Put IP and Media Perfectly in Tune? Running an IT Media Facility in a Predictable Way

Media organisations based on IP networks and IT technology systems are running in a continuous state of accepted risk. Yet this is an unknown and unquantifiable risk. The world of SDI and tapes gave us ‘guaranteed service’. The world of IP and IT promises us flexibility introducing a statistically very good but ‘best effort' approach’. A growing demand in load, usage, formats etc., increases the stress and skews the statistical behaviour. This increases the chances of underperformance and failures, which costs a lot of time and money. — To cope with this, ‘over-provisioning’ has been the sole solution given by the IT industry until now. Leading to ever increasing investments in network, storage and servers. And leading to a continuously higher inefficient usage of resources. Over-provisioning only helps to reduce or even mask part of the risk but doesn't guarantee the performance and reliability of the installations. It still falls short in providing the strict predictability that an operational solution requires when it matters. — However, it is not commonly known that technologies and solutions have been developed recently and do already exist today to make IP networks/IT systems behave in a predictable way. When applied in the right way IP networks and IT systems can deliver guaranteed predictable performance, run much more efficient, scale up linearly and be managed more easily.

Published

2013-10

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Ethernet switch, IP network, Quality of Service, QoS, Media IP network, SDI over IP, Software Defined Network, SDN

DOI

10.5594/M001500

ISBN

978-1-61482-953-9