BridgeTech vbc VBC User Manual

VBC Controller User’s Manual

Applies to software release v5.4

April 2018

Current documents are always found in the log-in area of the www.bridgetech.tv site. Refer to section 1.3 of this document for more information.

VBC Controller User’s Manual Revision 4a45156 (2018-04-26)

This publication can contain conﬁdential, proprietary, and conﬁdential trade secret information. No part of this document may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any machine-readable or electronic format without prior written permission from Bridge Technologies Co AS. CE-marked in accordance to low voltage directive (LVC) 73/23/EEC and EMC directive 89/336/EEC. Compliant to requirements for US and Canada. Designed for CSA approval. Bridge Technologies Co AS continuously improves on products and reserves the right to modify the speciﬁcations without prior notice. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and Bridge Technologies assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies.

The BRIDGE, BRIDGE TECHNOLOGIES and BRIDGETECH name, logo and all other related logos are registered trademarks of BRIDGE TECHNOLOGIES Co AS.

All other products or services mentioned in this document are identiﬁed by the trademarks, service marks, or product names as designated by the companies who market those products. Inquiries should be made directly to those companies. This document may also have links to third-party web pages that are beyond the control of Bridge Technologies. The presence of such links does not imply that Bridge Technologies Co AS endorses or recommends the content on those pages. Bridge Technologies acknowledges the use of third-party open source software and licenses in some products.

All trademarks and registered trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

 Bridge Technologies Co AS. Bentsebrugata 20, NO-0476, Oslo, Norway.

Contents 3

1 INTRODUCTION 6

1.1 Sites and Blades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.2 Users and Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.3 How to Use This Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2 INSTALLATION AND INITIAL SETUP 9

2.1 System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2.2 First-time Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.3 Deploying in a Virtualized Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.4 Verifying Correct Initial Setup and Software Activation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.5 Initial Setup Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2.6 Upgrading From a Previous Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2.6.1 Using an Installation Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.6.2 Using Software Activation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.6.3 Using a full reinstall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.7 Accessing the User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.8 Firewall Conﬁguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.9 License Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3 REMOTE DATA WALL 19

3.1 Introduction to the Remote Data Wall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.2 Accessing the Remote Data Wall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

4 THE VBC GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE 21

4.1 Login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

4.2 Live . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4.3 Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.3.1 Monitoring — Top Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.3.2 XML Alarms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

4.3.3 Monitoring — Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

4.3.4 Monitoring — Blade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

4.4 Blade alarms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.5 Graphics view (Graphics option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

4.6 Stream view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

4.6.1 Stream names, class and interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

4.6.2 Stream view — Selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

4.6.3 Selected Stream Compare MediaWindow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

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4.6.4 Selected Stream Compare ETR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

4.6.5 Selected Stream Compare Streamdata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

4.7 Thumbs view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

4.8 Service view (Transport Stream Service View option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

4.8.1 Service view — Thumbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

4.8.2 Service view — Selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

4.8.3 Selected TS Service Compare ETR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

4.9 Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

4.10 RDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

4.11 RDW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

4.11.1 RDW — Canvases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

4.11.2 RDW — Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

4.11.3 Canvas Conﬁgurator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

4.11.4 Web Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

4.11.5 Textbox Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

4.11.6 Thumbnail Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

4.11.7 Loudness Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

4.11.8 Media Window Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

4.11.9 Alarms Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

4.11.10RF Graph Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

4.11.11Clock Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

4.12 Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

4.12.1 Equipment — Device conﬁguration management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

4.12.2 Equipment — Manual conﬁguration ﬁles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

4.12.3 Equipment — Device software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

4.12.4 Equipment — Manage ﬁles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

4.13 Alarm setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

4.13.1 Alarm setup — Message Fwd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

4.13.2 Alarm setup — Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

4.14 Timeline (requires Archive Server) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

4.14.1 Choosing what to inspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

4.14.2 Navigating in time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

4.15 Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4.15.1 Reports — Manual Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.15.2 Reports — Report list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

4.15.3 Reports — Auto reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

4.15.4 Reports — Import logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

4.15.5 Reports — The PDF Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

4.16 Ext. Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

4.16.1 Ext. Reports — Manual extended report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

4.16.2 Ext. Reports — Extended report list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

4.16.3 Ext. Reports — Auto extended reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

4.16.4 Ext. Reports — PDF Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

4.16.5 Ext. Reports — Alarm poll and report status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.16.6 Ext. Reports — Setup storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

4.17 Main — Sites and Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

4.17.1 Sites and Users — Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

4.17.2 Sites and Users — Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

4.17.3 Sites and Users — User groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

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4.18 Main — Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

4.18.1 Logs — Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

4.18.2 Logs — Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

4.19 Main — Snapshots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

4.20 Main — Alarm statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

4.21 Main — Stream groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

4.22 Main — Service groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

4.23 Main — Archive Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

4.23.1 Archive server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

4.23.2 Enabling the Archive server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

4.23.3 Conﬁguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

4.23.4 System requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

4.23.5 Alarms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

4.24 Main — Gfx. View Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

4.24.1 Conﬁgure diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

4.24.2 Setup and data mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

4.25 Main — General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

4.26 Main — About . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

4.26.1 About — Release info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

4.26.2 About — License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

4.26.3 About — Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

4.26.4 About — Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

4.26.5 About — System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

4.26.6 About — Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

A Appendix: Separate Probe and Network Interfaces 125

B Appendix: The VBC Files 126

C Appendix: VBC Linux Processes 128

D Appendix: Example Site Conﬁguration 129

E Appendix: Getting the Thresholds Right 131

F Appendix: Probe Versus VBC Alarms 134

G Appendix: Troubleshooting 136

H Appendix: Backing up the VBC 137

I Appendix: Software Maintenance 139

J Appendix: Network conﬁguration 140

K Appendix: Enable NTP time synchronization 144

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1 INTRODUCTION

The VBC Controller is a server-side software application that offers central management of Bridge Technologies devices. Operating devices through the VBC is considerably more convenient and powerful than operating each device independently.

When managing a large digital television system there is a need to easily monitor the overall system status. Deploying a number of probes and a VBC enables the user to view the system status at-a-glance, and if a problem arises the VBC’s drill-down functionality makes it easy to locate the problem source.

Through the VBC the user can perform tasks such as building a hierarchical equipment view, view aggregate alarm and status messages, get aggregate status per TV stream and compare measurements across devices.

The VBC supports alarm export for integration into an NMS system.

The VBC server runs in a Linux environment. The VBC client is simply a web browser pointed towards the VBC server.

1.1 Sites and Blades

The VBC Controller supports a hierarchical equipment view. At the top of the chain are sites. A site is a number of devices that logically or physically belong together. These devices are also called a blades. Each device has an IP address and its own web interface that can be reached directly or via the VBC.

For systems deploying microVB units a Micro Device Controller (MDC) can be added to the VBC as a device. MDC will then report monitoring statistics to the VBC on behalf of all the microVBs.

1.2 Users and Access

The VBC Controller supports a role based user interface where a user is given full or limited access to a selection of the devices. Setup of system wide conﬁgurations, such as user setup, is performed by the pre-conﬁgured user admin.

The admin user is hard-coded inside the VBC and is the only user deﬁned when the VBC is installed. The admin user is the only user that has access to the system-wide setup menus. Put another way, the admin can do everything a regular user can do and more.

Beware!

to log in as admin to perform regular tasks.

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You can easily do a lot of damage by accident as the admin user, so it is not recommended

 BRIDGE Technologies Co AS

When logging in, the user name for the admin user is always

admin

and the password is

elvis

default. Please change the password for this user after installing the system.

There is no limit to the number of active users or to the number of active users of the same account. Each client will work independently of the others, only affected by changes to global settings usually done by the admin user.

The VBC uses a standard web mechanism called cookies to identify users. A cookie is a piece of data that the VBC returns to the browser when the user logs in. The browser will automatically provide this cookie in all subsequent requests towards VBC. The cookie allows the VBC to remember the state for all users who are logged in – so that it knows which sites the user has access to etc. Generally all windows or tabs from the same browser application will appear to the VBC as the same user – since they will all forward the same cookie.

The admin grants each user access to one or more sites. When logging in, the client’s access will be limited to the sites associated with the login name. The client will only have access to devices belonging to these sites.

Each user belongs to one user group. The access rights for the users is controlled in the user groups. Here the user can be limited to read only access, allowed the TS service view, doing RDP etc.

The user interface provided by the VBC is dynamic in the sense that almost all pages are generated differently for each user. The

Stream view

will, for instance, only list streams that are monitored by

probes that are included at the sites that the user has access to.

1.3 How to Use This Manual

This User’s Manual is valid for software version 5.4 of the VBC Controller.

Throughout this manual the term stream is often used rather than unicast or multicast. One stream may consist of one or more services, and refers to one IP uni- or multicast (for Ethernet input) or one transport stream (ASI, COFDM, QAM/VSB or QPSK/DVB-S2).

Chapter 2 INSTALLATION AND INITIAL SETUP explains how to install the software on a server.

Chapter 3 REMOTE DATA WALL describes the Remote Data Wall.

Chapter 4 THE VBC GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE describes the graphical user interface (GUI) as seen when pointing a web browser to the VBC Controller’s IP address.

A Appendix: Separate Probe and Network Interfaces describes how to set up the VBC as a bridge between the probe and management networks.

B Appendix: The VBC Files summarizes the ﬁles that are installed and created by the VBC.

C Appendix: VBC Linux Processes lists the Linux processes used by the VBC.

D Appendix: Example Site Conﬁguration contains an example on how to conﬁgure VBC sites.

E Appendix: Getting the Thresholds Right explains how to set up VBC thresholds.

F Appendix: Probe Versus VBC Alarms describes the alarm handling in the probes versus the VBC Controller.

G Appendix: Troubleshooting lists some hints troubleshooting VBC Controller issues.

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H Appendix: Backing up the VBC describes how to create a backup of the VBC and how to restore it later.

I Appendix: Software Maintenance brieﬂy describes software maintenance licenses and how they are used.

J Appendix: Network conﬁguration gives a brief introduction to the server OS network conﬁguration.

K Appendix: Enable NTP time synchronization provides some basic information about setting up time synchronization.

Note that current version of the User’s Manual can be found on the website. Log in as end user:

customer

with password:

xmas4u

. Additional technical documentation

is also found at the same location.

http://www.bridgetech.tv/

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2 INSTALLATION AND INITIAL SETUP

2.1 System Requirements

For VBC demonstration purposes the minimum hardware requirements are:

• Quad-core or multiple dual-core 1.6 GHz CPU

• 4 Gbyte RAM minimum (remember to ﬁll up all memory channels)

• 20 Gbyte writable disk space

•

10/100/1000T Ethernet Network Interface card(s) with support for CentOS Linux 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

The recommended VBC server speciﬁcations for a medium sized system (20 blades or 8000 streams) are:

• Intel Quad-core 2.4 GHz CPU

• 16 Gbyte 1600 MHz DDR RAM (remember to ﬁll up all memory channels)

• 250 Gbyte writable disk space

•

10/100/1000T Ethernet Network Interface card(s) with support for CentOS Linux 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

The recommended VBC server speciﬁcations for a large system (60 blades or 24000 streams) are:

• Intel Xeon 1630 v4 (4 cores, 8 threads, 3.7 GHz) CPU

• 24 Gbyte 1600 MHz DDR 4 RAM (remember to ﬁll up all memory channels)

• 500 Gbyte writable disk space

•

10/100/1000T Ethernet Network Interface card(s) with support for CentOS Linux 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

The recommended VBC server speciﬁcations for a very large system (100+ blades) are:

• Intel Xeon 1630 v4 (4 cores, 8 threads, 3.7 GHz)

• 24 Gbyte 2400 MHz DDR 4 RAM (remember to ﬁll up all memory channels)

• 2×500 Gbyte SAS, 15000 RPM in a Hardware RAID 1 conﬁguration

For even better performance SSD disks can be used instead, in a similar RAID 1 conﬁguration

•

10/100/1000T Ethernet Network Interface card(s) with support for CentOS Linux 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

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It is important that the number of RAM modules matches the number of memory channels supported by CPU. For dual socket systems the number of required RAM modules doubles.

Example recommended CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2667 v41:

For this system there are 4 memory channels. So for single socket systems 4×16Gbyte RAM modules could be ﬁtted, and for a dual socket system 8×16Gbyte RAM modules could be used.

