European Advanced Networking Test Center selected Spirent testing solutions to analyze Cisco Systems' IPTV infrastructure in a test commissioned by Light Reading. Spirent's Global Services team collaborated with EANTC to conduct an independent test of Cisco Systems IPTV infrastructure to verify an end-to-end IPTV and triple-play solution focusing on the network service requirements of broadcast TV and video-on-demand applications.

For this event, Spirent supplied Spirent TestCenter, Spirent Video Quality Test System and Spirent GEM Ethernet Network and Impairment Emulator. In addition to test equipment, Spirent provided a three-person engineering support team for the pre-staging and the intense two-week period of formal testing. The Spirent Professional Services team collaborated with EANTC to create the test scripts to run the test. With engineering support and equipment, Spirent offered load generators for emulation of 120 DSLAMs plus 65 service ports (GigE and 10GigE), performed video quality measurements, and conducted impairment generation for the duration of the test.

"IPTV is highly complex and requires a different, more holistic focus in implementation and testing than traditional broadband access technologies," said Carsten Rossenhovel, managing director of EANTC. "We found that Spirent was a great testing partner for IPTV solutions and support services, and together we put Cisco's network design under a rigorous test routine."

Covering four main areas that included quality of service, massive scalability of broadcast services, high availability of all services and user experience during high network load conditions, this test event exposed the realities of IPTV service deployment and need for thorough testing before the service goes live. Spirent's test systems enabled EANTC to analyze QoS from the perspective of the user, often referred to as quality of experience, and by the handling of preferential services by the network including network resource allocation in the case of limited resources. Furthermore, with Spirent TestCenter the test was able to identify small sub-parts-per-million loss in all the data, and to analyze the associated flows in detail, identifying the less than 0.00002 percent packet loss in IPTV multicast service.

"Testing of IPTV networks and service can no longer be about fixing problems when they arise," said Neil Anderson, vice president, Global Services, Spirent Communications. "Spirent is helping our customers identify potential issues before going live, making testing a strategic advantage for them."