Case Study: Resilient Backbone Design for IPTV Services

ABSTRACT This paper presents a case study of designing resilient back- bone network for supporting IPTV services within a single network provider. We flrst introduce the architecture and the characteristics of IPTV tra‐c. We then explore the design space in terms of IP versus optical technologies, hub- and-spoke versus meshed service layer topology, dual-homed versus ring access, use of multicast, routing, and fast failure restoration. From this design space, we propose a number of design instances and evaluate them according to the cap- ital expense they incur. We demonstrate signiflcant beneflts of multicast in reducing capital expense for broadcast TV, illustrate that our particular switched optical network de- sign requires less capital than the IP based designs, and show that ring access to the backbone is more attractive for broadcast TV, while dual-homed access being more attrac- tive if we have high volume of realtime Video on Demand (VoD) tra‐c. Categories and Subject Descriptors