The load on the VBC server will increase for increasing number of concurrent users and with more sites and blades, and the VBC’s responsiveness is dependent on server speciﬁcations. It may therefore be a good investment to use high performance server hardware in order to handle future system extensions.

Supported platforms:

• CentOS Linux release 7 (7.0–7.4) for x86_64

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7 (7.0–7.4) for x86_64

2.2 First-time Installation

Make sure that the server hardware matches the requirements listed above. Download the appropriate installation image from the end-user area on

http://www.bridgetech.tv/

and then follow the

procedure outlined below.

1. Obtain the latest installation kickstart image.

2. Insert the installation medium into the server:

•

For CD/DVD-based installations, burn the downloaded ISO image to a CD/DVD and insert into the server.

•

For USB-based installation, transfer the downloaded image to a USB mass storage device using a tool such as dd (Mac, Unix, Linux) or USBWriter2(Windows).

•

For installation in a virtualized environment, attach the downloaded ISO image to a virtual DVD-ROM unit.

Note:

Please read the advice on how to conﬁgure the virtual machine in section 2.3 to

ensure optimal performance.

Boot the server and make sure that the primary boot device is set appropriately. If the system fails to boot from the medium, you may need to conﬁgure the boot loader for ‘legacy BIOS mode’.

The installer will run, please follow the on-screen prompts to install the system, taking note of the following:

• IMPORTANT: Leave ‘Software selection’ at ‘Custom software selected’.

https://ark.intel.com/products/92979/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5- 2667-v4-25M-Cache-3_20-GHz

http://sourceforge.net/projects/usbwriter/

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• IMPORTANT:

/home

partition, which is unused. To avoid this, use the ‘I will conﬁgure partitioning’ option.

In the ‘Installation Destination’, the default partitioning will create a large

Then use the ‘Click here to create them automatically’ and manually reduce the size of (or remove) the /home partition, instead giving that space to the / partition.

•

We recommend that you conﬁgure network settings (IP address, gateway, DNS) within the installer. Post-installation network conﬁguration can be performed using the

nmtui

utility, please refer to J Appendix: Network conﬁguration for details.

•

The default installation does not provide any graphical user interface environment. This can be installed later if desired, please refer to the CentOS Linux3or Red Hat Enterprise Linux4documentation for more details.

At the end of the installation procedure, the server is rebooted. Remove the installation media and ensure that the system boots up properly.

Enter the selected IP address in your web browser to access the Software Activation page. If your host is using dynamic addressing, you can log in to the account created during installation and issue the command ip addr to display the address assigned to the system.

Continue to chapter 2.4 for details on how to enable the VBC Controller system.

The kickstart will install CentOS Linux 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 on the server. The disks will be formatted and all contents lost. Make sure that any important data on the server has been backed up before beginning the procedure.

Note that new installations of VBC must use the kickstart install procedure.

2.3 Deploying in a Virtualized Environment

It is also possible to deploy the software in a virtualized environment. For optimal performance, check the processor conﬁguration of setting of cores per virtual sockets on the virtual machine.

Please follow the steps from chapter 2.2 when installing the software in the virtualized environment. We recommended

disabling

operating system type when initially creating the new virtual machine instance in your virtualization environment. These options may override the installation instructions included in the provided installation image, causing an incomplete installation.

Pre-built images for VMware (vSphere/Workstation/Player) are provided in Format Archive) format. These images contains a system already installed according to the steps described in the previous chapter, with VMware Tools already installed and activated.

To deploy the image, you need to import it to the virtualization host, please refer to the documentation of your virtualization environment for more details on how to do this.

http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS7

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/index.html

cores per socket

on your host server and use the same conﬁguration

any ‘Easy install’ or similarly worded option, and not selecting the

OVA

(Open Virtualization

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Figure 2.1: Software Activation

If installed in a VMware vSphere environment, the machine should report back its network conﬁguration to the host environment. Please allow some time for it to do so, and then continue with the Software Activation procedure as described in the next chapter.

When logging in to the console of the pre-built images, the default password for the The same password is also used for logging in remotely using Secure Shell (ssh).

the password for the root user after ﬁnishing the install

, log in and use the

root

user is

Please change

passwd

command to

elvis

do this.

2.4 Verifying Correct Initial Setup and Software Activation

Once the software has been installed and restarted all further conﬁguration takes place through the web interface.

1. Launch a web browser application on the management system.

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Any web browser with support for JavaScript can be used to access the Software Activation interface, one of the following are recommended:

• Google Chrome

• Mozilla Firefox

• Microsoft Edge

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or higher

• Apple Safari

2. Type the IP address of the server in the browser URL ﬁeld and press Enter .

The network settings should have been set when the operating system was installed. If the web browser is unable to reach the web server, check the server’s network settings in the operating system.

The Software Activation view should be displayed inside the browser. Software Activation is password-protected, the user name is admin and the default password is elvis.

This password should be changed under the More options heading5.

The page displayed should look similar to ﬁgure 2.1.

If you already have an XML ﬁle with license keys for your system, click on the heading and upload this ﬁle under the

Import license keys

option. If you have the license key

More options

written down or in an e-mail, instead use the product page described below.

If this is a new server, and you need to obtain license keys for the purchased products, please click the link labeled

export hardware keys as XML

and send the downloaded ﬁle to your

sales representative as an e-mail attachment.

The VBC Controller is not enabled by default on the newly installed server. To enable it, use the link labeled

Not activated

next to its name. This will take you to a page giving you the details of the installed software, such as the installed version and the hardware key. If you have a license key that you want to enable and have not yet done so, enter the key in the ﬁeld labeled Apply license key and click the Add license button.

Click the button labeled

Activate software

and wait for it to ﬁnish. If successful, the VBC Controller should now be activated, and you will be presented with a link to the user interface. The next time you access the server using a web browser, you should be taken automatically to the enabled software.

Please note that it may take some additional time before the user interface of the activated product becomes available. If you receive an error trying to access it, please wait for a few minutes before trying again.

To return to the Software Activation view to make changes, open the

About — License

tab in the

VBC Controller user interface and click the link labeled Manage installed software.

It is

strongly recommended

that the system time is conﬁgured to be synchronized against an external NTP server. Please refer to K Appendix: Enable NTP time synchronization for more information on conﬁguring time synchronization.

If you forget the Software Activation password, you can reset it by logging in as root and issuing the command

/opt/btech/ssg/bin/reset_web_password

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2.5 Initial Setup Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble bringing up the Software Activation interface, or the VBC Controller web based management interface, verify the following:

•

Verify that the client machine and the VBC Controller are conﬁgured on the same subnet and that they have different addresses, or, if you use different subnets, verify that the routing and gateways are set correctly on both the client machine and the VBC Controller.

• Make sure that the IP address of the gateway and the network interface are not the same.

• Verify that the appropriate Ethernet link indicators of the PC and the VBC Controller are lit.

• Verify that web browser proxy settings are not interfering.

• Verify that local ﬁrewall settings on the PC are not interfering.

• Try rebooting the server and make sure all services start as expected.

• Clear the browser’s cache.

• Verify that the web server is running, by entering the command

systemctl status httpd

on the server’s command line. If it is not running properly, try issuing the command

echo "ServerName localhost" >> /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

and then restart the server by issuing the command

systemctl restart httpd

•

If you can reach Software Activation but the VBC Controller GUI is not working, enter the command If services are not running, try re-installing the VBC.

Please refer to J Appendix: Network conﬁguration for more information on server network conﬁguration.

vbchello

on the server’s command line to verify that the VBC services are running.

2.6 Upgrading From a Previous Version

We strongly recommend backing up the VBC ﬁles before upgrading to a new version of the VBC Controller, or when upgrading to a new release of the OS. The backup procedure is described in H Appendix: Backing up the VBC of this manual.

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To upgrade to this release of the VBC Controller, your system must meet the system requirements described in chapter 2.1. If your system does not meet these requirements, the installation procedure will stop with an error message.

VBC Controller version 5.4 will be able to upgrade VBC version 5.2 or later only. Only systems running CentOS Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x can be upgraded. For systems running older versions of VBC or older versions of the operating system you must ﬁrst backup the system by following the procedure described in H Appendix: Backing up the VBC. Install the new system using the instructions for new installations as described in chapter 2.2 and then restore the backup on the new system. This is described in section 2.6.3 Using a full reinstall.

VBC Controller version 5.3 was the last version with support for CentOS Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 6.x, 5.4 only supports release 7. The current version of the operating system can be found on the About — Release info tab in the user interface.

2.6.1 Using an Installation Script

Download the appropriate installation image from the end-user area on

tv/

and copy the installation script to the system. Log in as root and run the installation script by

http://www.bridgetech.

issuing the command

sh filename.run

(where ﬁlename.run is the name of the installation script). You will be presented with a menu with options toInstall the software orDisplay the README ﬁle. Press the appropriate key and press

Enter to begin.

This will upgrade the required ﬁles in

/opt/btech/vbc

, and restart the VBC server processes if the

software was already activated.

If error messages appear while running the installer script, please check out the README ﬁle from the installer for additional information (available from the installer menu).

If the installation fails, try re-installing the system as described above.

2.6.2 Using Software Activation

It is also possible to upload the VBC using the Software Activation interface. Access Software Activation and expand the software image ﬁle to be uploaded and click the When the software has been transferred to the VBC, the update.

More options

heading. Under the heading

Update

button. The image will have a

Update software

.tea

button to initiate the

, select the

extension.

If the VBC software was already activated, you will be transferred to a progress bar displaying the update status.

If the software was not activated, the upgrade will run in the background and you will be forwarded to the product page inside the Software Activation interface. Depending on how long the update takes, you may need to reload the product page again to verify that the software has been updated.

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If the software upgrade fails, you can ﬁnd a log describing the upgrade procedure by logging in to the VBC server and opening the ﬁle /opt/btech/vbc/log/upgrade.log

2.6.3 Using a full reinstall

Sometimes it is necessary to upgrade the system by doing a full reinstall. This must be done when:

• Upgrading from VBC before version 5.2

•

Upgrading from a system running CentOS Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 6.x or older

• Moving the VBC to a new server

The procedure for upgrading by doing a full reinstall is as follows:

•

First back up the old machine by using the procedure described in H Appendix: Backing up the VBC. Make sure to use the backup script from the new SW version when doing the backup and store the backup in a safe location.

• Install the new system using the instructions for new installations as described in chapter 2.2.

• Restore the backup on the new system as described in H Appendix: Backing up the VBC.

Please note that the hardware key will change when the VBC is reinstalled on a new machine. Please see section 2.9 License Details on how to obtain the current hardware key and contact your sales representative to obtain a new license key.

2.7 Accessing the User Interface

Once the software has been installed and activated all further conﬁguration takes place through the web interface.

The following web browsers are supported for the management interface:

• Google Chrome

• Mozilla Firefox

• Microsoft Edge

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or higher

• Apple Safari

The login view should be displayed inside the browser. This should look similar to ﬁgure 2.2. If you have problems accessing the user interface, refer to chapter 2.5 for troubleshooting.

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Figure 2.2: The VBC Controller Graphical User Interface

2.8 Firewall Conﬁguration

If you have ﬁrewalls active, the following ports need to be enabled:

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Web (TCP port 80 and 8080)

Protocols and ports

Required. For serving clients. Port 8080 is only used if MDC is part of the VBC conﬁguration.

Web tunneling to probes (TCP port 80 and 8080)

Probe polling (XML over TCP port 80)

On-line license proxy (TCP port 8443)

SNMP traps and consultation (UDP ports 161 and 162)

NTP (TCP port 123)

Device auto-detection (UDP port 2011)

ftp (TCP port 21)

Secure Shell and telnet (TCP ports 22 and 23)

Required. The VBC will intercept and forward Web requests from clients towards probes on port 80. Port 8080 is only used if MDC is part of the VBC conﬁguration.

Required. Every 60 seconds, the VBC server requests measurements from the probes. Also used to verify if probes are alive.

Required unless the probes can access the licensing service directly. When the probes are on a restricted network, they will use the proxy serving on this port to connect to the licensing service. The port needs only to be open towards the probe network.

To be able to receive SNMP traps or consult the VBC MIB.

