Video on Demand performance management

VoD creates complex performance engineering challenges

Large-scale Video on Demand (VoD) systems create complex performance engineering challenges. A good experience for an individual user results from a consistent time to first frame, high audio and video quality, good response to key presses, and a lack of buffering and the resulting ‘circle of death’.

The users collectively place a highly dynamic load on a network as they select channels and skip content. Meanwhile, the network supply conditions may also vary rapidly. Indeed, the VoD service may be only one of several services that a broadband operator is offering and concurrently operating. Despite this complexity, the VoD supplier and the operator have to provisioning and manage the network resources to assure the service quality.

Ask yourself these questions

• Is there an erratic performance for some users at peak times?
• Are the internal engineering metrics as well as the external customer satisfaction metrics may be unsatisfactory?
• Is it difficult to isolate the source of transient performance problems?
• Are problems having a detrimental effect on the the relationship with your operator?

We can help you run your VoD system with confidence

By using our scientific approach to isolating issues, you can know the feasibility of resolution of performance issues in advance of spending money. This avoids wasted expenditure on capacity upgrades or CPE replacement that fail to resolve the underlying performance issues.

By modelling systems in advance, we can help you to minimise the costs and risks of supporting growing functional and performance needs. We can help you to target infrastructure upgrades only where they are needed, and know exactly when CPE replacement is required.

To find an answer to these questions and how network performance science will help with your VoD performance management, please see the Video on Demand performance management brochure or get in touch.