NAB 2017: Media Links To Demo 10-Gbps Hitless Data Transport

Users are enabled to take advantage of bandwidth available at venues

Media Links will demonstrate the transport of 10-Gbps Hitless Data at NAB 2017 (SU5021). Of particular interest to sports producers and broadcasters across the globe, this new feature for the company’s flagship MD8000 media-over-IP transport platform will enable users to take full advantage of the increasing bandwidth available at stadiums and remote facilities, providing enhanced data-carriage capabilities with the same level of resilience and robustness as currently experienced with broadcast video and audio services.

MediaLinks will demonstrate the transport of 10-Gbps Hitless Data at NAB 2017.

“Over the years, we have provided hitless transport of multiple video and audio channels in higher and higher resolution from sports venues back to broadcast and production facilities,” explains Media Links President Tom Canavan. “However, feedback from our clients and also panel discussions with senior sports executives at the Sports Video Group’s annual TranSPORT conference in New York at the end of 2016, highlighted the growing need for data, data, and yet more data.”

During sports events, he notes, production teams want up-to-the-minute supplemental content and information to accompany the live transmission of the event.

“This has resulted in a significant demand for the transport of data back and forth between venues and production facilities,” he explains. “E-mails, phone, graphic/computer-file data transfers are only a small part of the story. Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP) streaming and the need to move massive archived media content has also dramatically increased the demand for robust data connectivity.”

Canavan adds that necessity is precisely what the new 10-Gbps Hitless Data feature for the MD8000 transport platform now addresses. “It is an exciting and significant industry development, designed as a result of listening and directly responding to the practical requirements of our valued global client base.”

The 10-Gbps Hitless Data capability provides uninterrupted data transport across long-distance networks and is realized by Media Links’ new eight-port/four-port 1GbE line cards operating in conjunction with 10GbE trunk modules on the MD8000 platform. Based on the sequence number and timestamp of individual data packets, any network disturbance is immediately detected, resulting in a seamless switchover to a redundant stream with uninterrupted (hitless) data transport.

Also being demonstrated at NAB 2017, NetGazer is a scalable, graphics-oriented software platform that monitors and manages network environments to optimize multimedia-service performance. Intuitive interfaces expose service, event, and status information, allowing immediate and efficient management of complex, high-bandwidth networks.

Support and performance for thousands of services, platform-independent GUI, non–service-affecting software upgrades, and media-optimized ELK stack (for indexing, searching, analyzing, and visualizing complex network data) are several of NetGazer’s features, all for the purpose of simplifying network operations while quickly isolating, identifying, and remedying network problems. Several NetGazer editions are available, scaling from single-studio environments to large enterprise and global networks.

Another display at NAB 2017 will showcase a wide-area IP media networking demonstration, highlighting the convergence and seamless transport of the complete suite of broadcast-media signals (video, audio, and data) to a comprehensive, distributed IP switch fabric. Media Links’ high-density MDX 4090 IP router will be featured, accommodating up to 96 10GbE ports with rapid switching through its MRF (Media Rapid Flow) protocol along with PTP (Precision Timing Protocol) capabilities, all managed through touchpanel control software.

Says Canavan, “All Media Links solutions deliver on our vision of providing Media Without Limits capability for those applications where quality, performance, and reliability are paramount. We continue to leverage our 20+ years of media-over-IP experience to enable workflow as well as cost and bandwidth efficiencies across seamless broadcast IP networks, both globally and locally.”