Used for time synchronization if the probes have been conﬁgured with the VBC IP address. It is strongly recommended that the server running the VBC software, and the equipment controlled by it, be synchronized against an external NTP server. Refer to K Appendix: Enable NTP time synchronization for more details.

Used by the VBC to auto-detect devices.

Required if probes are to be software upgraded from the VBC server.

Useful to perform health checks etc. towards probes.

For more details on how to conﬁgure the network, please refer to A Appendix: Separate Probe and Network Interfaces.

2.9 License Details

After the unlicensed VBC Controller software is installed, it will run in a trial mode for 30 days with unrestricted access to features. After this period, if a license key has not been obtained, the VBC will revert to being an element manager with no access to licensed features and with no alarm features.

To obtain a license the Technologies reseller, who will return a The Hardware Key can also be seen in the Software Activation interface.

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Hardware key

displayed in the

About — License

Product License Key

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view is given to your Bridge

which is submitted from the same view.

3 REMOTE DATA WALL

This chapter gives a quick introduction on how to use the Remote Data Wall feature of the VBC Controller.

3.1 Introduction to the Remote Data Wall

Remote Data Wall (RDW) gives the opportunity to quickly and easily create a visual representation of network activity using a web browser window. Depending on the size or complexity of the network being monitored, RDW can spread from a single screen to multiple screens in a videowall format – but requires no specialist skills to install.

The Remote Data Wall can be conﬁgured to display mosaics from the selected streams, as well as alarm lists and other important information from within the system. A conﬁgured mosaic is called a

canvas and is conﬁgured in the RDW – Canvases view.

3.2 Accessing the Remote Data Wall

The Remote Data Walls can be reached by entering All connected browser windows are displayed as devices in the

<IP address>/rdw/

RDW — Devices

in a browser’s URL ﬁeld.

view. By default,

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the canvas named

Default

is used for new devices. It is possible to select which RDW canvas is to be

displayed on a speciﬁc device in this view. Each canvas can be displayed on any number of devices.

The RDW can also be reached through the Devices list clicking the link at the bottom of the screen, as shown in the picture below.

Go to chapter 4.11 for details on how to conﬁgure the Remote Data Wall.

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4 THE VBC GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE

The VBC web interface is reached by pointing a web browser to the IP address of the VBC Controller as shown in the screen shot above. The following web browsers are recommended:

• Google Chrome

• Mozilla Firefox

• Microsoft Edge

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or higher

• Apple Safari

Note that different web browsers behave differently with respect to memory leaking, and if the VBC GUI should be available at all times the browser should be selected carefully. A browser memory leak

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manifests itself as the browser responding more and more slowly, and this is corrected by closing down the application and restarting.

The interface is easy and intuitive to use. The tree menu is always located on the left hand side. The menu contains more entries for the admin than the menu for regular users. Some menu items are nested, in particular the site and blade sub-menu entries are provided to allow quick access to the last visited site and blade.

The web interface has been designed to be resizable in both vertical and horizontal directions with a minimum screen resolution of 1280×800 pixels. For operational use it is however highly recommended that a higher screen resolution is used. The

view

pages will automatically adapt to the current area of the browser window after it has been

Stream view,Thumbs view

and

Service

resized and the screen is refreshed.

Tool-tips are available for most buttons and labels. To access tool-tip information simply navigate the mouse pointer towards a button or a label and leave it hovering for a second or two.

4.1 Login

Users are required to log in to get access to the VBC Controller. Only the admin user can add new users – this is explained in the chapter 1.2 of this manual.

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After a user has logged in, the menu-tree changes to reﬂect the new options.

A status-line lists all the sites that the user can access and states his access-rights (full or read-only). A login history for the user is also provided.

Users will stay logged in until they actively log out or their session times out (by navigating the browser away from the VBC application).

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4.2 Live

The alarm list in the

Live

identical to the list in the are not aggregated.

view displays all currently un-aggregated active VBC alarms. The list is

Monitoring

view, except that cleared alarms are not included and alarms

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4.3 Monitoring

The VBC provides monitoring at three different levels. Top-level monitoring allows the user to get an overview picture of the complete system; site monitoring provides details about one selected site and blade monitoring allows the user to monitor a speciﬁc device.

4.3.1 Monitoring — Top Level

The top level

Monitoring

page displays status for each site and a top level alarm list. The color of

the bulb indicates the severity of the most severe active alarm for a device that belongs to the site.

The layout of this page can be changed in the user setting described in the

Sites and Users —

Users menu.

The following color codes are used for bulbs:

Color codes in bulbs

Green No active alarms (or only alarms set to severity OK)

Yellow The most serious active alarm is a warning

Orange The most serious active alarm is an error

Red The most serious active alarm is a major error

(typically No Signal)

Black At least one device has a fatal error

(typically cannot be reached)

The same color codes are used for alarms.

The severity of different alarms can be customized globally by the admin user, in the

Alarm setup

menu.

The user can select which alarms to show and hide in the

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Filter alarms

menu. The setting is reset to

the default when the user logs in the next time. Clicking

Clear alarms

will wipe all the cleared alarms

from the alarm list. The alarm list is reset the next time the user logs in.

To avoid reporting too many alarms, the alarm list in the within a site. This is called

alarm aggregation

and is not performed for any other alarm list except

Monitoring

page merges similar alarms

the SNMP alarm list. Alarm aggregation is not performed across sites. Hence similar alarms in different sites are never merged.

The following table shows examples of alarm aggregation:

Raw alarm Aggregated alarm

SiteA:BladeX No signal BBC

SiteA:2 TIMES No signal BBC

SiteA:BladeY No signal BBC

SiteB:BladeX No signal BBC

SiteB:3 TIMES No signal STREAMS:2

SiteB:BladeY No signal NRK SiteB:BladeZ No signal BBC

The N TIMES aggregation indicates that N alarm messages were merged. The STREAMS:M aggregation indicates that in total M different stream names were reported in the raw messages.

In the VBC, all probe alarms are based on error-seconds measurements reported by probes, compared against error thresholds deﬁned for the same probe. Extractor alarms reﬂect the current device status.

In order to view probe alarms that may possibly correspond to a VBC alarm, click the blue information

icon



associated with the VBC alarm. A pop-up view shows individual

Blade alarms

that match the VBC alarm in time and type of alarm. Note that the time on the probes and the VBC should be synchronized in order for this functionality to work correctly, refer to K Appendix: Enable NTP time synchronization for more details. Also note that alarms must be enabled probe GUI, otherwise they will not be displayed in the pop-up view. Please refer to the probe manual for more information. As there is not a one-to-one relationship between probe and VBC alarms, there will often be a number of probe alarms that can cause a VBC alarm to be raised. This means that the list of probe alarms can have many entries compared to the VBC alarm text.

The table below lists all VBC alarm messages; note that this is the behavior when using default thresholds (refer to E Appendix: Getting the Thresholds Right for a description on how to calibrate thresholds):

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Message Description

No contact

No signal

RTP drops

MLR error

IAT error

Bitrate overﬂow

Bitrate underﬂow

ETR pri one error ETR pri two error

ETR pri tree error

ETR other error

ETR interface error

OTT transport error

OTT http error

OTT xml error

This alarm is raised if the VBC is unable to obtain status from a particular probe. The probes are polled every 60 seconds, so if raised, this alarm will stay active until poll contact is achieved.

This alarm indicates that during the last 60 seconds poll interval the probe experienced at least 3 seconds of no signal.

This alarm indicates that during the last hour the number of error-seconds experienced by probe exceeded the threshold (default 5 seconds).

These alarms indicate that during the last hour the number of errorseconds experienced by the probe exceeded the threshold (default 20 seconds).

These alarms indicate that during the last hour the number of ETR errorseconds experienced by the probe exceeded the threshold (default 250 seconds).

These alarms indicate that during the last hour the number of OTT errorseconds experienced by the probe exceeded the threshold (default 60 seconds).

Expected scrambling

Expected clear

Freeze-frame

Audio level

OTT alignment

Caption availability

Caption quality

Archive error

These alarms indicate that during the last poll period a VB288 Objective QoE Content Extractor has detected that either the signal is scrambled while expecting clear (Expected clear alarm) or vice versa (Expected scrambling alarm). The VB288 allows the conﬁguration of these alarms per stream.

This alarm indicates that during the last poll period a VB288 Objective QoE Content Extractor detected a freeze-frame or a color-freeze condition for a stream that has freeze frame detection enabled.

According to threshold settings on the VB288 a stream was either too silent or too loud for too long.

Reported by the VB288 if the proﬁles for an OTT service are not aligned wrt to the sequence number, suggesting that the picture is not synchronized between the proﬁles.

This alarm indicates that during the last poll period a VB288 has detected that a service with closed caption monitoring had less caption services than speciﬁed in its threshold.

This alarm indicates that during the last poll period a VB288 has detected a quality issue with one or more of the caption services extracted from a service with closed caption monitoring.

This alarm indicates the Archive server has active errors such as low disk space or too many conﬁgured streams.

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Archive warning

This alarm indicates the Archive server has active warnings such as disk space less than 50%.

Please note that the alarm window can be changed from the default 1 hour as assumed in the above explanations. For shorter alarm windows the number of error seconds required are scaled accordingly.

Clicking one of the site-names will open the site status page.

The user may select what ﬁelds should be present in the alarm list by clicking the

Fields. ..

button.

Removing some ﬁelds may be convenient when using a screen with low resolution.

The user may select to remove some alarm types from the alarm list by clicking the

Filter alarms. ..

button. This affects the graphical user interface for the current user only. By re-enabling alarms that have been previously ﬁltered these alarm instances will re-appear in the alarm log.

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The user may clear out the alarm list by clicking the

Clear alarms

button. This hides the cleared alarms from the alarm list for the current user for this session, if the user logs out and in again the full alarm list will be displayed.

The

Page

buttons allow the user to view the navigate the alarm list and go back and forth in the list of

alarms.

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4.3.2 XML Alarms

The un-aggregated top level alarms are available as XML via a static URL. The URL is obtained by replacing the /vbc part of the regular VBC URL with /vbc/static/alarms exp.xml – see example below.

In this example the two screenshots show the same alarms.

The XML alarm list provides integrators with an additional way of automating alarms export from the VBC – now integrators can choose between SNMP and XML alarm integrations.

The release attribute in the XML document is updated every time the VBC refreshes the alarm list and the crc attribute will only change when the alarm list changes.

Refer to

Alarm setup

for a description on how alarms are also available via the MIB and SNMP traps.

Please refer to the document Eii External Integration Interface for detailed information about Eii.

4.3.3 Monitoring — Site

The

Site

monitoring page provides information about the selected site. Each device is presented in a list with indication about the device type and IP address. The status of each blade is indicated by the color of a status bulb. For all non-green blade bulbs there should be corresponding entries in the alarm list.

The alarm list will only show alarms for the selected site.

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Clicking one of the device name links opens up the device graphical user interface is accessed.

Blade

monitoring page through which the regular

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4.3.4 Monitoring — Blade

The

Blade

device’s own web interface pages, similar to those that can be reached by accessing the device directly. The bottom part of the page contains the VBC alarm list for the selected blade.

If the blade cannot be reached from the VBC server, the top half of the page will be empty and the page will take approximately 10 seconds to load. In this situation the blade’s bulb status icon is usually black in the is used.

monitoring page provides information about one blade. The top part of the page is the

Site

monitoring page, provided that the default ‘No contact’ alarm severity Fatal

When accessing a probe through the VBC, the probe’s built-in access control feature is disabled and the VBC decides if the user is going to have full access or simply read-only access.

Clicking one of the alarm entries will automatically select the corresponding page in the device.

If a Micro Device Controller (MDC) is part of the VBC conﬁguration, the regular MDC user interface is accessed in a similar way as other blades, by clicking the site device link associated with the blade.

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4.4 Blade alarms

The

Blade alarms

view displays a list of active and cleared alarms present in devices’ individual alarm lists. These alarms are not affected by VBC threshold settings, i.e. they reﬂect the current device alarm status, only limited by the one minute alarm poll rate. Note that only alarms that are enabled in devices will be present in the Blade alarms view.

