with the Cisco Advanced Video Services Module (AVSM). The Cisco AVSM extends content and media services to the aggregation edge, providing:

• Gigabytes of media-streaming capacity

• Terabytes of content-caching capacity

• Advertisement insertion

• Fast channel-change services

• Bit error correction to assure high quality over error-prone last-mile networks

• Transparent integration into a content delivery network powered by the Cisco CDS

The Cisco AVSM eliminates the need for standalone content delivery elements at the network edge, providing intelligent streaming and caching capabilities that support the delivery of content and advanced services closer to the user. By delivering these Cisco CDS capabilities as a blade for the Cisco ASR 9000 Series Routers, the Cisco AVSM benefits from all the high-availability characteristics of the routers, and simplifies your network infrastructure.

Cisco Converged Cable Access Network

Even as managed services operators move to IP in some parts of their networks, many still rely on previous-generation cable access infrastructures designed to deliver services only to the TV. These older networks carry high operating costs and make it difficult to integrate cloud-based content and applications into the TV experience.

The Cisco Converged Cable Access Networkprovides a DOCSIS 3.0 access platform to help you migrate to an end-to-end IP infrastructure. The solution lowers costs, increases scalability, and lets you bring new cloud-based content and applications to the TV experience.

The Cisco Converged Cable Access Network provides:

• Industry-leading DOCSIS 3.0 scalability with new 3G60 line cards that deliver 10 times the capacity and 20 times the speed of DOCSIS 2.0 solutions, at a fraction of the cost per channel

• Reduced TCO with the ability to converge all services - digital video, IP video, voice, and broadband data - onto a single shared infrastructure

• Increased service velocity with the ability to develop and rapidly deploy new services with web-based toolkits and capabilities

• Easy migration path to upgrade your deployed cable assets to an all-IP infrastructure

Cisco 3G60 Line Cards: Unleash the Power of DOCSIS 3.0

Cisco cable modem termination system (CMTS) solutions provide industry-leading universal broadband routers and line cards to help you take full advantage of the scale, flexibility, and cost-efficiencies of DOCSIS 3.0. Now, Cisco offers a new cable access solution designed specifically to help you deliver immersive cloud-based experiences to your subscribers.

The 3G60 line card for the Cisco uBR10012 Universal Broadband Router provides:

• Industry-leading DOCSIS 3.0 scalability, with support for 576 downstream and 480 upstream channels per chassis - 10 times the channel capacity of DOCSIS 2.0 solutions

• Faster speeds, providing up to 1 Gbps downstream with 24-channel bonding - 20 times the speed of DOCSIS 2.0 solutions

• Lower cost per channel due to a higher channel capacity, delivering services at 1/10 the cost of DOCSIS 2.0 solutions

• High availability with redundancy options for both line cards and RF edge gateways

To learn more about Cisco solutions for cable operators, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/cable and http://www.cisco.com/go/3G60.

Cisco Content Delivery System

Central to the Cisco Videoscape cloud vision is the ability to deliver immersive experiences and any type of IP content to any device. But how can you make this vision a reality?

To maintain a high quality of experience, scale services, and keep costs under control, you need to be able to cache multiple types of content close to subscribers and intelligently stream that content to a variety of connected devices. Today, most service providers either outsource these functions to third-party CDN providers or use in-house proprietary streaming systems. Neither option is ideal, however, for implementing the Cisco Videoscape vision of universal content and access.

Proprietary systems limit flexibility and content options, and can be difficult and expensive to scale. Outsourced CDN services carry recurring monthly costs and prevent you from realizing the full value of your network infrastructure. Why should service providers outsource CDN capabilities when they already own the most advanced IP networks in the world? Why not use your network as a strategic asset?

A Next-Generation Media Delivery Platform

The Cisco Content Delivery System provides an intelligent, video-optimized CDN platform to provide personalized media delivery. Cisco CDS incorporates TV streaming for high-quality content delivery to digital TVs and STBs, as well as Internet streaming to deliver content and applications to any connected IP device. Designed for the next generation of cloud-based video experiences, Cisco CDS can ingest, store, and deliver live and on-demand content and applications flexibly, cost-effectively, and with optimal scalability.

