Net Insight's Nimbra platform lets CATV or Multi System Operators (MSOs) consolidate all traffic into a single infrastructure. This eliminates the need for parallel networks and multiple boxes for each broadband, TV and VoD service, which reduces operating expenses and capital equipment costs and eliminates many points of failure.
Market
The move from being an analog TV distribution service to being a true multiservice provider has led many operators to deploy multiple parallel infrastructures to support each new service. The infrastructure has often become unnecessarily complicated with many points of failure, low system efficiency, high capital costs and high operating costs. Managing growth and service expansion can quickly become an expensive nightmare. Consolidating everything into one infrastructure offers enormous benefits, vastly improved service reliability and great cost savings.
Consolidation is not without its own difficulties. For example, introducing IP multicast into a common network for all services and mixing streaming video with bursty broadband traffic is a serious challenge. QoS management for an integrated infrastructure is another potential problem.
Increasing consumer demand for VoD and non-linear TV services is driving the need for ever-increasing bandwidth for cable systems. Net Insight can help make this dramatic expansion cost-effective and simultaneously provide a highly reliable, scalable infrastructure for on-going expansion.
Challenges
CATV operators face multiple challenges in today’s business environment:
- Migration from analog to digital TV
- Introduction of more HD content
- Increasing broadband speeds using DOCSIS 2 and 3
- Introduction of VoD for movie rentals and non-linear TV
- Introduction of VoIP for telephony services
- Addressing the lucrative enterprise segment
- Creating an all digital infrastructure that can host all of these services
Net Insight offering
The Nimbra platform includes high-density media network equipment with 8-port Gigabit Ethernet modules. The Nimbra 600 series chassis which can host up to 16 of these modules, providing huge amounts of capacity in a single unit. The Nimbra 600 series also offers 4-port STM-16 (2.5 Gbps) and 1-port STM-64 (10 Gbps) ports to connect to dark fiber, WDM or SDH ports for maximum flexibility. The Nimbra solutions offers trunk switching capacities of up to 160 Gbps in each element. Since it uses a distributed switching architecture, the system scales to multiple Tbps.
The Nimbra platform has unique multicast distribution capabilities specialized for the efficient and reliable distribution of digital SD and HD television content. It uses channelization for strict separation between services. To ensure that different traffic does not interfere with each other, it supports multiple virtual Ethernet switches on the same Ethernet card; this allows you to separate Ethernet traffic end-to-end and still allow management within the same network. Nimbra allows you to flexibly provision all of your services — broadcast TV, broadband, VoIP, enterprise VPN and VoD — over the same fiber or wavelength.
The Nimbra platform’s optical control plane integrates with NimbraVision, our Network Management System. The Nimbra control plane provides automatic configuration, service provisioning and protection/restoration. The result is improved performance by the NMS and a more scalable system. NimbraVision supports point-and-click provisioning, centralized alarm management, tracing functionality, inventory management, and many other features.
Key benefits
The major benefits of the Nimbra platform for CATV operators networks are:
- Multi-service with guaranteed QoS transport for risk free consolidation of broadband, broadcast TV, VoD, VoIP and enterprise VPN into a single network
- Scalable and easy manageable IP multicast specifically designed for TV distribution
- Bandwidth efficient VoD transport
- Easy traffic engineering and service provisioning