Video: Scalable IP Architectures for Live Production and Playout

For many building a good network for a 2110 or other media-over-IP standards is new and a bit scary. But if there’s one person who knows how to do it, it’s Arista’s Gerard Phillips who’s here to go through the basics and build up the network needed for a large and scalable network.

Scalability is the heart of this, because life does change – your company grows, technology pushes you from SD to HD to UHD etc. So you need to build scalability in from the beginning. Getting this right comes down to choosing the right hardware and having the right architecture.

Gerard looks at switch architecture and bandwidth both in the switch and of the network cables. He then looks towards ‘hub and spoke’ Vs monolithic switch design. What are the pros and cons to each and which is right for you?

SDN – Software Defined Networking – is also a key ingredient in such a network. This is where the routing decisions of the switch infrastructure is taken out of the switches because they have automatic and blinkered algorithms and takes it to a server which has a complete overview of the whole system. For a broadcaster who deals with critical signal chains – this is usually the best approach to give determinism and safety to the network.

PTP – Precision Time Protocol – provides the foundation of the 2110 standard and is therefore very important to studio installations being used to replace black and burst. What are the best ways to distribute this and how can you deal with redundancy?

These topics and more are all covered at this IP Showcase presentation from IBC 2018.

Watch now!

Speaker

Gerard Phillips Gerard Phillips
Systems Engineer,
Arista Networks

Webinar: Network Timing in an IP Infrastructure


Time: 08:00 & 16:00 GMT, 20th February 2019

Peter Schut is back in the sixth webinar in Axon’s Broadcast IP 101 series, this time examining timing, namely PTP, for professional essence-over-IP systems such as based on SMPTE ST 2110.

Timing needs to be rock solid in studio settings where many signals are mixed together, so your PTP system needs to be too. SMPTE 2059-2 standardises the use of PTP timecode (IEEE 1588) in broadcast. It’s important to understand how master clocks and slave clocks work, plus there is talk of ‘transparent’ and ‘boundary’ clocks in switches. Getting the architecture right is key remembering that one important different between IP timekeeping and black and burst time keeping is that the communication is two-way.

Peter gives us the benefit of his experience and insight into getting timing right in two sessions, one morning, one evening.

Register now!

Speaker

Peter Schut Peter Schut
CTO
Axon

Video: AES67 Open Media Standard for Pro-Audio Networks

AES67 is a method of sending audio over IP which was standardised by the Audio Engineering Society as a way of sending uncompressed video over networks between equipment. It’s become widespread and is part of SMPTE’s professional essences-over-IP standards suite, ST 2110.

Here, Conrad Bebbington gives us an introduction to AES67 explaining why AES67 exists and what it tries to achieve. Conrad then goes on to look at interoperability with other competing standards like Dante. After going into some implementation details, importantly, the video then looks the ‘Session Description Protocol’, SDP, and ‘Session Initialisation Protocol’, SIP which are important parts of how AES67 works.

Other topics covered are:

  • Packetisation – how much audio is in a packet, number of channels etc.
  • Synchronisation – using PTP
  • What are SDP and SIP and how are they used
  • Use of IGMP multicast
  • Implementation availability in open source software

Watch now!

For a more in-depth look at AES67, watch this video

Speakers

Conrad Bebbington Conrad Bebbington
Software Engineer,
Cisco

Video: Enhanced Redundancy of ST 2059-2 Time Transfer over ST 2022-7 Redundant Networks

We’re all starting to get the hang of the basics: that PTP is the new Black and Burst, that we still need sync to make studios work and that PTP (IEEE1588) is standardised under ST 2059 for use in the broadcast industry. So given its importance, how can we make it redundant?

Thomas Kernen from Mellanox and Chair within the STMPE standards community takes about his real-lift work on implementing PTP with an eye on redundancy methods

Thomas covers the following and more:

  • Whether 2022-7 works for PTP
  • BMCA Redundancy Model
  • Multiple Grand master use
  • Adjusting to dynamic variations in timing feeds
  • IEEE 1588 v2.1
  • Timing Differences in basic networks

Speakers

Thomas Kernen Thomas Kernen
Staff Software Architect, Mellanox Technologies
Co-chair SMPTE 32NF Network Facilities Technology Committee