Blade Alarms

 Click the blue information icon to view a detailed alarm description

Sev A bulb indicating the alarm severity

Status The alarm status: Active, Cleared or Event

Time

The time the alarm was raised by the device. For cleared alarms the time span of the alarm is shown, i.e. the time the alarm was raised and the time it was cleared.

Site The site(s) where this the device that raised the alarm is located

Blade

The name(s) of the device that raised the alarm. Can be multiple names if the same device is added to multiple sites

Interface The interface receiving the stream causing the alarm

Stream The name of the stream having the alarm

VBC alarm The VBC alarm name

Description The device alarm description

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By default all blade alarms from sites the user has access to are displayed in the Blade Alarms list. However a number of ﬁltering options makes it easy to search the list for speciﬁc alarms:

Blade Alarms Filtering

Site

Blade

Show only active alarms

VBC alarm:

Stream name

Service name

PID

Select a site from the drop-down menu to view alarms originating from the selected site only.

Select a device from the drop-down menu to view alarms originating from the selected device only. Please note that you need to select the site before selecting the blade.

Check this box to view active alarms only. Events and cleared alarms are not displayed.

Select a VBC alarm name from the drop-down menu to view that alarm type only.

Type a text string + <Enter> to only view alarm list entries matching the speciﬁed stream name. The search is case insensitive and matching starts from the beginning of the string.

Type a text string + <Enter> to only view alarm list entries matching the speciﬁed service names. The search is case insensitive and matching starts from the beginning of the string. Only applicable for streams that carry service names. It is common not to transmit this information Single Program Transport Streams (SPTS) which often used in IPTV systems. Service names are transmitted in tables in the transport streams such as Service Description Table (SDT) for DVB systems or Virtual Channel Tables (VCT) for ATSC systems.

Type a PID number + <Enter> to view alarm list entries with matching PID number only. Note that this is only relevant for ETR alarms that are associated with a speciﬁc PID.

Start time

Type a date and time (format example: Jun 21 14:31:17) + <Enter> to specify a time window deﬁned by the

Start time

and

End time

. All alarms that were active during this time window will be displayed. Deﬁne a

Start time

only to view all blade alarms raised after the

speciﬁed time plus alarms that were active at the speciﬁed time.

End time

Type a date and time (format example: Jun 21 14:31:17) + <Enter> to specify a time window deﬁned by the

Start time

and

End time

. All alarms that were active during this time window will be displayed. Deﬁne an

End time

only to view all blade alarms that were active

before the speciﬁed time.

Click on a element in the blade alarm list to seem more detailed information about that speciﬁc alarm.

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Blade Alarm Details

Status The alarm status: Active, Cleared or Event

Severity The alarm severity as conﬁgured in the Alarm setup page on the device

Alarm Type The type of alarm such as ETH, ETR, OTT or SYS

VBC alarm name

The name corresponding to this alarm in the VBC. As an example, the ETR alarm Continuity counter error corresponds to the VBC alarm ETR pri one error

Blade IP The IP address of the device which have reported this alarm

Site(s)

The sites where this device have been registered. Normally a device is registered to one site but in some situations it can also be useful to add it to multiple sites

Blade name(s)

The name the device have been assigned in the Equipment view. If the same device is registered to multiple sites then all the different names the device have been assigned is shown here

Interface The interface receiving the stream causing the alarm

Stream The name of the stream having the alarm

Service name

The name of the service affected by the alarm. Only applicable for ETR alarms and only when the stream contain service name information

PID

The Packet ID of the PID affected by the alarm. Only applicable for ETR alarms

Raise time The time the alarm was raised by the device

Raise description The description of the alarm when it was raised

Raise sequence no

The sequence number of the alarm message as sent by the device when it

was raised

Raise trap

The trap alarm text sent by the device when raising the alarm. The format of this text ﬁeld is described in the document SNMP trap format

Clear time The time the alarm was cleared by the device

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Clear description

The description of the alarm when it was cleared. For some alarms this may be different from the raise description (updating the number of detected MLR errors etc.)

Clear sequence no

Clear trap

The sequence number of the alarm message as sent by the device to clear the alarm

The trap alarm text sent by the device when clearing the alarm. The format of this text ﬁeld is described in the document SNMP trap format

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4.5 Graphics view (Graphics option)

Figure: Simulation of a network monitored by Bridge Technologies equipment.

Graphics view will display diagrams, where the diagram objects are used to show the current alarm status of the VBC elements: Site, Blade, Stream or Stream group.

The operator designs diagrams and generate the diagram ﬁles in the Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg) format, which is an open standard and is supported by all modern browsers. Graphics View currently support importing of .svg ﬁles generated by Microsoft Visio

 and InkScape.

When generating diagram ﬁles the objects can be hyperlinked to a VBC blade view, VBC selected stream view, or to other uploaded diagram ﬁles. To navigate to these diagram click the relevant areas of the diagram. This allows for instance to have a system overview diagram where you can see the different sites and then click in to see details for the headend or the different regional sites, overview of the channel status, list of transponders on the satellite etc.

In the example diagram above the box background colors are displaying the aggregated status of the stream group, the stream arrow colors are showing status of the individual streams, and the probes are showing the corresponding status color of the probe (Blade) in the VBC.

Use the following buttons to navigate the diagrams:

Click to view the diagram full screen, ﬁlling the entire browser window.

You can additionally use the browser menus to make the graphics view ﬁll the entire

computer screen.

Click to return to the normal VBC GUI when in full screen mode

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Click to go to the starting diagram (conﬁgured in the

Main — Gfx. View Setup

This is useful when you have multiple diagrams with hyperlinks for navigation.

Please refer to chapter 4.24 for details on how to conﬁgure the Graphics view.

page).

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4.6 Stream view

In the

Stream view

shows the current status, and the 96-pixel MicroTimeline stream-bar shows the status for the last 96 hours (i.e. 4 days).

streams are by default presented in alphabetical order. For each stream the bulb

Each bulb-color corresponds to the aggregate status for all probes that belong to sites that the user has access to. The bulbs are updated every 60 seconds – which corresponds to the probe poll interval.

The stream bars reveal any VBC alarm that has been present during the last 4 days. The bars will automatically scroll one pixel to the left each hour with the rightmost pixels showing the status for the current hour. The bar color corresponds to the severity of alarms that have occurred. During periods when VBC alarms are masked due to VBC schedule settings, the bar color is blue. Note that this applies to VBC scheduling only, and not to probe or extractor scheduling. If scheduling applies part time of a one hour MicroTimeline period, it will be colored blue if there have been no alarms during the non-scheduled part of the period. Otherwise it will be colored according to alarm severity. Alarm severity is conﬁgured in the Alarm setup page.

The user selects whether all streams or only one stream group should be represented in the view. The selectable stream groups are available in the Stream-group drop-down menu. The stream groups are conﬁgured in the Main — Stream groups page.

The Sort drop-down menu allows stream sorting based on name, interface or current stream status severity.

The Filter ﬁeld allows the user to specify a text string; only streams and sites with names matching the speciﬁed string will be displayed. If an extractor is part of the system, the VBC will also check against multicast addresses. This functionality is very useful to quickly locate a speciﬁc stream in a large system.

The number of streams presented on a page is only limited by the size of the display screen. Refreshing the screen after resizing the browser window will automatically ﬁll up all of the available screen area. If there are more streams in the selected stream group than can be displayed in a single view the remaining streams may be monitored by clicking the numbered links at the bottom of the page.

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Clicking a stream name brings up the Selected stream view.

4.6.1 Stream names, class and interface

The stream name speciﬁed for Ethernet streams, OTT service and RF tuning setups are presented in the Stream View in VBC. Since by deﬁnition all stream names need to be unique on a single device we have added an optional class part to the stream name. This allows the same stream to be monitored several times on the same device and still have all instances reported separately to the VBC. For example, by naming three streams “BBC”, “BBC@main” and “BBC@backup”, all three streams will be treated as if the name was BBC alone. The class part is displayed in the view — Selected list.

In addition to the class, the interface on which the stream was received is listed here. Streams received over RF or ASI are listed under their interface name. Multicasts are listed as IPTV when received on probes and as E-IPTV when received on extractors. OTT streams are listed as OTT when received on probes, or on extractors where OTT Active Testing has been enabled for the stream, and as E-OTT for the extractor QoE measurements.

Stream

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4.6.2 Stream view — Selected

The

Selected stream

view lists measurements for all probes that are monitoring the selected stream. For each blade monitoring the stream, a 96-pixel MicroTimeline bar is displayed, showing the status for the last 96 hours (i.e. 4 days) for the stream on that blade, along with the selected error-second values, as described below. If one or more VB288 Objective QoE Content Extractors are part of the VBC conﬁguration and is monitoring the stream, a thumbnail picture and associated meta-data are displayed at the top of the page.

By selecting between two and ten probes (clicking the check box at the beginning of each line) and then clicking displayed in the

Compare Media Windows for selected probes

Selected stream compare MediaWindow

view. Note that this is only relevant for

the graphs for the probes are

streams present on probe IPTV interfaces.

By selecting between one and ﬁve probes (clicking the check box at the beginning of each line) and then clicking the

Selected stream compare Streamdata

Compare Streamdata for selected probes

view. This comparision can be done for IPTV, OTT and

, the graphs for the probes are displayed in

RF streams. The data shown depends on the stream type.

By selecting between one and ﬁve probes (clicking the check box at the beginning of each line) and

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then clicking Compare ETR measurements for selected probes selected ETR measurements for the probes are displayed in the for streams that are ETR analyzed. ETR analyzed streams will have an additional link

Selected stream compare ETR

view. Note that this is only relevant

ETR

in the

rightmost column that when clicked will open up the probe’s ETR page for the selected stream.

It is possible to jump between the streams by clicking the

and

links at the top of the page.

The bulb displayed for each probe shows the probe’s status for the selected stream.

Thumbnail meta-data

Parameter Description

Bitrate: The total stream rate

Video: The video bitrate and whether the component is scrambled or not

Audio: The audio bitrate and whether the component is scrambled or not

Teletext: The teletext bitrate and whether the component is scrambled or not

Encoding: The video encoding format

Size: The video picture size (video resolution)

Aspect: The video aspect ratio

Service name: The name of the service in the stream

Address: The multicast IP address of the stream

Extractor:

The IP address of the extractor delivering thumbnail and metadata; can be clicked

Each minute the VBC polls probes for information which is displayed in four categories selectable in the drop-down list in the top right hand corner.

IPTV(Error-second)

Selecting

IPTV(Error-second)

displays all IPTV error second parameters measured by the probe during the selected period1(last 4 days, 24 hours or 60 minutes). VBC alarms are based on the error second parameters, and the severity of the corresponding alarm is indicated by the colored bulb by the parameter name.

Parameter Description

ES(nosig) Number of seconds with no signal

ES(RTP)

Number of seconds with RTP packet drops. This will always be zero if the stream is not encapsulated in RTP headers.

ES(MLR)

Number of seconds with packet drops in the TS layer (seconds when media loss rate is non-zero). This is equal to the number of error seconds with CC errors.

ES(IAT) Number of seconds when the delay factor exceeds the threshold.

ES(overﬂ) Number of seconds when the bitrate exceeds the error-threshold.

ES(underﬂ) Number of seconds when the bitrate falls below the error-threshold.

Note that the MicroTimeline bar is not scaled, it always represents 96 hours.

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IPTV(Statistical)

Selecting

IPTV(Statistical)

shows all aggregate IPTV measurements that are not error-seconds

measured by the probe during the selected period (last 4 days, 24 hours or 60 minutes).

Parameter Description

sum(OK-polls) Number of times that the probe has been successfully polled.

sum(Failed-polls)

Number of times that VBC has failed to poll the probe. Each time VBC fails to poll a probe the No contact alarm is raised for one minute.

sum(MLR)

Number of TS packets lost in the MPEG2 transport stream. This is not the same as the number of CC errors (which would be the number of detected packet losses and not the packet count).

sum(RTPdrop) Number of RTP packets dropped.

IPTV(Last minute)

Selecting IPTV(Last minute) shows parameters that are updated for each poll (i.e. each minute).

Parameter Description

Signal

For how long the probe has been receiving a signal for this stream. This is the same as the time since the last no-signal error second.

cur(Max-IAT)

The peak delay factor during the last minute. This is the same as the peak IAT during the last minute and is a measure of how much jitter is present in the signal.

cur(Max-bitr) Peak bitrate during the last minute.

cur(Min-bitr) Lowest bitrate during the last minute.

