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Download the complete free test guide now - End-to-End IPTV Test Strategy
Outlined here is an open test strategy for IPTV networks. The basic IPTV delivery network consists of the 3 main elements – Head End (content ingest), Network (delivery path) and Subscriber Premise (CPE). A complete test strategy must incorporate an end-to-end approach for performance measurements.
In IPTV, the typical device behind a CPE is a set-top box with or without PVR functionality. These devices may use IPv4 and/or IPv6 addressing, and can utilize a wide variety of Ethernet based Layer 3-7 protocols (examples: UDP, TCP, IGMP/MLD, RTSP, HTTP, FTP, SIP, etc).
To conduct effective testing of the IPTV environment, the test setup must replicate, as close as possible, the real world deployment environment. In everyday life multiple individual devices sit behind the CPE all vying for bandwidth, running a multitude of application types. Therefore, it’s essential to include other traffic types in the test strategy.
Shenick provides a methodology designed to test IPTV environments with a key focus on the individual end user experience which includes the device registration process, content request flows and finally the quality of the delivered content.
After establishing a benchmark performance or QoE results on a per flow basis for the IPTV network, the next step is to create client activity with various applications to include real world scenarios that include voice and application data services.
As the network is IP based, it’s essential to round up testing by considering various security attack
mitigation tests. The test structure has provisions for both regular (HTTP, IGMP, POP3, SMTP etc)
application flows and disruptive flows (P2P, DDOS, spam, viruses). All the traffic types Good, Bad,
Illegal are run from within the same test GUI for synchronization of cause and effect.
Listed below are an outline of tests for consideration -
| Test Requirement | CPE | Access | Aggregation | Edge | Core | Head End | |
| NETWORK | Content Availability | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Channel Change / Trick Play | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Latency / Jitter | ✓ | ||||||
| MANAGEMENT | CPE Access (Address Allocation) | ✓ | |||||
| EPG Availability | ✓ | ||||||
| Authentication and Billing | ✓ | ||||||
| Security /Policy Management | ✓ | ||||||
| PERFORMANCE | Content Quality | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Service QoS Provisioning | ✓ | ||||||
| Channel Change Efficacy | ✓ | ||||||
| SCALABILITY | Content Ingest | ✓ | |||||
| Max STBs per CPE | ✓ | ||||||
| Max CPE per ACCESS Node | ✓ | ||||||
| LIVE HEADEND PERFORMANCE | External - Content Quality | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Content Performance | ✓ | ||||||
| USER SCENARIO | Active traffic injection incl. (VoD, VoIP, web, email, P2P, etc) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| ROADMAP TEST | IPv4 and IPv6 enabled devices | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| SIP enabled content | ✓ |
Download the complete free test guide now - End-to-End IPTV Test Strategy