A multiservice interactive network – the facilitator for communication
karin.nygardskalman@acreo.se
At the Acreo test bed 170 test pilots (contracted end-users) are testing the new technique in a real environment, and give their opinion of the functionality of new solutions and services. The test pilots constitute a representative picture of society and live in properties in the country side as well as in detached houses and apartments in a city environment.
The future broadband network is a multiservice interactive network. The first step is ”triple play” i.e. a combination of Internet, Telephony and TV- distribution, all based on IP transport. The challenge is that many of the new services put new demands on the broadband network compared with today’s best effort Internet. Examples are: real time requirements for video, high availability and reliability for telephony, network security for many enterprise services. What needs to be investigated is what requirements the future services will put on the network in order to get a future proof implementation.
The goal of the Acreo test bed is to implement a limited number of network-demanding advanced services that create different requirements and quality aspects of the broadband network. In the test bed we can check how the network performance affects the quality of the different services in order to find out how to specify the future network. For that reason, services based on best effort Internet are not part of this project.
Test pilots
Today we have 170 testpilots in the test bed, over the next two year there may be a small increase of testpilots. Since it is not the goal of the project to find out the attractiveness of different services, the number of testpilots can be limited. The number of testpilots will be determined by the need to test aspects like quality, scalability and flexibility.
Acreo is not a service development organization and needs to find partners both from private, public and research sectors in order to create these services. The type of services selected is based on how they expand the service space from network requirement perspective. In order to understand the market they are chosen from different sectors: entertainment, healthcare, culture & learning, and enterprise. The services are tested and evaluated from quality perspective in our test bed in Hudiksvall and in Stockholm.
The testpilots have been offered IP-TV, IP-Radio, TV on demand, IP-Telephony and Internet since the middle of 2004.
The broadband network provides possibilities for interactivity at a relatively low cost which has not been possible before, Acreo has measured the traffic load created by the different services and the quality of service in the network. Any conclusions are yet too early to draw, but we have seen some trends. One of these is that you may see more traffic coming out from a broadband island than coming in, when the possibility is there.
All the testpilots were interviewed before they received any equipment. This was done in order to get the starting values correct and to understand the perception of the testpilots.
In the diagram presented on the next page, it is seen that all testpilots, as well as the average Swede, regard TV as the most important media for news and entertainment. The Internet is less important, as well as radio and newspapers. This fact is important when developing new services: Should they be provided through the TV or the PC? Looking at the elderly: How will the service be provided to them? Depending on the answer a lot of technical and standardization questions have to be solved.
TV as the Broadband terminal
Part of the open network concept, which is the basis for our work in the Acreo test bed, assumes that all citizens are potentially active end-users. Projects like the 24-hours authority assume that the network has full penetration to all possible end-users. Broadband connections to each and every citizen is the basis for cost effective and secure communication with public institutions (the tax office, public registration, building permits, hospitals, service homes, local TV-channels, etc.) and possibly also with private organizations using high quality video connections. This is especially important when the broadband network is used as the basis for creating possibilities for older people and handicapped people to stay in their private homes longer than it is the case today. This is only possible if there is a readily available broadband terminal in each household, today the TV-set is the most likely basis for the private home connecting to the broadband network. Many potential end-users are not interested in operating or investing in a PC. Private end-user should be supplied with a fully developed easy-to-use interface for TV access to the triple play services (TV and video, telephony and browsing on the Internet). In this scenario using the TV-set will be used to connect to public authorities and institutions.
Video on demand
An interesting service provided to the testpilots is IP-TV and video on demand. Some of the lessons learned in distributing IP-TV are the importance of the metro and access network. The network must not cause any jitter or delay effects of the signal, which could cause the football players to stop and freeze when they are scoring goal. Another bottleneck in the TV distribution is the set top boxes used to convert the IP signal. There are no standards specifying the technical parameters in these boxes today, which means you might have to use different set top boxes for different IP-TV providers.
The testpilots are very pleased with the IP-TV service they have. There are 90 testpilots provided with 30 –40 different channels. They use an average of 60 Mb/s and a peak at 100 Mbit/s, equivalent to 12 channels used in the network all the time, and 20 channels as a maximum. Some testpilots ask for set top boxes with storage possibilities. (The industrial partners in the test bed will have new boxes with storage possibilities early in 2005, which could be tested.)
New services
The next services to be tested in the test bed are:
- HDTV: This service is the most bandwidth consuming service in the future broadband network and will define the necessary access speed to the end user.
- Interactive high quality video telephony for healthcare, distance learning etc.
- IP based VPN as integrated part of the multiservice broadband network. Mainly for security reasons, the enterprise sector today uses dedicated network for their communication. Creating VPN as an integral part of the network will offer a much more cost efficient and flexible solution but it puts more strict requirements on the network.
- Peer-to-peer and local multimedia services between and inside broadband islands: Broadband network has a potential to strengthen the local information between individuals and local communities and in that way create new social interaction and strengthen the democracy.
- Gridbased network: Together with other research networks (NREN) it is possible to create a future oriented broadband network that allows high capacity computing based on sharing power between computers connected with high capacity links.
In Acreo we have key competence in IP networking and standards bringing Sweden on the world map of these activities. The test bed will be a driving force to evaluate and impact new network services and its standard.
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Comments:
TV is considered to be the most important media for both news and entertainment, and Internet the least important.
– So what can be done to make Internet a more important channel for news and entertainment?
There’s a constant discussion on how to increase Internet usage and overcome the “digital divide”. Some claim that a focus on developing services for the broadband net is the right way, and others that we can’t develop services before we have the right infrastructure to distribute them.
– So what should be the focus? Building nets or developing services? Maybe we just need the right balance between the two.
Two facts are indisputable in our studies:
The use of Internet increases and changes dramatically when a user goes from a dial-up connection to broadband. Broadband is a prerequisite for an increase in Internet usage.
TV is by far the most important media for both entertainment and news.
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Facts: Network ”Gavlegarden”
The network has 10000 sockets, about 50% of them
Active (residential users).
All users have Fast Ethernet (100 Mbit/s). However, by traffic shaping each user is limited to 6 Mbit/s in both directions.
Some results:
- Upstream traffic is larger than downstream.
- Downstream varies with a factor of three during 24h
(peak 220M, low 70 Mbit/s).
- Upstream traffic variation is less (since this traffic is initiated from users spread over several timelines? Downstream traffics initiated by the end users in the network).
- Downstream peak hours: approx. 17-01