FEATURE

Zelfgemaakte IPTV

TV van een netwerk

De basisbeginselen van datatransmissie in een netwerk TCP, UDP en RTP Wat betekent dat? Een netwerk gebruiken Netwerkkabels maken alle andere kabels overbodig 1000 Mb aanbevolen voor betrouwbaar gebruik

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FEATURE

Selfmade IPTV

Vitor Martins Augusto

You can find quite a bit of information on IPTV in the Internet but its often not all that easy to understand since it can be very long-winded and complicated and assumes the reader has some basic knowledge. One reason for the difficulty in getting started in this field is that most of the material doesnt have TV installers in mind but rather is more geared towards network specialists and IT administrators; two worlds bump into each other here. Our goal is to save our TELE-audiovision readers some time and describe the more important points. Taking the leap into the IPTV world is made complicated by these keywords: TCP, UDP, RTP, Multicasting and Unicasting. But none of these are really earth-shattering. Almost everyone today that uses a computer or tablet to get to the Internet knows what TCP is. This network protocol regulates the communication between the various computers. Data is sent in small packets from the senders computer to the recipients computer. To prevent the loss of a packet, it contains the address of the transmitter and the receiver. The packet also includes a checksum that is calculated from the data it contains. This makes it possible to determine if the packet arrives correctly and undamaged. The best thing about TCP is that the individual packets are transmitted until a confirmation is sent back by the receiver. If this is the case, the transmitter can then forget about the correctly received data. Otherwise, the packet would be retransmitted as often as needed until a reception confirmation is sent back. The order in which the individual data packets are received is not important they will be placed in the proper order by the receiver. You can look at TCP as an amateur radio communication between two Hams: the first Ham transmits a lengthy message and after each sentence waits for the second Ham to signal that he received the message by saying Roger. If he didnt understand it the first time,

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1. Schematics of a MULTICAST transmission. The server sends one stream to the switch. The transmission is then forwarded to all connected devices. 2. Schematics of a UNICAST transmission. The server sends one stream to the switch, but this time the stream is only forwarded to one specific client. Notice how the remaining ports are fully available for other communications. 3. Analogy of UDP: one transmitter sends information, regardless of how many listeners there are. Also, there is no feedback to the transmitter. If a listener misses a part or if he cannot correctly receive the transmission, there is nothing to do about it the transmitter will never know! 4. Analogy of TCP: one transmitter sends information to one listener. The reception of every sentence has to be confirmed by the listener. If he missed the sentence or if he did not understand it clearly, the transmitter will send the sentence again.

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the first Ham repeats the transmission. This protocol is ideal for data transmissions; it guarantees that the data arrives correctly and in one piece. For live video and/or audio transmissions this protocol is not as ideally suited. There are two problems: 1) The video (or audio) has to arrive

in the correct order. What good would it do if the third frame, for example, is lost and after the seventh frame the whole thing is repeated? 2) The checksum process is redundant. If the image data of a frame doesnt arrive correctly, it would be too late the retransmit that frame.

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Because of these reasons the UDP protocol is much better suited for live transmissions of audio and video. In this case were dealing with a greatly simplified protocol in that the data packets are sent without a

checksum. Aside from that, the transmitter is not looking for any kind of return signal from the receiver. And in Multicast mode the transmitter really doesnt care whos on the receiving end. Analog to UDP could be

compared to a radio broadcast: the DJ reads the news aloud and has no idea whos listening, no idea how good the reception is and no idea if the listener understood everything that was said. Unlike TCP, with UDP you

1. DekTec DTE-3137 in action. Amazing how much performance has been fitted in such a small device yet, it can inject a complete DVB-S/S2 transponder into the network. 2. In order to be able to work with IPTV, we had to get ourselves a gigabit switch. These are very cheap now, so there is no excuse to keep struggling with 100MBPS technology. 3. The Dexing NDS3975 in action: it is receiving three transponders (one from its internal tuner,

one from the Topreal TP-1011 through ASI and one from the DekTec DTE-3137 through IP). It then multiplexes a new transponder which is output through ASI and IP (on a different IP). Amazing! 4. This picture shows one clear advantage of using only IPTV within a studio or head-end station: notice the blue network cable this single cable is enough to transport all required information. Actually, all other cables could be removed (except for the LNB-cable, in case you want to use the internal tuner).

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should make sure there is a reliable network connection between the transmitter and receiver, otherwise the broadcast wont be reliable. RTP on the other hand is not a fundamental protocol like TCP or UDP. On the contrary, RTP is a protocol layer based on UDP. This means that as a basis UDP is always used for RTP. RTP offers a number of functions that greatly improve live audio and video transmissions: Data identification Time stamps for audio/ video synchronization Maintaining the order of MPEG frames Special handling of MPEG key frames This just goes to show that RTP should be used whenever all the devices involved support this protocol. With Multicasting an audio/video stream is simply transmitted without any particular receiver in mind. This transmission is routed to all users by the network and its up to the users to decide if they want to receive it or not. Obviously this is extremely practical if more than one user wants to receive the same stream. As many users as desired can tune in without the need for additional network band-

1. Wireshark capturing the network traffic. Beware that lots of data is captured during a IPTV broadcast. You should only capture data for some seconds, otherwise it will take ages to process all captured packets. 2. After capturing the network traffic for a short period, there are many analysis tools available within Wireshark. This picture shows where the traffic originated. It can be clearly seen that the devices with IP-address 192.168.1.149 and 192.168.1.210 generated a huge amount of traffic. Notice the destination IP: they are multicasting IPs 3. All captured packets can be analyzed individually and the contents can be viewed, while the header is shown in a more detailed way.

