Lawo White Paper: IP broadcast networks become transparent

To achieve the full benefit of IP production infrastructures, network performance, and reliability are absolutely critical. The advent of these IP-based technologies requires a new range of diagnostic tools for monitoring and telemetry.

Lawo has been at the forefront of addressing this need, developing and deploying SMART solutions that live at the intersection of broadcast and IT and offer a comprehensive solution for managing networked production infrastructures.

While hardly anybody in the midst of migrating towards, or already reaping the benefits of, a sophisticated IP broadcast network would seriously consider reverting to the brave old baseband world, most active IP users will admit one thing: there used to be a time when unplugging cables was a quick and painless way of troubleshooting a malfunctioning installation.

With the advent of IP, the cable-checking approach no longer works. Unplugging an RJ45 or optical cable will tell you almost nothing about which device is malfunctioning. At best, a whole rack goes off-line, the worst case being that the entire install stops working. Broadcast engineers need to know exactly which data originate where, where they are headed, which route they use, whether there are any bottlenecks and/or delays, what is causing them, etc.

This calls for a professional monitoring and telemetry solution that makes the black box as transparent as a crystal ball— campus-, country- and/or worldwide. This article introduces a solution that helps engineers and operators to perform deep packet analysis on all formats of media flows for audio, video and data, with special attention to ST-2110, OTT and PTP.

This story first appeared on Sports Video Group US. To read more, go to: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2018/12/07/lawo-white-paper-ip-broadcast-networks-become-transparent/