ETR

Selecting

ETR

displays all ETR derived error second (DES, see description in next section) parameters measured by the probe during the selected period (last 4 days, 24 hours or 60 minutes). VBC alarms are based on the error second parameters, and the severity of the corresponding alarm is indicated by the colored bulb by the parameter name.

Parameter Description

DES(etrPri1) Number of seconds with ETSI TR 101 290 priority 1 errors

DES(etrPri2) Number of seconds with ETSI TR 101 290 priority 2 errors

DES(etrPri3) Number of seconds with ETSI TR 101 290 priority 3 errors

DES(etrOther) Number of seconds with ETR 290 other errors

DES(etrIface) Number of seconds with ETR 290 interface errors

Measured %

Displays for how long the stream has been ETR 290 measured by the probe, shown as a percentage of the selected measurement period

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ES versus DES

For IPTV (Ethernet) streams that are continuously monitored the parameters are speciﬁed as ES(param) meaning the parameter reﬂects error-seconds directly. The ETR parameters are generally monitored round-robin, so to convert these measurements to error seconds per hour (or other time periods) they have to be extrapolated. For example, clicking the “60 minutes” for the ETR parameters will extrapolate all ETR measurements during the last 60 minutes so that they are comparable. As an example, if a stream is ETR monitored for only 3 minutes during the last 60 minutes, the number of error seconds measured during this 3 minutes period is multiplied by 20 and the Measured % parameter will show 5 (since 5 % of 60 minutes equals 3 minutes).

OTT

For OTT streams, selecting OTT in the drop-down menu gives the following parameters:

Parameter Description

ES(Transport) Number of seconds with OTT transport errors.

ES(Http) Number of seconds with OTT HTTP errors.

ES(Xml) Number of seconds with OTT XML errors.

The OTT error second counters listed above have corresponding VBC alarms.

Probes and Extractors with the OTT Active Testing license detect a large number of OTT errors and maps each into one of these general categories. This mapping can be seen by navigating to a probe’s OTT menu and clicking the Alarms tab in the pop-up window.

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4.6.3 Selected Stream Compare MediaWindow

Up to 10 probes can be compared in the

Selected stream compare MediaWindow

view. The high

resolution version is used when only two probes are selected.

From the MediaWindow graph it is possible to compare packet jitter and CC errors in the streams. By comparing graphs it is possible to locate where packet jitter is introduced and where packet loss occurs. Refer to the probe manuals for more information about MediaWindow measurements.

The range of the graph can be set to a maximum of 4 days. For smaller ranges the scroll buttons may be used. It is also possible to view the bitrate graph by clicking the

BW:MLR

button. When the

IAT:RTP button is clicked the graphs show packet jitter versus RTP packet loss.

It is the probes that draw the MediaWindow graphs inside frames created by the VBC. If the probes are not time synchronized (using NTP or TDT/TOT) the graphs may appear unaligned and the time labels may be wrong. Refer to K Appendix: Enable NTP time synchronization for more details.

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4.6.4 Selected Stream Compare ETR

Up to ﬁve streams may be compared across different probes and interfaces in the

Selected stream

compare ETR view.

Refer to the probe manual for a comprehensive description of the compare sub-views.

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4.6.5 Selected Stream Compare Streamdata

This view is available for all Ethernet IPTV streams, OTT and RF streams. The data source is the stream-data in the database. The history available depends on the settings found under the

tuning

link on the

About — System

page. The maximum history is two years. Note that the time

Disk

needed to generate this page depends primarily on the speed on the VBC server, the history window of the database and the number of streams selected.

For 4h and 24h intervals data is plotted with minute resolution, for larger intervals 1 hour spacing is used.

Clicking the legends will toggle the visibility of each graph.

The user can customize the graphs by making selections in the menu-bar below the graphs and clicking Update.

The data that can be plotted depends on the type of the stream monitored. The available settings are:

Graph type Available parameters

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Error seconds KPI (IPTV streams) Select among

• Error seconds no signal

• Error seconds media loss rate

• Error seconds inter arrival time

Error seconds bitrate (IPTV streams) Select among

• Error seconds bitrate overﬂow

• Error seconds bitrate underﬂow

Bitrates and DF (IPTV streams) Select among

• Max delay factor

• Maximum bitrate

• Minimum bitrate

Sum packet loss (IPTV streams) Select among

• Sum of media loss rate

• Sum of RTP drops

RF parameters (for RF interfaces) Select among

• Signal level

• Signal to noise ratio

• Modulation error ratio

Error seconds KPI (OTT streams) Select among

• Error seconds quality

• Error seconds availability

• Error seconds transport

• Error seconds http

• Error seconds xml

Select initial graph zoom: This speciﬁes the initial zoom for all the graphs after the Update has been clicked. Each graph can be adjusted individually afterwards.

Mark each sample: Emphasize each database sample so that it is easy to spot holes in the database when the stream was not monitored.

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4.7 Thumbs view

If one or more VB288 Objective QoE Content Extractors are conﬁgured as part of the VBC’s setup, the Thumbs view will present a thumbnail picture for each stream which is extracted.

The current stream status is indicated by the thumbnail picture’s frame color. The MicroTimeline stream bar presenting stream status for the last 4 days is the same as in the Stream view page.

The line just below the stream name indicates whether it is an IPTV stream or a OTT stream. A stream will occur as many times as it is extracted on VB288s. A stream will occur regardless of whether it is monitored by probes.

Clicking a stream name brings up the Stream view – Selected view.

The selectable stream groups are available in the Stream-group drop-down menu. The user selects whether all streams or only one stream group should be represented in the view. The stream groups are conﬁgured in the Main — Stream groups page.

The Sort drop-down menu allows stream sorting based on name, interface or current stream status severity.

The Filter ﬁeld allows the user to specify a text string; only streams where the stream name, multicast address or sites name matching the speciﬁed string will be displayed. This functionality is very useful to quickly locate a speciﬁc stream in a large system.

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4.8 Service view (Transport Stream Service View option)

In the optional

Service view

transport stream services are presented in alphabetical order as default. For each service the bulb shows the current status and the 96-pixel MicroTimeline stream-bar shows the status for the last 96 hours (i.e. 4 days). For services to be shown in the

Service view

the corresponding stream must be ETR 290 monitored in one or more probes and must have a service name signaled in the transport stream (in Service Description Table (SDT) for DVB systems or Virtual Channel Tables (VCT) for ATSC streams).

Note that the MicroTimeline is updated per stream and not per service. Thus all services that are part of the same stream will have the same MicroTimeline. The

Extended reports

functionality can generate service based PDF reports where the status is ﬁltered per service (and optionally aggregated over different sites).

Each bulb color corresponds to the aggregate status for all probes that belong to sites that the user has access to. The bulbs are updated every 60 seconds – which corresponds to the probe poll interval.

The service bars reveal any alarm that has been present during the last 4 days. The bars will automatically scroll one pixel to the left each hour with the rightmost pixels showing the status for the previous full hour. The bar color corresponds to the severity of alarms that have occurred.

The number of services presented on a page is only limited by the size of the display screen. Refreshing the screen after resizing the browser window will automatically ﬁll up all of the available screen area. If there are more services in a system than can be displayed in a single view the remaining services may be monitored by clicking the numbered links at the bottom of the page.

The user chooses to display all services in the system or limit the display to one service group. The selectable service groups are available in the Service group drop-down menu. The service groups are conﬁgured in the Main — Service groups page.

The Sort drop-down menu allows service sorting based on name, interface or current stream status severity.

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The Filter ﬁeld allows the user to specify a text string; only services with names matching the speciﬁed string will be displayed. This functionality is very useful to quickly locate a speciﬁc stream in a large system.

Clicking a service name brings up the service.

4.8.1 Service view — Thumbs

Selected Service View

, allowing further inspection of a

The

Service view — Thumbs

view is identical to the regular

Thumbs

view, except that individual

thumbs will be displayed for each service within an MPTS (Multi Program Transport Stream).

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4.8.2 Service view — Selected

The

Selected Service View

monitoring the selected service. If a probe monitors the same service for several inputs there will be one entry in the list for each interface.

lists MicroTimeline bars for all probes and interfaces that are ETR 290

Selecting one to ﬁve locations and clicking the

Compare ETR measurements for selected services

will open the Selected TS Service Compare ETR view.

Parameter Description

# The probe number

SID

The service ID of the monitored service. This can differ between different sites if the service ID is remapped in the system

Interface

The type of probe interface that carries the stream containing the monitored service

Stream The name of the stream carrying the service, as deﬁned in the probe

Stream last 96h

The MicroTimeline bar for the stream that contains the selected service for the given probe and interface

Now

A bulb indicating the current status for the stream that contains the selected service for the given probe and interface

Probe

A link to the

Blade

view for the probe that has performed the service measure-

ments

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4.8.3 Selected TS Service Compare ETR

Up to ﬁve transport stream services may be compared across different probes and interfaces in the Selected TS Service Compare ETR view.

Refer to the probe manual for a comprehensive description of the compare sub-views.

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4.9 Map

The map feature displays a geographic overview of blades that have a geographic location conﬁgured. Each blade is represented by a pin. The color of the pins shows the status of the devices.

Clicking a pin will display more information about that blade, such as name, site and IP and makes it possible to access the blade details.

The geographical location of a blade is conﬁgured in the Equipment view.

Note that the Map feature requires an Internet connection to reach the map server.

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4.10 RDP

The RDP view allows users to obtain control and overview of the RDP conﬁguration and RDP status of individual probes in a system. This makes it easy to avoid stream corruptions that might otherwise occur due to several probes forwarding a stream to the same destination address.

The return data path list shows the RDP conﬁguration of the probes in a system:

Return Data Path (RDP)

Parameter Description

[Start]

Click the

Start

button to start RDP forwarding for the corresponding

probe

[Stop]

Click the

Stop

button to stop RDP forwarding for the corresponding

probe

RDP

If RDP forwarding is active for a probe, the corresponding RDP ﬁeld will display a selection mark (v)

Site

The site associated with a probe. Click the site link to open the site view

Name The probe name. Click the probe name link to open the probe view

IP address The probe IP address

Engine

The probes have 2 independent RDP engines, this column shows the engine number

Forw. interface

Shows which probe ethernet interface the RDP stream will be used to forward the stream

Stream addr:port:SSM

The address of the stream to be forwarded. The format is IPaddress:port number:Source Speciﬁc Multicast

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Dest addr:port

The destination address that the stream should be forwarded to. The format is destination IP address:port number (interface gateway IP

address)

Active RDP

It is possible to deﬁne that only one RDP forwarding can be active at any time. Enabling RDP forwarding for a probe will then stop RDP forwarding for all other probes, to avoid possible stream interference due to several probes forwarding to the same address. Mark the checkbox and click the

Apply button to activate this functionality.

RDP probe settings – only Ethernet

It is possible to deﬁne and upload RDP settings to a probe. This is done by setting parameters, selecting a probe by highlighting a row in the RDP probe list and clicking the

probes

button. It is also possible to select several rows to upload identical settings to several probes.

Apply to selected

The RDP probe settings are:

RDP probe settings – only Ethernet

Parameter Description

Stream to forward: address: The IP address of the multicast or unicast to be forwarded

Stream to forward: port: The port number of the multicast or unicast to be forwarded

Stream to forward: SSM: The source IP address for a Source Speciﬁc Multicast

Destination: address: The RDP destination IP address

Destination: port: The RDP destination port number

Relay settings: Interface:

From the drop-down menu select the interface the RDP streaming should use: Data interface or Management in-

terface

It is also possible to copy probe settings to the RDP probe settings dialogue ﬁeld by highlighting a row in the RDP probe list and clicking the Update from selected probe button.

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4.11 RDW

4.11.1 RDW — Canvases

The

RDW — Canvases

logged in as

admin

view creates, edits, or removes canvases for the current user, or all users if

. Please refer to chapter 3 for more information on the Remote Data Wall feature.

You can ﬁlter the list of canvases by searching for name or owner in the Filter box.

Canvases

Name: Name of this canvas. Clicking the name opens the canvas conﬁgurator.

Owner: Name of the user who owns this canvas.

To create a new canvas, click the New Canvas button and enter the name of the new canvas.

