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A couple of years ago, the big question with IPTV wasn’t so much “how?” but “when?”

But now that IPTV (News - Alert) is being deployed everywhere, many service providers are no longer asking “when?” but “how?”

Service providers are increasingly finding that becoming a successful purveyor of IP video services isn’t an easy thing. That’s because IPTV isn’t the kind of service that can be delivered on a “best efforts” basis. On an IP video network, every packet has to make it from the head end to the customer’s TV set - and make it there intact - otherwise the video quality will degrade and the customer will eventually come to realize that they should have gone with another service provider.

If you’re a service provider and you’re planning to launch an IPTV service, perhaps including video-on-demand and HDTV, you had better make damn sure your network is ready to deliver the goods – and deliver them flawlessly. If you can’t accomplish this right out of the gate, then you might as well stop wasting your time, and your money, because in this new, highly competitive market, you simply will not make it.

So how do service providers guarantee that their IP video services will be delivered flawlessly upon the moment they’re deployed? Well, first and foremost, they need a highly reliable, flexible and scalable end-to-end video monitoring and troubleshooting tool that will enable them to analyze every aspect of the video network. This is something that cannot be accomplished with the flimsy, software-only video monitoring systems that are out there – rather, it takes an investment in the network itself, in the form of monitoring equipment that measures video quality at various key junctures - and software that helps technicians drill down and find where the problem is.

Leading the way in this area is Massachusetts-based IneoQuest Technologies, a “pure-play” provider of comprehensive video monitoring and troubleshooting systems. The company just yesterday announced the release of its IQPinPoint Video Quality Management System, the first video quality management system designed specifically for reducing network operational expenses (OPEX (News - Alert)) with “multi-dimensional” monitoring and analysis technology.

As explained by Marc Todd, IneoQuest’s founder and CEO, “multi-dimensional” monitoring and analysis goes way beyond just plain monitoring. Sure, service providers which monitor their networks using software-only solutions can find out if a problem is occurring – but usually the “discovery” process begins after a technician is dispatched to the customer’s premises. Once there, the technician might discover that not all of the packets are arriving at the customer’s set top box - but then what? It’s not like he can fix the problem – or conduct further analysis - while he’s standing in front of the customer’s TV set. And there goes another wasted truck roll!

But with IneoQuest’s IQPinPpoint, a service provider can not only proactively discover which STBs are receiving flawed signals (in many cases before the customer even knows), they can also discover where the problem is occurring on the network without having to dispatch a technician.

“Knowing that there is a problem doesn’t completely help you,” Todd said during a recent interview with TMCnet. “You have to know where it is – and when it happened – and then you have to fix it.”

To accomplish this, a service provider needs a monitoring and troubleshooting system that employs a combination of hardware and software. By installing probes at various junctures on the video network and then connecting them, via the backplane, to a centralized video management system, operators can get much clearer views into the performance of their networks, and can isolate and fix problems faster.

With IQPinPoint, service providers can first monitor the video at the head end, to make sure that the problem didn’t start with the stored video, and then continue monitoring the video it as it passes over the network, taking measurements at key junctures (i.e. on various sub-systems, at the core and at the edge) along the way to track packet loss and other transcoding errors. The data gathered by the probes is then sent to a video management system, which in turn is used to perform diagnosis and repair (either manually or automatically).

“Monitoring sub-systems isn’t really enough,” Todd said. “You have to have a quality assurance strategy that lets you monitor the programs themselves – the video – and if you detect a problem, then that system has to do more than monitor, it has to isolate. We’ve got remote troubleshooting, so you can log into that probe that on the network, miles away, and you can record-trigger-analyze, so you can find the specific problem, solve it, and then go back into watching it over long periods of time. So by using our system, your deployment gets better and better – because you’re really solving problems.”

The ability to monitor the video at the head-end is a key capability, because after the stored video has been analyzed, the data gathered from that analysis serves as a benchmark for how the video should measure at other junctures on the network.

“You don’t want to do MPEG analysis or video payload analysis at the customer prem,” Todd said. “What good is that? You don’t have the expertise out there. You want to do it at the head end. So you watch all the video simultaneously, at the head end, and you do your deep packet inspection from there … and after that point, the only thing that is going to affect that video, from a transport point of view, is loss.”

As Todd explained, IQPinPoint, in tandem with IneoQuest’s Video Management System (VMS), is capable of analyzing all of the video - at the head end or elsewhere - simultaneously, which means that every packet of every video (and keep in mind there could be hundreds or even thousands of videos in a provider’s line-up) is monitored and measured for quality.

“And because we watch all the video, at multiple locations, we can take advantage of advanced strategies for partitioning the problem,” he said. “So I can tell you immediately, ‘that’s a video problem,’ or ‘nope, that’s a network problem.’ That’s a huge saver for the small telco.”

IneoQuest’s advanced FPGA probes, which are installed at strategic points at the head-end, in the core, and on the edge of the last mile, can be remotely upgraded and configured, which in turn gives service providers “complete visibility” into their networks. These custom probes, which can be quickly re-configured and upgraded with new versions of the software via the intuitive user interface of the VMS, allow service providers to not only monitor and troubleshoot, but also quickly correct problems that can result in poor video quality. For example, if there are two discs on the network which are delivering the same video, but one of them happens to go down, the system enables an IT administrator to re-direct the video from the working disc to those customers which are being affected by the failure. By the same token, if one of the video signals is stronger than the other, then the probe can be instructed to take the stronger of the two signals and distribute that among the pre-defined group of customers.

