IP for broadcasting is no longer a theoretical concept. It is proving its worth in television stations throughout the world. But transitioning to IP has its challenges, even for those lucky enough to work on greenfield sites. The abstraction of the video and audio essence from the underlying timing plane is presenting many issues whose solutions were often taken for granted in SDI and AES infrastructures, but the learning curve needed to make IP systems work for broadcasting is well worth the investment.

Fundamentally, we’re distributing synchronous video and audio over an asynchronous network, and in doing so, we’re effectively destroying the timing plane. To reconstruct the video and audio signals at the destination we must synthesize a timing system that operates over an asynchronous packet switched network. Switch buffers with indeterminate latencies conspire against this goal so packet jitter and loss become something we have to work with.

To achieve the promise of scalability, flexibility, and resilience, a change in mindset is required as broadcast engineers expect video and audio signals to be delivered with near perfection, but IT engineers and the vendors who manufacture routing and switching equipment assume there will be some packet loss due to the dynamic nature of IP networks. Once this has been accepted, then designing IP broadcast systems becomes more achievable.

Designing IP Broadcast Systems picks up the story where 'Understanding IP Broadcast Production Networks- The Book' left it, and assumes the reader has read this earlier work.

Download Designing IP Broadcast Systems - The Book and expand your understanding of the technologies and workflow of IP powered systems within broadcast production.

The free PDF download contains all 18 articles in this series - and all the articles are available as individual web pages:

Article 1 : Thinking Asynchronously
Designing IP infrastructures requires us to think asynchronously if we are to deliver reliable studio IP infrastructures.

Article 2 : Network Layers & Topologies
Discussing layer-2 switching & layer-3 routing, topologies and SDNs.

Article 3 : Give & Take For IP’s Sake
Our partner Lawo discuss real world user experiences and sharing knowledge.

Article 4 : System Glue
IP infrastructures add another level of complexity to our concept of glue.

Article 5 : Timing
Adding PTP to asynchronous IP networks provides a synchronization layer.

Article 6 : Where Broadcast Meets IT
Broadcast and IT engineers approach their professions from two different places.

Article 7 : Integrating Cloud Infrastructure
Connecting on-prem broadcast infrastructures to the public cloud.

Article 8 : With ST2110, You’ve Got The Power
Our partner Lawo explore the SDI Vs IP debate.

Article 9 : Addressing & Packet Delivery
How layer-3 and layer-2 addresses work together to reduce congestion.

Article 10 : Why Can’t We Just Plug And Play?
Why plug and play is not as straightforward as it may first seem.

Article 11 : Routing
Flexibility can cause much frustration when deciding on a network topology.

Article 12 : Resilience Is… When The Essence Keeps Coming
Our partner Lawo discuss how software defined broadcast infrastructure can bring true resilience to production systems.

Article 13 : Remote Control
How TCP and UDP may negatively influence each other.

Article 14 : Ground To Cloud
Reducing latency for streaming to the cloud impacts congestion control.

Article 15 : Software Defined Networking (SDN)
SDNs help optimize networks to improve their performance.

Article 16 : NMOS
NMOS is delivering solutions to efficient operational requirements.

Article 17 : Surf The Wave
Our partner Lawo discuss how broadcasters who have already migrated to IP are actively looking into how the original flexibility promise of IP can be taken one giant leap further.

Article 18 : System Monitoring
As IP plays a more important role, the need to progress beyond video and audio signal monitoring becomes increasingly important.