IPTV Test and Measurement Best Practices

The use of Test and Measurement (T&M) in IPTV service rollouts can be divided into two broad categories: service assurance and performance analysis. Performance Analysis is concerned with analyzing a pre-operational IPTV setup in the lab or in the field. Service Assurance on the other hand is primarily concerned with assuring IPTV service quality in a live operational environment. This paper focuses on providing a pragmatic set of test and measurement guidelines that can be implemented on a live operational IPTV service for the purposes of service assurance. The audience is engineers, operations, and operations managers concerned with providing quality IPTV experience over a controlled IP Network. While, the recommendations here are generally applicable to any IPTV system, specific middleware implementations have unique requirements.