Not only does FPGA facilitate faster firmware and software upgrades, it also allows for detailed monitoring without any impact on network resources. That’s because, unlike software-only monitoring solutions which run “in-line” with the video, IQPinPoint is not bandwidth intensive and therefore has minimal impact on network performance.

“On the front side, we are not in-line with the video – we’re taking it off a tap, or a mirror, so there is no impact on the video service,” Todd said. “On the management port side, our probes are intelligent, they’re FPGAs and processors all in one – so they are digesting and consuming the numbers and stats, and are then able to compress those, using a proprietary method we use for compression, to get that information up to the management system with minimal overhead.”

IneoQuest’s portfolio of probes includes interfaces that allow deployment anywhere in the network, from head-end, to network core and throughout the multitude of available last mile technologies. These probes offer support for Ethernet, ASI, ADSL2/2+, VDSL, HPNA, WiFi (News - Alert), 3G and QAM.

In fact, the company just recently introduced its new family of Singulus Lite “Crickets” - with 3G and WiFi interfaces - bringing multi-dimensional monitoring and analysis to the wireless network. Used in conjunction with the IQPinPoint platform, the Singulus Lite “Cricket” enables service providers to reduce operational expenses (OPEX) and improve video quality over wireless networks. The company also plans to support the 4G wireless broadband service WiMAX (News - Alert) as well as the new video broadcast technologies MediaFlo and DVB-H later this year.

Todd said with the new WiFi cricket, which is a USB device, you can hook it up at a hot spot and do remote analysis to see what impact the video has on the hot spot.

“In the WiFi case, [the Cricket] makes a Layer 1 wireless connection to a hot spot, and then allows you to, say, join a video flow, or do a TCP transfer of a video, and then we’ll actually follow that stream the same way we do it with the bigger analyzers – we watch every video packet that comes across,” he said. “So we can then tell you if you have a Layer 1 problem – for example, if you had packet loss – or if the video has a problem, the payload has a problem, we can decipher between those two – we can record and analyze, record and trigger, and also we can use it like a bridge – so let’s say I want to take a video and I want it to come to the wireless connector and then go out a 10/100 connector, it has the ability to do that. So I could sit behind a wireless device and then pass it out through an Ethernet port to a set top box.”

Such comprehensive capabilities are rare, if not even completely absent from today’s IPTV monitoring and troubleshooting solutions.

“IQPinPoint is a multi-dimensional video quality management solution – this is a business driven approach to enable service providers to not only reduce video artifacts, but reduce cost, increase profits and improve customer satisfaction – not just by monitoring, but remote analyzing and fault isolating, so you can find and fix the problem and improve your systems after you spend that OPEX dollar,” Todd concluded. “I don’t know anybody out there who is doing what we do.”

In other news, IneoQuest also announced this week that Gino Dion, former principal engineer in the CTO office at Alcatel (News - Alert)-Lucent, has joined IneoQuest as VP of business development.

According to a company press release, Dion’s arrival “underscores IneoQuest’s explosive three-year growth and continued focus on market leadership in advanced IP video quality and service assurance systems.”

“As service providers continue to roll out video services, the ability to control operational expenses (OPEX) becomes critical,” Todd said in the release. “Gino’s background in IPTV technology and his experience with video quality and service assurance will better enable us to increase our penetration within key markets while creating new opportunities in sectors that are just now beginning to develop.”

While at Alcatel-Lucent, Dion successfully led several important projects including the company’s service assurance initiatives for IPTV. He was also instrumental in providing direction and guidance on numerous IP video product and service rollouts.

Prior to his seven-year stint at Alcatel-Lucent, Dion managed IP Applications at C1 Communications.

“Controlling OPEX is quickly becoming the most critical aspect of successful IP video strategies for service providers,” Dion said in the release. “IneoQuest’s evolutionary end-to-end video quality management technology is paving the way to solving this problem. I very much look forward to being part of this talented team and to helping bring even more exciting solutions to market.”

IneoQuest’s solutions are used by equipment manufacturers to test the capabilities of their IPTV hardware products prior to going to market; and by service providers (including telcos and cable operators) to test their networks for IPTV readiness prior to deployment of new services, and to continuously monitor and troubleshoot their networks after deployment (as they grow and take on new customers). In addition, the company offers professional services for all phases of IP network planning, including expert advice, counsel, service assurance monitoring and more.

Mansfield, Mass.-based IneoQuest was founded in 2001 and currently employs 58 people. The company’s factory, where all of its hardware components are assembled, is also located in Mansfield. In addition, the company has sales offices in Beijing and the APAC, as well as three sales teams and UK office in Europe.

IneoQuest is exhibiting IQPinPoint and its other solutions NAB 2007, being held this week (April 16–19) at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas (Booth #SU11606).

For more information, visit www.IneoQuest.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Assignment Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.