Networking IPMX Traffic

Marc Levy, Chief Technical Officer, Macnica

Integrated Systems Europe (ISE)

RAI Amsterdam, Room G110
February, 11th 2020.

Referenc System Architecture Guide | April 2017

Agenda

• High level view of IPMX Traffic

• Switch Management
• IPMX Traffic vs ST2110 Broadcast traffic
• IPMX – Unicast + Multicast compared
• IPMX Networks for Example Use Cases
• Graceful Degradation
• Network Resiliancy Considerations
• Conclusions
• Questions
IPMX Bandwidth Utilization

BANDWIDTH USAGE
8.00E+08

7.00E+08

6.00E+08

5.00E+08

4.00E+08

3.00E+08

2.00E+08

1.00E+08

0.00E+00
Video Audio Other
IPMX Traffic

• Video Traffic – MOST DEMANDING!!!

• Frame-based mezzanine light compression
• High Bandwidth – assume a max of at least 750 Mbps (75% of 1G pipe)
• UDP traffic (RTP is layered above UDP) – no retries, no guaranteed packet
transmission
• Forward Error Correction – not required or part of the standard
• Error concealment – depends on implementation, may affect latency
• Error concealment is not Error Correction – its lossy
• Error tolerance – depends on implementation, this is a challenging problem.
• Traffic Shaping – variable. Depends on hardware vs software sources,
encoding implementation. No assumption on traffic synchronization between
nodes can be made.
• Expect substantial ordered and out of order jitter at source, additional network jitter.
IPMX Audio

• Typically 48 KHz, 24-bit LPCM traffic, up to 8 channels. Total audio

bandwidth 9.2 Mbps. That’s around 1.2% of the video bandwidth
• NOTE: Higher sampling rates are possible
• Similar to video – RTP over UDP
• Concealment is difficult (audio corruption is disturbing)
• Error tolerance is good – receivers can easily recover
• Traffic shaping is more consistent due to low bandwidth, jitter as a
percentage of packet spacing is relatively low.
Other Traffic - PTP

• PTP is part of ST2110, and IPMX – generates synchronized timer

across all nodes
• Each node communicates with a Grand Master
• Some switches have dedicated features to support PTP
• Transparent Mode – each switch measures packet latency of required PTP packets, and
adds latency value to a packet field.
• Boundary Mode – switch acts as a PTP slave to the Grand Master, and a master to other
switch nodes. Supports scalability
• PTP used to synchronize playout time across nodes
• PTP timer can be used to generate synchronized clocks across nodes
• The PTP support requirement may be a sticking point for some use
cases – PTP can still be used for alignment, may not be good enough
for video clock sync.
Other Traffic – ANC / USB / Control

• ANC is low bandwidth traffic synchronized with other media traffic

• Generally easy to conceal errors, not difficult to deal with
• USB Traffic – generally for Human Interface Devices (HID), bi-
directional traffic. Trade-off between latency and error tolerance (TCP
vs UDP)
• Control traffic (NMOS IS Restful API traffic / other control / web GUI)
• Relatively low bandwidth TCP traffic
• May set up events that are synchronized with the media, so can be time
sensitive traffic
• Control traffic itself is not synchronized with media traffic
IPMX Traffic vs ST2110 Broadcast Traffic

ST2110 Broadcast IPMX

Media genlocked (synchronized) at the source Media not aligned or synchronized

Strict traffic shaping rules (ST2110-21) require Designed to be compatible with a wide range of
hardware or high performance software sources hardware and software sources with loose traffic
shaping requirements.
Uncompressed video is the most common – but Frame-based mezzanine compression is required –
light mezzanine compression is an option. All other video is more compressed than for Broadcast
media is uncompressed. ST2110.
Require high-end enterprise class switches with PTP Switch requirements depend on use case, from low-
protocol support. Switch vendors qualified their end unmanaged consumer switches to enterprise
products in the ST2110 interops. class switches.
Immunity to switch errors improved through Focus on error concealment, recovery from losses,
seamless redundancy switching. and graceful degradation.
Switches are generally media only Switches may be media only or converged
Switch Management

• Bandwidth Management
• The bandwidth of each flow is known
• The network can be designed for non-blocking operation across multiple
switches
• Higher level software (IS-06 / Netconfig) can manage port allocation and
bandwidth
• Bandwidth for media flows is predictable, and needs to be guaranteed
• Bandwidth Management or non-blocking flows are needed
• Traffic Policing
• Switch ensures flows and ports behave correctly – they don’t exceed their
expected bandwidth through rate control
• Switch needs to support Traffic Policing for secure networks when bw
management is used.
IPMX – Unicast vs Multicast

Unicast Multicast

Simple switch buffer management – packet is High bandwidth multicasting does best with sparse-
written once to the buffer, read once. mode protocol independent multicasting (PIM-SM).
This is a relatively complex algorithm.
Easy to manage, unmanaged switches work fine. Management is more complex.