To change the name or owner of a canvas, ﬁrst click the Edit button on the top right.

To remove a canvas, click the Remove button on the top right, then click the Remove button for the canvas you want to remove.

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4.11.2 RDW — Devices

The

RDW — Devices

lets the user change canvas, identify, or reload devices connected to its canvases. Please refer to chapter 3.2 for more information on how to connect devices to the Remote Data Wall.

There are four ways of ﬁltering the know devices.

All Devices show all devices that are, or has been connected to the server at one point.

Recent show all devices that are connected, or was disconnected within the last day.

Connected show all devices that are connected now.

Inactive show all devices that has been disconnected for more than one day.

Devices

Name: Name of this device.

Canvas to show: Name of the canvas to show on this device

Commands: Identify

displays the device name on the device.

Reload

forces the

device to reload the canvas

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Status:

Show the current status of the device, it can be Connected, Disconnected, or Inactive

Status Last Updated: Last time the device was connected

Auto reload: Show if and when the device will automatically reload

To change the name or reload time of a device, ﬁrst click the Edit button on the top right.

To remove old devices, click the the device you want to remove.

4.11.3 Canvas Conﬁgurator

Remove

button on the top right, then click the

Remove

button for

The

Canvas Conﬁgurator

lets the user conﬁgure a canvas by setting the size and color of the

background, adding and placing widgets, and more.

It has three main areas; the toolbar at the top of the screen, the canvas and widget options on the right of the screen, and the canvas itself, where the widgets are placed.

Toolbar

Function Button Key Description

Preview Eye F

Toggle preview mode, where you can see how the canvas

would behave on a client device

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Select and Move Cursor V

Pan Hand Alt

Zoom Zoom Z

This tool can be used to select one or multiple widgets. Click a widget to select it or drag a box to select multiple widgets. Holding the shift button while clicking adds or removes the clicked widget to the selection. To move the selected widgets, drag them in place, or use the arrow keys. Selected widgets can by copied with ing the

Delete

Ctrl+C

and pasted with

Ctrl+V

. Press-

key will delete all selected widgets from the

canvas. Click the canvas background to deselect everything.

By either selecting this tool, or holding

Alt

, you can click and

drag to move the viewpoint

This tool allows you to zoom in where you click. Holding

Shift while clicking will zoom out instead.

Add Widget Plus W

This tool lets you add new widgets to the canvas. Either click the widget you want, or type its name and press enter, then drag out a box for the widget. This adds the widget to the canvas, and to the current selection.

Text T T

With this tool selected, click a Textbox widget to be able to edit it. With text selected, press

Ctrl+B

to make it

bold

Ctrl+I to make it italic or Ctrl+U to make it underlined.

When changing widget options, only select one widget at a time. To change the options of the canvas, deselect all widgets.

Common options

Size and Position

W Sets the width of the widget or canvas

H Sets the height of the widget or canvas

X Sets the horizontal position within the canvas

Y Sets the vertical position within the canvas

Appearance

Fill Sets the background color

Border Sets the border color and width

Text Sets the text color

Canvas options

Grid

Snap To Grid Makes the widgets snap to the grid size set

Show Grid Makes the grid lines visible in the conﬁgurator

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Widgets

This shows a list of all widgets. They can be selected here, and if some widgets

are overlapping you can change the order in this list to change which will be rendered on top

Widget options

Plaque

Display Selects the position of the plaque. Off removes it

Text Sets the content of the plaque

Each widget has its own options which differ from widget to widget. To edit these, it is important to only select one widget at a time.

4.11.4 Web Widget

The web widgets allows for embedding any web page or image on the RDW canvas.

Options

URL URL to the web page or image to load

Scale Sets the zoom level of this page or image

Refresh Sets if and how often the page or image is reloaded

Allow scripts Sets if the page is allowed to run JavaScript

Allow progressive loading Sets if the page is allowed to download additional data

4.11.5 Textbox Widget

The Textbox widget can be used to add static text to the RDW canvas.

Options

Size Sets the font size

Alignment Sets the text alignment; either Left, Center, or Right

4.11.6 Thumbnail Widget

The thumbnail widgets lets you display updating thumbnails from your multicasts and OTT channels.

Options

Channel Select a Multicast stream or OTT channel to display thumbnails from

Service If the selected stream is a MPTS, you can select a speciﬁc service

Proﬁle

If you selected a OTT channel and multiple proﬁles are available, you can select one

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Size

Sets the size of the image, can either be Contain keeps the aspect ratio of the source, ﬁlling in black bars where needed, Cover resizes the image to make sure the image is fully visible, or Original displays the image in its original size

Loudness Turns on the selected audio meter for the selected channel, if available

4.11.7 Loudness Widget

The loudness widget displays audio values from your multicasts and OTT channels. It can either be a graph over the last couple of minutes, or a audio meter showing the current value. For a vertical meter, drag the box out high and thin. For a horizontal meter, drag the box out low and wide. For a graph, drag the box out high and wide.

Options

Channel Select a Multicast stream or OTT channel to display audio samples from

Service

If the selected stream is a MPTS or has multiple audio PIDs, you can select a speciﬁc service

Proﬁle

If you selected a OTT channel and multiple proﬁles are available, you can select one

Retention Sets how much data the graph should display

Scale Sets the where the graph or meter caps the values

Mode Sets if the meter should show RMS or LUFS values

4.11.8 Media Window Widget

The media window widget shows media window data from your multicast streams.

Options

Channel Select a Multicast stream to display media window data from

Plot Sets which of the three available plots to display

Retention Sets how much data the graph should display

4.11.9 Alarms Widget

The alarms widgets show the active VBC alarms, sorted by severity.

4.11.10 RF Graph Widget

The RF graph widgets can display RF data from your tuners.

Options

Channel Select a Tuning to display RF data from

Data to display Sets which data to display; Either CNR, MER, or Channel Power

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Unit Sets which unit to convert the values to

Scale Sets the where the graph caps the values

Retention Sets how much data the graph should display

4.11.11 Clock Widget

The clock widgets shows the time in the conﬁgured timezone.

Options

Clock type Sets what kind of clock to display

Timezone Sets which timezone this clock should display

Minute offset Sets the offset in minutes from the selected timezone

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4.12 Equipment

The

Equipment

provides a convenient way for the user to view each device’s conﬁguration and software version.

For each device the following information is available:

page lists important properties for all the blades that the user has access to. It also

Standard

# The table list number

Enabled If this table entry is checked the device is enabled in the VBC

Site

The name of the site that a device is assigned to. Note that a single device

may be assigned to several sites

Name

The name of the device, as speciﬁed by the admin user when adding a

device to a site

Type Type of device (‘probe’, ‘extractor’, ‘generator’ or ‘MDC’)

Ver The hardware version for this device, where available.

IP address The device’s IP address

SW-version The software version of the device

Conﬁg

The device’s conﬁguration can be viewed by clicking its View link. The

conﬁguration XML ﬁle may be saved for back-up and copying purposes

RF cards

Slot 1 The RF card present in slot one, if available

Slot 2 The RF card present in slot two, if available

License

HW Key The hardware key needed to generate licenses

License text A textual representation of the devices’ current license options

Resource

Uptime Time since device started

NTP sync Whether the device is syncing against a time-server

Time Current device time

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Temp Device’s temperature in Celsius

Disk free Current amount of disk free

Min df Minimum ever disk free (since power on)

Ram free Current amount of free memory

Min rf Minimum ever free memory (since power on)

SD free Available space on ﬂash card (if equipped with one)

Other

Description Description/Name as speciﬁed on device.

Location Location as speciﬁed on devices

Serial Serial number of device

Maintenance ends Date the software maintenance ends

Maintenance left Remaining time for software maintenance

The admin user has more options in the

Equipment

page than regular users. In addition to viewing conﬁgurations and software versions the admin can distribute conﬁgurations to several blades and perform batch software upgrades of probes and extractors.

The simplest way of performing a software upgrade of probes and extractors is by importing a software ﬁle (with .tea or .tea2 extension) via the then selecting the corresponding ﬁle from the drop-down selection list in the

Import device software image

Upload software to

pop-up view and

devices pop-up view.

Do not power off probes that are being software uploaded. If a probe is powered off during software upload it will need special service to recover. An alternative to importing a software ﬁle is to copy the software ﬁle directly to the This is typically achieved using the

/opt/btech/vbc/configs/vb2_software

scp

command in a terminal shell. The software ﬁle will then

folder on the VBC server.

become available for selection.

A number of check box ﬁltering options allow the admin user to view only selected devices in the equipment list, the alternatives are:

Show enabled,Show disabled,Show probes,Show

extractors and Show unassigned.

Note that auto-detected devices show up in the list as unassigned.

Click the

Add new device

button to manually add a device to the equipment list. This will open the

Edit device pop-up view.

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Edit device

IP address The device IP address

Name Type a device name that will be used throughout the VBC user interface

HTTP port Deﬁne the HTTP port to be used for the web trafﬁc

Site

From the drop-down menu deﬁne the site that the device should be associated with

Type From the drop-down menu deﬁne the type of device

URL

When a device of type Custom has been selected, it is possible to deﬁne a URL to access this device’s GUI

Location

By entering the geographical location of the blade here, it will be visible in the

Map

view. The location is entered as decimal degrees latitude and longitude, commaseparated, with positive numbers indicating north and east, respectively.

Enabled

Check the box to disable the device. This means that the device will not be active within the VBC GUI

When the new device has been deﬁned, click the

Apply changes

button. Click the

button to

close the pop-up view.

It may in some cases be useful to add one device to multiple sites. This can be done in by adding the same device IP address multiple times.

Highlighting an existing device and clicking menu described above. Make changes to the device as appropriate and click the

Edit selected devices

will open the Edit device pop-up

Apply changes

button.

Highlighting one or more existing devices and clicking the

Delete selected devices

button will delete

the device(s).

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4.12.1 Equipment — Device conﬁguration management

Copy settings between devices of same type

Clicking this link will open the

Copy settings between devices

pop-up view. The process of copying

settings between devices involves ﬁve steps:

1. Select source device

2. Select one or more destination devices

3. Click the Update list of available selections link

4. Select the groups of settings that should be copied

5. Perform the actual copying by clicking the Copy selected sections link

The VBC will determine which settings are compatible between devices and update the selection list accordingly.

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Copy stream list between any devices

Clicking this link will open the Copy stream lists pop-up view.

The stream (multicast) list is compatible between probes and extractors, and it is therefore possible to freely copy this list between these types of devices. Select source device and one or more destination devices and click the

Copy Ethernet streamlist to selected devices

link. Note that multicast join

information is not included in this copying process.

The status of the copying process can be viewed in the Status ﬁeld. Clicking the

View

link will open a

pop-up view providing additional status information.

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4.12.2 Equipment — Manual conﬁguration ﬁles

Import conﬁguration ﬁle

Clicking this link will open the

Import conﬁguration ﬁle

pop-up view. The conﬁg ﬁle can either be downloaded from another probe and uploaded without change or have been manually edited as described on the next page. Select the conﬁguration XML ﬁle to be imported and click the

Go!

button.

Upload imported conﬁguration ﬁle to devices

Clicking this link will open the Upload imported conﬁguration ﬁle to devices pop-up view.

Select the conﬁguration ﬁle to be uploaded and select the destination devices. Click the

conﬁguration ﬁle to selected devices

upload process can be viewed in the Status ﬁeld. Clicking the

link to perform the conﬁguration upload. The status of the

View

link will open a pop-up view

Upload

providing additional status information.

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Manualy editing the conﬁguration

It is possible to manually edit an XML conﬁguration ﬁle. Use a valid conﬁguration ﬁle (by clicking a

View

link of the

Equipment view

) and save it locally. Edit the ﬁle and make appropriate changes before saving it. Any CRC attribute in line 2 of the conﬁg ﬁle must be removed (i.e. remove text similar to

crc="b8a1fa3f"

). Import the ﬁle from the

Import conﬁguration ﬁle

view. The ﬁle will

then become selectable in the Upload imported conﬁguration ﬁle pop-up view.

Note:

Please make sure that the structure of the XML is not corrupted when manually editing the ﬁle.

Any syntax errors in the ﬁle will cause errors when the ﬁle is imported to the devices.