With Cisco CDS, you can integrate live video and media files from your own hosting centers or from content provider servers. Cisco CDS dynamically duplicates the video streams and distributes them at the closest point to the consumer. You can also cache content within your network close to end users, reducing video traffic on the core network and improving the overall subscriber quality of experience.

As a primary component of the Cisco Videoscape solution, the Cisco CDS provides:

• Improved bandwidth efficiency and lower costs with dynamic routing technologies such as proximity, dynamically determining the closest source of any requested content and the lowest-cost route to deliver it

• Total flexibility with an open, flexible architecture that supports almost all common TV and web video formats, such as MPEG, standard definition, high definition, HTTP, Microsoft Windows, Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime, and Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)

• Advanced streaming through a variety of popular streaming technologies, including all variants of Adobe Flash and Microsoft Windows Media streaming

• Expanded reach with adaptive bit-rate streaming technologies that help you deliver a consistent quality of experience even when customers are accessing content over the unmanaged Internet

• Scalability with embedded intelligence that automatically identifies and caches the most popular content close to subscribers, and lets you scale content storage and streaming resources separately as local needs change

Cisco CDS also supports new revenue opportunities and strengthens the value you can provide to content providers and online video partners. With an in-house CDN and advanced traffic management tools, you can maintain full control of content delivery from ingestion to consumption, and assure a high quality of experience. In addition, with an open architecture and broad web protocol support, Cisco CDS provides a versatile platform for supporting new partnerships with almost any content or application provider.

To find out more about Cisco CDS, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/cds.

Cisco Services for Videoscape

Central to delivering the Cisco Videoscape vision is taking a phased, system-level approach to implementation, with the back-office cloud, the network, and clients evolving together as one. To achieve this, you need to be able to plan, design, implement, and operate all aspects of the solution as a single, harmonious system. Most important, you need to be confident that you can bring new capabilities to market at the proper time to stay ahead of competition and do so with as little risk as possible.

Your migration to a next-generation video solution will require careful planning, taking into account the architectural, technical, and operational implications of the deployment. As your partner, Cisco Services brings the expertise to help you successfully adopt new architectures, deliver the entire solution, and help ensure a smooth transition as you proceed.

Cisco Services offerings cover all aspects of the Cisco Videoscape portfolio - cloud, network, and clients - to deliver a comprehensive solution (Figure 4). Using a lifecycle methodology, Cisco Services can help with:

• Migration of your existing network infrastructure to support IP video

• Integration of the end-to-end video solution, and integration with your operational environment

• Customization of the Cisco Videoscape solution to address your unique requirements

The complete suite of professional services also includes postdeployment support to help you operationalize and assure the end-user experience.

Figure 4. Cisco Services for Videoscape Portfolio

The Cisco Services organization has a proven track record of successful deployments. Cisco brings together people with deep IP and video expertise, best practices, advanced tools and platforms, along with industry-leading Cisco technologies to deliver a complete solution. With a flexible engagement model customized to address your unique requirements, and assurance backed by SLAs, Cisco Services can help mitigate any risk and accelerate your time to market.

Cisco and Service Providers: Reinventing TV. Together

The future of TV and media entertainment is here, powered by the cloud. With the Cisco Videoscape solution, you can reinvent the TV experience for your customers and position your network as the main enabler of tomorrow's immersive, ubiquitous media experiences.

Cisco is ready to be your partner in this journey. Only Cisco can provide:

• A comprehensive IP video architecture that encompasses the back-office cloud, the media-optimized network, and client solutions, all working together to deliver unified, immersive experiences

• A premium quality of experience that surpasses "best-effort" media delivery by drawing on embedded intelligence that extends across the cloud, network, and clients

• Investment protection through a clear migration path that lets you develop and monetize new services now, while providing the foundation for more advanced future capabilities

• End-to-end lifecycle services that take you through the preparation, planning, design, implementation, operation, and optimization stages of your cloud-based IP video architecture

• Proven industry leadership providing innovative video back-office, CDN, IPTV, CPE, and data center implementations for many of the largest, most successful service providers

For More Information

To learn more about the Cisco Videoscape solution, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/videoscape.

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