Providius is a Canadian Software development company providing monitoring and visulisation technologies for your SMPTE2110 IP Broadcast network infrastructure. Based just outside of Toronto, Providius has provided Australian broadcasters via PAT, with networking analysis tools since 2018. Providius offers the BMG (Broadcast Monitoring Gateway) and NVRT (Network Visualisation & Realtime Telemetary) software suits to eliminate the ‘finger pointing’ between broadcast & IT departments when it comes to fault finding in an IP broadcast network. If you are running a ST2110 network, let PAT show you how you can take charge of your network analysis and monitor a wide variety of media flows.

Broadcast Monitoring Gateway (BMG):
The exponential growth of IP based media networks has allowed both broadcasters and service providers to scale operations faster than ever. Consumers are now being offered the luxury of watching any content, anywhere and at any time, and expect the highest level of service without compromise.

This unification between IP networks and streaming media does present its own set of challenges to ensure that media is originated, processed and delivered in compliance. IP flows can frequently suffer from packet loss, jitter, encoding impairments and transport violations to name a few.

Having the right monitoring and visualization technologies in place to proactively identify impairments and service disruption is imperative to the success of the operation. Providius has engineered the Broadcast Monitoring Gateway (BMG) high density analysis platform as the 24/7 eyes and ears of both your video service and delivery network.

The Broadcast Monitoring can acquire, decode, and analyze a wide variety of media flows across multiple high-capacity IP interfaces (up to 100Gb/s) including:

  • Uncompressed Production Formats
  • Compressed Formats
  • Audio Formats
  • OTT/ABR Formats

SMPTE 2110 (all parts), 2022-6/-7
MPEG-2 TS, H.264, HEVC, JXS, NDI*
MP1-L1, AAC, HE-AAC, A-52, AES67, RAVENNA HLS

The BMG incorporates the essential analysis and decoding processing necessary to alert the operation tiers of service and packet transport related impairments for production, linear and adaptive bitrate (ABR) defined services. At the heart of the BMG, packets are processed for service compliance with also the unique ability to analyze the conditions of the delivery network. This dual focussed analysis approach provides a clear demarcation between video delivery and video processing thereby drastically reducing the mean time to repair (MTTR) and eliminating finger pointing between transport and processing departments.

Features & Benefits

  • precision software analysis
  • simultaneously monitor multiple media types
  • monitoring by exception and mosaic
  • runs on COTS/VM compute platforms
  • remote access client stations
  • control system integration / NMOS

Network Visualisation & Realtime Telemetry (NVRT)

The professional broadcast industry is embracing IP-based infrastructures and data transport at a rapid pace. Leveraging IP technologies ensures that operations are highly future proofed in terms of scale, geographic reach, and flexibility. What has been missing so far is a software solution to monitor the switch network and the media flows that traverse them. A solution that passively analyzes both the IT and the broadcast side of your operation in realtime. Enter the NVRT, Network Monitoring & Realtime Telemetry, the marriage of network telemetry and deep media packet inspection on a single display.

The Providius Network Visualization & Realtime Telemetry Dashboard (aka NVRT) is a vendor agnostic enterprise software suite designed to provide full network and media visibility across an all-IP, or hybrid IP-SDI, LAN/WAN broadcast infrastructure.

Use NVRT to answer any of the following questions and more …

  • Do want to know what’s connected to your network in realtime?
  • Do you need to trace a media / PTP flow across the network?
  • Do you need to confirm media flows are routed on the switch accurately?
  • Do you want to track bandwidth utilization and flow metrics?
  • Do you want to represent your network routes as an XY matrix?
  • Do you need a PTP topology and confirm PTP is locked where expected?
  • Do you need to differentiate between a stream issue and a networking issue?

Based on Linux, this software-defined networking solution incorporates a powerful and robust database to document and rapidly search any aspect of the operation—from a simple cable ID number to seeking the journey of a multicast across an infrastructure LAN or transnational multi-hop WAN. By leveraging a vast library of software communication protocols, the system automatically interrogates live and dormant path connections to create the most intuitive and data rich presentation layers of a COTS-hybrid infrastructure. With its award-winning features, NVRT supports a wide range on network protocols to build up rich graphic representations of the network infrastructure. These automated processes dynamically document the interconnected network design in real-time. NVRT users have a zero-footprint installation: NVRT can be deployed on-prem, private or public cloud, VM / bare-metal server environments, and accessible from a browser or mobile device.

Features & Benefits

  • Lightweight software for VM / bare-metal with multi-client seat dashboards
  • Auto Discovery of network assets & auto-mapping topology in realtime
  • Frequently used with Cisco, Arista, Netgear* and Aruba* networks
  • Realtime inventory of assets
  • Live event logging. Receive alerts from endpoints including the switch fabric
  • Flow path tracing. Search for a multicast and instantly tracks its path across the network
  • PTP Traffic Analysis. Understand the entire PTP topology from GM thru to the endpoint
  • Scalable from 100 assets to over 10,000 assets
  • Multi-User
  • Fault Isolation
  • OPENCONFIG
  • SFP Metrics
  • Link Speed Detect
  • RTP Flow Metrics
  • Alarm Timeline
  • Historical Graphing
  • SNMP Trap Receiver CAPEX/OPEX Modes

For more information visit the Providius website or contact the PAT Sales department for your obligation free demo.