4.12.3 Equipment — Device software

Import device software image

Clicking this link will open the software ﬁle and click the Probe can all be imported using this dialog. Software ﬁles have .tea or .tea2 extensions.

Import device software image

Go!

button. Software images for VB1, VB2, VB3, VB288 and Software

pop-up view. Select the required

Upload software to devices

When the software ﬁle has been successfully imported, it will become available as a selection in the drop-down selection menu in the Upload software to devices pop-up view.

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Upload software to devices

Clicking this link will open the previously imported from the selection in the drop-down selection menu. Software image ﬁles located in the

Upload software to devices

pop-up view. Software image ﬁles

Import device software image ﬁle

pop-up view will be available for

/opt/btech/vbc/

configs/vb2_software folder will also be selectable.

The upgrade procedure will by default use HTTP to transfer the update image to the device; this requires access control to be disabled during the upgrade process, which is conﬁgured in the

— Login

view in the probe or VB288. If the device type allows it, it is also possible to use HTTPS;

Setup

this requires that the device is using software version 5.3 or later. For hardware probes it is also possible to use a procedure based on FTP and telnet; this requires the corresponding protocols to be enabled in the

Setup — Security

view of the probe and to be allowed in the network (not being

blocked by ﬁrewalls etc.).

If changing the access control or security settings of the target device is not possible, you will need to use the stand-alone software upgrade procedure as described in the User’s Manual of the speciﬁc product.

Select a software image from the menu and select one or more destination devices. Click the Software upgrade selected devices link to perform the upgrade. The status of the upgrade process can be viewed in the Status ﬁeld. Clicking the

View

link will open a pop-up view providing additional status

information.

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Do not power off devices that are being software upgraded. If a device is powered off during software upload it will need special service to recover.

Upgrading to a new major release requires a valid software maintenance license, please refer to I Appendix: Software Maintenance for more details. If the current software maintenance license does not cover the uploaded software version, the upgrade will be aborted and the current version is kept.

Click the Clear status link to clear the software upload status ﬁelds.

4.12.4 Equipment — Manage ﬁles

Manage uploaded software and conﬁg ﬁles

Clicking this link will open the list and click the

Delete selected ﬁles

Manage ﬁles

. Deleted ﬁles will no longer be available in drop-down menus

pop-up view. Mark ﬁles that should be removed from

throughout the menu system.

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4.13 Alarm setup

In the Alarm setup menu the admin can change the severity level for any alarm.

Changing the severity level for alarms will impact the color of bulbs, stream-bars and alarms. The alarm lists present all active alarms sorted on severity, with black alarms top and green alarms bottom. Setting severity level to

OK (green)

will make sure those alarms do not impact bulbs or stream bars

but they will still be present in the alarm lists.

The severity level is also used for the SNMP alarm list and traps.

The alarm setup menu also allows the admin user to conﬁgure the alarm window and alarm reset time for each VBC alarm.

An overall system controller like the VBC Controller should not raise instantaneous alarms, as this for a large system might lead to a multitude of alarms toggling on and off, leading to an untidy user interface difﬁcult to interpret. VBC alarms are therefore based on error second measurements summed over an alarm window period (sliding window). When the number of error seconds counted over the alarm window period exceeds the user deﬁned threshold for that alarm type the VBC will raise an alarm. The alarm window and alarm reset time for ‘No contact’, the VB288 Objective QoE Content Extractor alarms and the Archive server alarms are ﬁxed at 1 minute alarm windows. The default alarm window period is 1 minute for ‘No signal’ and 60 minutes for remaining alarms.

The alarm reset period is the number of consecutive minutes, without any new error seconds, needed to clear an active alarm.

Clicking the document links will open guides describing how to set thresholds for probes and the VBC. It is highly recommended to read these in order to correctly conﬁgure the alarm thresholds and alarm windows.

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4.13.1 Alarm setup — Message Fwd

The VBC allows the admin to customize how alarms are to be generated and forwarded to 3rd party systems, either by SNMP or by email.

Alarms to forward

Only those alarms that have and thus forwarded as traps. When the

SNMP forwarding

Monitoring

checked will be part of the VBC’s SNMP alarm list

alarm list is updated, the SNMP alarm list is also

updated if:

1. The alarm type has been selected for SNMP forwarding

The site that reports the alarm matches the selection in Site to use for SNMP alarms (selected in the Alarm setup — Message fwd — SNMP Traps view)

When the SNMP settings have been changed, the admin may want to rebuild the SNMP alarm list completely to get rid of alarms that are no longer relevant. This can be achieved by selecting Clear in the Clear alarm lists frame in the Main — General view.

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The VBC’s alarm MIB describes all the details of the trap and alarm lists formats. The MIB can be obtained from your Bridge Technologies reseller. The SNMP alarm list is only available through the SNMP MIB.

Alarms can also be forwarded by email to pre-deﬁned email groups. Deﬁne email groups using the

Email Groups

tab, and select the groups that are to receive the alarm in the

Email group

column of

the speciﬁc alarm.

One email will be sent per the VBC alarm. Alarm aggregation is not performed for the email alarms. It is possible to also include the blade alarms from the device causing the alarms in the email - this will contain more speciﬁc information about the alarms than what the VBC alarms does.

SNMP Traps

Sometimes it is desirable to switch off alarm aggregation for the SNMP traps in order to get more precise alarms. The drawback is that during alarm storms the VBC will end up sending hundred of traps instead of just a dozen.

Consider the case where there is one site with one probe monitoring 100 streams and there is a signal loss for all streams. If Enable trap aggregation is disabled there will be one trap per stream of the format “Sitename:Bladename No signal streamname”. If Enable trap aggregation is enabled there will only be only one alarm with format “Sitename:Bladename No signal Streams:100”. Thus enabling trap aggregation reduces the number of traps from 100 to 1 in this case.

User properties

Site to use for SNMP alarms:

Select which sites should generate alarm traps. By default all sites will be selected

Enable trap aggregation: Select if traps should be aggregated

Parameterize trap text:

When the

Parameterize trap text

check-box is ticked the VBC SNMP traps will be parameterized. Refer to separate documentation on trap text format

Trap dest 1–4: The IP address of the trap destination

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Email Groups

The

Email Groups

page lists the email recipients can be set up to receive SNMP alarms. The email

recipients are conﬁgured on this page and then selected on the Alarms tab.

A number of global parameters can be conﬁgured:

Mail queue parameters

Postpone mail send (sec)

Number of seconds to wait after alarm status has changed before sending email. A value of 180 should ensure that relevant bladealarms are included (if they have been enabled for the email group).

Number of attempts

Number of attempts to try to send email before deleting it from the queue.

Mail send interval (ms)

Minimum time between email-sending of alarms – to control network load.

Mail max age (sec)

Delete emails if they have been in the send queue for longer than this time.

Remember to click

Apply

after modifying the global email parameters for the new parameters to take

effect.

Click the

Add new

button to add a new email group to the list. This will open the

pop-up view.

Edit email group

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Email group

Group name

This names the email group so that it can be selected in the recipient dropdown.

Recipient list A comma-separated list of recipient email addresses.

Description A description of the group.

Message text A message to be included in every email.

Add blade alarms

If checked also relevant blade-alarms will be included in the email, otherwise only VBC alarms are included.

When the new email group has been deﬁned, click the

Apply changes

button. Click the

to close the pop-up view.

Highlighting an existing email group and clicking

Edit selected

will open the Edit email group pop-up

menu described above. Make the appropriate changes and click the Apply changes button.

Highlighting one or more existing email groups and clicking the

Delete selected

button will delete

the email group(s).

The settings for the outgoing email server is conﬁgured in Main — General view.

Please note that the alarm emails may end up being caught by spam ﬁlters. Please make sure that exception rules are added if needed so that these messages are not classiﬁed as spam. A correct mail server setup is needed in order to send out the alarm emails.

button

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4.13.2 Alarm setup — Scheduling

The VBC scheduling functionality allows alarm masking at stream level during selected time intervals.

Scheduling Setup

In this view the user can deﬁne time windows during which alarms for a selected stream will be suppressed by the VBC. This enables alarm masking at times when it is known that a stream would otherwise generate non-relevant alarms, e.g. at times when a stream is not transmitted. Clicking the

Add new

button will open the

Edit alarm scheduling

pop-up view, allowing the user to deﬁne a scheduling scheme and associate it with a stream. Existing scheduling schemes may be edited by highlighting it and clicking the

Edit selected

button. A scheme may be deleted by highlighting it and

clicking the Delete selected button.

The search ﬁeld in the upper right corner of the view enables ﬁltering on a text string; only list entries matching the speciﬁed text string will be visible.

Note that it is possible to associate more than one scheduling scheme for the same stream.

During times when a stream has alarm masking enabled, the stream’s MicroTimeline will be colored blue. Note that this applies to VBC stream scheduling only, and not to scheduling performed at probe or extractor level.

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The alarm scheduling applies to the PDF reports as well with the limitation that a complete hour H is completely ﬁltered if H:59 is ﬁltered, otherwise not ﬁltered at all. Hence if alarm scheduling is active at 13:59 for a stream, the report will mask all errors for that stream from 13:00 to 13:59.

The format of the scheduling period string is:

HHMM:HHMM,HHMM:HHMM

. As an example, mask-

ing errors from midnight to 6 in the morning and from 18.00 to 20.00 can be written as this:

0000-0600,1800-2200.

Parameter Description

Stream The name of the stream for which the scheduling applies

Comments A text string providing information about the scheduling scheme

Enabled An indication of whether the scheduling scheme is enabled or not

All days One or more scheduling periods that apply for all days during a week

Mon – Sun One or more scheduling periods that apply for the speciﬁed day

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Scheduling Overview

This view displays an overview of all scheduling deﬁned in probes and the VBC. VBC scheduling applies at stream level, whereas probe scheduling applies at PID or service level.

Note that all services and PIDs that are associated with service or PID threshold templates different from Default will be present in the scheduling list, irrespective of whether scheduling is actually enabled or not. If no scheduling applies for a service or PID present in the list, the corresponding

Scheduling template

of the

Scheduling template

ﬁeld will read Never. It may be a good idea to perform a column sorting

column (by clicking the column heading), this way grouping enabled

scheduling entries.

The search ﬁeld in the upper right corner of the view enables ﬁltering on a text string; only list entries matching the speciﬁed text string will be visible.

Parameter Description

Stream The name of the stream for which the scheduling applies

Interface The probe interface associated with the probe scheduling

Type The type of scheduling level: stream, service or PID

SID The service ID associated with a probe service scheduling scheme

PID The PID associated with a probe PID scheduling scheme

PID ignore

For a probe PID threshold template, scheduling is selected to apply for any of these errors: CC errors, missing PID, unreferenced PID or all errors. The

PID ignore

ﬁeld of the scheduling list displays which of these errors are associated with a scheduling template. If no scheduling applies for a PID in the schedule list, the ﬁeld will display all types of errors and the associated

Scrambling template

ﬁeld will read None. In the screenshot

above this applies for PID 101 in the stream CNN_EUROPE.

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Probe

Scheduling template

Scheduling The scheduling time window(s) during which alarms are masked

The IP address of the probe associated with the probe scheduling list entry

The probe scheduling template associated with the scheduling list entry (as deﬁned in the probe

Setup — Scheduling

view). If no scheduling is

enabled this ﬁeld will read None.

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4.14 Timeline (requires Archive Server)

The

Timeline

conﬁgure the Archive Server. Select the right hand pane.

view requires an Archive Server, please refer to chapter 4.23 for details on how to

Timeline

in the left hand menu, and the timeline should load in

4.14.1 Choosing what to inspect

To change which stream and service you are looking at, select the desired service from the drop down at the top left. Note that tracks that are already added will stay put to enable comparing services. If you do not want to have the old tracks there, click the small X in the top right of each track. You can ﬁlter which streams you see by typing part of the stream or service name into the ﬁlter box. The drop down should now only be populated by the matching streams or services. To clear the ﬁlter, just click on the X in the right hand part of the ﬁlter box.

In the bottom left you can select from which source you want to add tracks, and to the right of those you will ﬁnd the different types of data stored from the selected device.

To remove a track, press the X located at the top right of the track you want to remove.

Some tracks can be resized by clicking on the vertical arrows located under the close button for the track.