Very good non-blocking performance. Even Can provide very good performance if all the
consumer switches have enough bandwidth for switches in the network support the required
non-blocking full bandwidth connections on all multicast algorithms – requires higher end switches
ports. and more management.
Latency is low and accumulates linearly across Each switch in the path is effectively a processing
switches. node, so latency less predictable.
Example Use Case – small Unicast media-
only network
Example Use Case – small Unicast media-
only network
• Examples:
• Small display wall
• Home / small business KVM or Gaming
• Single switch, each source talks to one sink
• Inexpensive non-blocking 1G unmanaged switch would suffice
• If number of ports grow beyond what a single switch can support (typically 48
– 24 sources, 24 sinks), the network is no longer in this category
Example Use Case – large unicast media
only network
Example Use Case – large unicast media
only network
• Examples:
• Large display wall
• Enterprise KVM or Gaming
• Multiple switches, each source talks to one sink
• Small-business (SMB) or enterprise 1G managed switches with high
bandwidth uplink
• Enterprise high-bandwidth managed Top of Rack switch
Example Use Case – Multicast Media Only
network
Example Use Case – Multicast Media Only
network
• Examples:
• Corporate Events / concerts / Houses of Worship / College campuses
• Live sports
• Enterprise KVM with live screen sharing
• May be a single switch (for small events) or multiple switches
• Enterprise switches with high level management are required
• Significant IT knowledge is required to manage and deploy these
networks
• Synchronization accuracy may require switches that support PTP
Example Use Case – Converged Network
Example Use Case – Converged Network

• Examples:
• Enterprise events / conferencing / KVM
• Other file-based (general office / internet / video) using the same network
• This is a challenging network management problem, but:
• Cost of re-cabling is very high compared to switch upgrade cost
• High-end enterprise switches, combined with IPMX bandwidths, are up to the
task
• IT expertise is available in these environments
• Converged networks allow for centralized maintenance, network security, and
scalability – so there is a strong motivation.
Graceful Degradation

• Why degrade gracefully?

• Some functionality is usually better than no functionality (but not always)…
• Network management can be complex, its easier to bring up a system with a
degraded network than no connectivity
• Video quality is poor, but all the screens are up!
• The latency of my gaming has gone up, and the video isn’t smooth – is someone
downloading a big file?
• Video quality went down on a multicast stream – are limits and permissions set up right?
• Much of the underlying technology needed for graceful degradation is
required for network status monitoring
Graceful Degradation

• Examples of graceful degradation:

• Frame sync mode – last good frame is played. Lost packets result in more
replayed frames, so video can become jumpy.
• Can be implemented at the playout node without participation from the source
• May not be graceful – with compressed video and no drop in source bandwidth, the
number of complete received video frames may drop to 0 very quickly.
• Variable Frame Rate – source can drop frame rate (and therefore bandwidth)
if network drops are occurring at sinks.
• Degradation is graceful
• Latency goes up – not suitable if low latency is a requirement
Graceful Degradation

• Examples of graceful degradation:

• Adjust compression ratio – source reduces number of bits per pixel (and
therefore bandwidth) if network drops are occurring at the sink
• Degradation is graceful
• Latency is not affected
• Applications with high quality video requirements (like KVM) may not tolerate video
quality degradation
• Adjust resolution – source changes its video resolution to reduce bandwidth
• This is a lossy solution – the source must force a switch to a lower bandwidth (for
example, forcing a Hot Plug event + new EDID for HDMI)
• Latency not affected
• Video quality (in terms of accuracy / absence of compression artifacts) is not affected
Graceful Degradation

Method Encoder Decoder Switch BW Latency Resolution Img Quality

Frame Sync NO YES Same Increased Same Same

Variable YES YES Lower Increased Same Same

Frame Rate
Compression YES NO Lower Same Same Lower
Ratio
Reduce YES NO Lower Same Lower Same
Resolution
Network Resiliancy of IPMX End Points

• As IPMX becomes a standard, interoperability of implementations will

be tested and certified.
• Can network resiliency be certified or characterized? More difficult…
• What to look for?
• Sources
• Good traffic shaping
• Graceful degradation features if required
• Sinks
• Good suite of network status monitoring features - Packet loss per stream, measure
network NRO (Non-Re-Ordering) and RO (Re-ordering) jitter
• Flexible buffering solution - variable depth, frame sync, packet reordering
• Support for graceful degradation features
Conclusions

• The IP network itself is a critical part of any networked media system

• The right switched network for the job depends on the use case
• Broadcast ST2110 is the “gold standard” – but gold is expensive!
• Managing the switched networks is a complex task, and networked live media
will add more complexity
• PTP may be challenging! Compromises or creative solutions may be needed.
• The end point has its role to play
• Clean sources help
• Resilient sinks are critical
• Graceful degradation is a viable compromise
QUESTIONS?

Referenc System Architecture Guide | April 2017