width between the transmitter and the switch. Since the switch has to process numerous data packets, it could very quickly become overloaded when dealing with a cheap SOHO product (Small Office, Home Office) while at the same

time additional data is exchanged between users. If, for example, User 2 doesnt want to take part in Multicasting and would rather send a large file to User 3, it could happen that the flow of this data transmission is reduced to a snails pace or it

might not function at all. To utilize Multicasting, with regard to the IP destination address it would be good enough to configure using any IP address from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255. This address range would be used by all of the Multicast de-

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4. This graph shows the bandwidth during the captured transmission. Interestingly, the bandwidth is not constant, when displayed in millisecond interval. 5. This graph shows the bandwidth of the same transmission, but as Bits/ second. With just two transponders fed into the network, a 100MBPS switch is working at its limit. In fact, we tried to use a 100MBPS switch and it froze after a few seconds. A regular operation was only possible using a 1000MBPS switch. 6. Using DekTecs StreamXpert software, which already has been tested in TELE-satellite 11-12/2012, together with the professional DekTec DTE-3137 receiver, one has much more feedback about the IPTV broadcast. Notice the lower left corner: a graph shows continuously the occupied network bandwidth. 7. StreamXpert can show all possible information about the streamed transponder, including the programme clock reference (PCR), required for correct synchronization of audio and video. This allows editing the timestamps in order to compensate for any detected errors.

vices. Note that Multicast is not only used for IPTV; it is used whenever the same data needs to be sent to multiple computers, such as, when multiple computers need to be installed all at the same time via a network. Thats how IT professionals, for example, in universities or large companys install an operating system on hundreds of computers all at once. With Unicasting however, the stream - unlike Multicasting - is

sent to one specific receiver. This has the advantage of not loading down the network for all the remaining users allowing data traffic to function normally. The data is routed in the switch between the inputs of the servers and the users while the remaining switch ports remain free. The disadvantage is the fact that for every additional user the stream would have to be individually retransmitted. In no time at all the network bandwidth

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8. Despite having a perfect picture, StreamXpert indicates some errors in PAT and PMT. Interestingly; these were already present in the original DVB-S stream 9. Useful information provided by StreamXpert: the grid view, where all active services within the stream are mapped according to their PID. 10. Meanwhile, we monitor our Dexing NDS3975 with the SnmpNMS management software. This application gives us remote access to the internals of this integrated professional receiver. 11. On the Mux-tab, we can specify which channels of the three different incoming transponders (through the internal tuner, ASI-in and IPTV) we want to output.

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would reach its capacity and its especially the connection from the server to the switch that would need to withstand enormous amounts of data. The question often arises if IPTV should be operated

at 100MBPS or would it be better at 1000MBPS (also referred to as 1GBPS or 1GBit/s). Its not an easy answer; it depends ultimately on how you want to use IPTV and the network.

When different receivers will only route single transponders to one or more multiplexers, then for the most part a 100MBPS network would suffice. Quite often professional receivers only oper-

ate via a 100MBPS interface; in view of the fact that the bandwidth of common DVBS/S2 transponders transport data on average at 50MBPS, this would be sufficient. All the IPTV receivers we know of also operate on a 100MBPS network interface. Why then would you want to upgrade to a 1000MBPS infrastructure? The simplest explanation is this: if cars could only drive at 55 MPH, then in principle single-lane roads would be good enough. But if there are a large number of cars all on the road at the same time, then a multilane highway would be much better even though the cars would be moving no faster than 55 MPH. A 100MBPS switch is designed for this speed and would fall to its knees if all the ports would suddenly demand high data transfer rates at the same time. A 1000MBPS switch is

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simply able to handle much more data internally. If you want to provide IPTV to a community, a hotel or a home where the network would be used for other services (Internet, File sharing, VoIP, etc.), then we definitely would recommend a 1000MBPS network. In todays day and age this is considered standard and upgrading from a 100MBPS network to a 1000MBPS network should not really present any problems if the

cables already in place are CAT-5e or CAT-6 types. If this isnt the case, the existing cable should be replaced with CAT-6 cable. The switches would also have to be updated and you should make sure that the network adapter on older computers can also handle 1000MBPS. To get an overview of the network, it would pay to install a Network Monitoring Program, also called a Network Sniffer. These programs log all packets that

are sent on a network. In order for this to be technically possible, special software, known as WinPcap, needs to be installed. WinPcap places the computers network card in promiscuous mode in which the network card accepts all packets, not just those that are specifically meant for that computer, but all of them. Additionally, WinPcap provides an interface for applications to gain access to these data packets.

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The most well-known and most popular network monitoring program is Wireshark. The basic requirement is WinPcap and with that all of the data traffic can be logged. In this way its easy to recognize which IP addresses from which computers are requesting which data packets. Its also easy to identify if network multicasting is in use, how much bandwidth is being used, etc. And the good news? Both WinPcap and Wireshark are free. Whether in a studio or in a headend, IPTV has established itself as an omnipresent solution for the distribution of audio and video signals. There are many advantages regardless if IPTV is used for the internal distribution in a headend or for the direct feed to an end user. Just the fact alone that all data can be sent over a single cable makes it worth utilizing this technology.
12. To check our IPTV streams within the network, we use VLC. 13. TSReader Professional is an excellent tool when it comes to analyze transponder streams. Instead of just rendering the channel, TSReader shows all PIDs and their respective bandwidth.

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