Network Monitoring Systems For Broadcast TV and Other Media Centric Systems
March 6th, 2010 |
Network systems are part of everything today including media based systems. Learning about problems on the networks is a vital part of keeping these systems running, thus network monitoring systems have become a requirement in broadcasting, Digital Cinema, and satellite distribution.
Many network systems today transfer media. More and more Terrestrial Television Stations are operating in hubs, where much of the work is done in a central location and the actual stations in the town are sometimes just a transmitter, or a transmitter with a newsroom.
IPTV is on the rise where customers get their TV from the Internet. Often these are hubs within a community with the content distributed out via satellite where it is put into the local streams.
Digital Cinema is beginning to distribute via satellite. Huge movie files are moved via satellite to each theater and the distributor needs to know how the transfer is going, that the movie will be there when it needs to play out. These systems may have thousands of end points to monitor.
Retail likewise is making extensive use of satellite distribution with thousands of end points. Transferring digital signage data and teleconference it’s important to know the state of the network quickly.
Monitoring these big systems and having a fresh overview and a fresh status is an interesting process. Much of the information is by SNMP and must be polled. Many of the failure and status info data sets must be polled: to get lock status, EsNo, BER or many of the other parameters from a receiver you must poll. The challenge is doing this for 2,000 receivers or more and getting this data within a couple of minutes. On media based systems the files being handled are not available via SNMP and they must be gotten by other means and incorporated into the display and alerting system so operators know that the right media is where it needs to be.
Events happening on your media based network don’t have to be a mystery - problems stacking up and then suddenly a crash. Learn about Network monitoring systems that are media aware.
At MTD Systems, what we do is watch all of the equipment - all the processes - all the time. There are warnings that we tell you about: on-air failures don’t always have to happen. I invite you to visit http://www.MTDSystems.com.