4.14.2 Navigating in time

To navigate in time you have two options. Back and forth in time, and zoom in / out.

To go back and forth it time you can select the desired time from the time and date picker located at the center top. The time and date picker is most useful for large jumps in time, like if you want to look at data from days/weeks/months back in time. Just select the correct date and time, and the timeline should automatically jump to that point in time.

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The buttons to the left and right of the timepicker let you move in small increments in both directions, and are most suited for smaller adjustments in time.

The last way to navigate in time is to drag the timeline in the direction you would want to move it. The timeline should smoothly glide with the dragging motion, and new data should pop up seamlessly.

To zoom in and out, use the + and – buttons located to the right of the ﬁlter box. Between the buttons the current zoom level is shown. The zoom level describes how much time is shown in one box.

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4.15 Reports

The fundamental measurements of the VBC reports are based on the parameters availability, quality and timing. The reports can be created for IPTV and OTT streams. To create reports for ETR measurements please use the Ext. Reports functionality.

IPTV (Ethernet) streams

Availability

Availability refers to the presence of a stream. An availability of 100% means that there have been no signal disruptions for the complete interval that a stream has been monitored. The no-signal error seconds are measured directly by probes as ES(nosig).

Quality

Timing

Availability

Quality

Quality refers to the packet loss affecting a stream. A quality of 100% means that there has been no packet loss during the interval that the stream has been monitored. The packet loss is measured directly by the probes as ES(MLR).

Timing refers to the timing of a stream. Timing is based on error seconds just like availability and quality. However a difference is that the value leading to timing error seconds is not a boolean type. While it is straight forward to determine signal loss and packet loss, determining timing issues requires comparing a jitter measurement against a user speciﬁed threshold for IPTV streams. A jitter error-second is thus determined by comparing the IAT measurement against the IAT threshold deﬁned as part of the Ethernet threshold template associated with the stream in the probe. Ethernet threshold templates are created in the probe’s Multicasts — Ethernet thresh. view, and it is associated with a stream in the Multicasts — Streams — Edit view.

OTT services

Availability refers to whether at least one proﬁle for an OTT service is present. Otherwise error seconds are calculated and the availability parameters will drop to a lower value.

Quality error seconds are counted if not all proﬁles for a OTT service are present. 100% means that all proﬁles are present all the time.

Timing Timing is not measured for OTT services in VBC version 5.4.

As an example, 10 error seconds during a period of 48 hours would be presented as 99.9942% for any of the parameters availability, quality or timing. The calculation is 100%

−

48×60×60

100 =

99.99942%.

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4.15.1 Reports — Manual Report

The

Manual report

below.

view allows the user to generate a report based on the parameters described

Note that parameter requirements for automatically generated reports are also speciﬁed in this view. Select the auto report period using the ‘Action’ drop-down menu and set the parameters.

Parameter Description

Site list Only probes belonging to selected sites will contribute to the report.

Stream selection

The user may select to generate a report containing all streams in the system or only streams associated with one stream group. The stream groups are conﬁgured in the Main — Stream groups page.

Interfaces

Chose to create a report for IPTV (Ethernet) streams, OTT services or both.

Preset

Allows the user to select between a number of pre-deﬁned report periods. The ‘Report from’ and ‘Report to’ ﬁelds are updated according to the selection. If the preset value Userdeﬁned is selected, the user may manually determine the report period.

Report from First date of the report. A report can span from 1 day to 2 years.

Report to Last date of the report.

Report detail level

Choose whether to generate a full report, a report containing only erroneous streams or a report containing only summary information. When the check box is marked, a help page will be included in the report.

Trend graph interval

The trend graphs show progress over time by averaging all measurements for the selected interval (day, week or month) and plotting these values over time. When the check box is marked trend graphs for all streams will be included in the report.

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Thresholds

Specify the availability, quality and jitter threshold percentages to be used in the report.

When all parameters have been selected the report is generated by clicking the button.

When editing the settings for a automatic report the button the button

Generate test report

will apply the settings and create a test report so that the settings

Apply changes

will save the settings and

can be tested.

4.15.2 Reports — Report list

Generate report

The report list menu provides a list of all reports that the logged-in user is allowed to view. The admin user has access to all reports while regular users can only view his own reports.

Newest reports will be presented at the bottom of the list (by default). Older reports with identical report parameters are removed when a new report is generated.

The status line at the bottom displays pending reports as well as terminated reports. A terminated report means that the report could not be generated likely because the report engine found an incomplete or inconsistent data set. Rather than doing a best effort report the report will be discarded and the ‘Terminated’ count increased. Click the

Fields. ..

button to select which ﬁelds should be

present in the report list. Click the Delete selected button to delete one or more reports.

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4.15.3 Reports — Auto reports

The VBC may automatically create reports daily, weekly or monthly, based on parameter requirements made by the user in the Manual report view.

If the enable daily report check-box is marked, a report will be created every day at time 00:01. Likewise generation of weekly and monthly reports can be enabled; the weekday and month day for

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the generation is speciﬁed by the user. Click the Apply changes button for changes to take effect.

Check the checkbox in the

Email report

row and enter the email address of a recipient, each of the checked report type will be emailed by their time of generation to the selected recipient(s). If there is more than one recipient, add a comma (‘,’) between the addresses.

The Auto reports conﬁguration will be individual to each user account registered on the VBC, so each user account may have its own conﬁguration of the auto extended reports. This can be used to have multiple daily reports emailed every night etc.

The parameters for the report is located under the Settings column, these are set in the Manual extended report tab by selecting the Edit for the appropriate report for the Action setting.

4.15.4 Reports — Import logo

In the Import logo tab the admin can import a custom logo that will be used in generated reports.

The aspect ratio of the logo should be OK inside the reports even if it is displayed with ﬁxed width and height in this view.

4.15.5 Reports — The PDF Report

The generated PDF reports contain the following information:

• Title page (page 1) describing who generated the report, report dates and contributing sites

•

The summary page (page 2) containing measurements and trending across all streams and the SLA thresholds

•

An optional help page describing the graphical elements of the report and showing the similarities between the VBC’s report graph and the probe’s MediaWindow graph

• The stream table listing all streams

• Per stream information (if requested) including optional trending graphs

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The PDF report title page

The company logo can be imported.

The PDF report summary pages

The summary information grid shows overall information.

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The SLA overview shows how the reported streams perform compared to the SLA threshold values. If the measured parameter value is better than the SLA threshold the bulb icon associated with the parameter bar is green, otherwise it is red.

The three trend graphs show how the parameter percentages develop over time. During each trend period (day, week or month) the number of error seconds are summed across all streams and the average is used to represent that trend interval. The labels are 100%, the user speciﬁed threshold and the all time low. If a measurement period is incomplete the associated value is indicated as a grey point located at the threshold line.

The threshold setting percentages are speciﬁed when the report is generated. This table also shows the corresponding number of error seconds for the entire reporting interval as well as for one day.

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The pie charts show how many streams fall below the threshold settings. In the above example there are 125 streams that are OK while 23 have an availability of less than the threshold setting. Hence

84.4% of the streams are OK with respect to availability.

The overall chart states how many streams are not affected at all – hence 113 of the streams are above the threshold settings for all parameters.

The stream table page lists all streams providing both error second and percentages for availability, quality and timing. The ES (time) values are an average based on measurements from all the probes monitoring the stream. The presented value is the total number of error seconds summed for each probe divided by the probe count.

A red bulb indicates that a parameter is outside the thresholds. The time the stream has been measured is stated, 100% means it was measured during the entire reporting interval. The number of probes that measured the stream is shown.

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Per stream page

The stream graph is a graphical representation of the parameters quality, availability and timing over time. For each sample period (the sample period will depend on the range of the report) a color code is used to indicate if any of the quality (blue), availability (green) or timing (brown) parameters were affected for the stream. So it is sufﬁcient for the stream to measure 1 error second during a speciﬁc sample period to color it accordingly. Conversely, the only way to have an all green bar is for the stream to measure 0 error seconds across the entire interval of the report. A grey color is used whenever no streams are measured. To the right of the stream graph are the status bulbs comparing the sum of error seconds against the user speciﬁed threshold.

For streams that are monitored on more than one probe, the average graph is drawn ﬁrst followed by elementary probe measurements. The average graphs (the stream graph and the three trend graphs) are derived by summing the error-seconds of the elementary probe measurements and dividing by the number of probes. This averaging is performed according to the stream graph resolution (refer to the summary information) for stream graphs and for each trending interval for trend graphs.

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4.16 Ext. Reports

The extended reports section gives the user the ability to generate reports based on the raw

Alarms

from the probes added to the VBC. These reports will provide information about ETR 290

Blade

alarm status as found on the ETR 290 section on a probe. The reports are based entirely on Probe ETR alarms, to get the alarm graphs “green” the ETR thresholds on each probe have to be changed.

Both the status of streams (MPTS or SPTS) as well as the individual services in MPTS/SPTS can be included in the report.

The reports can be created manually or automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and emailed to a list of recipients.

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4.16.1 Ext. Reports — Manual extended report

In the

action

section choose what type of report template should be modiﬁed (daily, weekly or

monthly) or select Generate Manual Report.

Press the check box for each site that should be included in the selected report.

Select which alarm data to be included in the report. To add checks drag either entire groups of checks or individual checks from the list of available checks on the right to the list of included checks on the left of the screen. The normal multi-select with Shift+Mouse or Ctrl+Mouse can be used. Checks which are added to a group will be plotted as one entity in the graph and the status of each check in the group is joined to produce one graph. If one of the checks are alarming in a period of time then the group will have an error in that period.

To add a custom group click the items and press

Delete

button. To rename an existing group double click the name of the group. It is

Add group

button. To delete a check or a group of checks select the

not possible to rename a check directly but the same effect can be achieved by adding a group and adding one single check to that group. This makes it possible for instance to plot ‘TS sync’ as ‘Signal availability’.

The dropdown can be used to select between the following presets:

Predeﬁned options for report data

All checks:

All the checks supported by the ETR 290 engine in probe are plotted, this includes checks not part of the ETSI TR 101 290 speciﬁcation. The checks are plotted individually.

All ETR 290 checks:

All the checks speciﬁed the ETSI TR 101 290 speciﬁcation. The checks are plotted individually.

All interface checks:

All of the interface checks such as signal level, MER, SNR and bit error rate. The checks are plotted individually.

All check groups:

This will plot the different check groups supported by the ETR 290 engine. The status of each check in the group is joined to produce one graph.

Groups for Finland: The checks grouped to ﬁt Finnish government regulations.

Select which stream group to generate the report for or select

[All streams]

to generate the report

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for all streams. Please note that if there are no streams in the speciﬁed stream group on the selected site the report will be empty. The stream groups are conﬁgured in the

Main — Stream groups

page.

Select which service group to generate the report for or select [All services] to generate the report for all services. For a stream report this will then show all streams containing the services listed in the service group. Please note that if there are no services in the speciﬁed stream group on the selected site the report will be empty. The service groups are conﬁgured in the

Main — Service groups

page.

Please note that you should specify either a stream group or a service group, not both at the same time.

The time span may be switched between the

last day

, the

last 7, 30 or 90 days

. Or the user may a

set a User deﬁned interval including up to 2 years of report data.

The level of detail can be switched between:

All streams

– This selection will display the status for all the streams monitored at the selected sites and display them individually. Generating such a report can take a long time and the number of pages may become high.

Merged streams

– This selection will generate a report where the data for the streams are merged. If the same stream is monitored at different probes/sites and/or at different interfaces on one probe the measurement results will be merged showing the overall status of the stream. If the monitored stream has errors at one probe it will become red in the merged stream graph.

All streams and services

– This selection will gather data from all of the streams and all of the

services that are a part of the transport streams.

Merged streams and services

– This selection generate a report based on all of the streams and

their services and merge it all into one section.

All services

– This selection will gather data from all of the services inside the monitored transport

streams.

Merged services

– This selection will gather data from all services in all of the monitored transport

streams and then merge the data together.

The entities in the report can be sorted in different ways. Select one of the following in the dropdown:

• Site -> Blade -> Interface -> Stream

• Stream -> Site -> Blade -> Interface

• Stream -> Interface -> Site -> Blade

Set the on percentage. If the selected report is of type a

error-second threshold

for the alarm checks in the extended report, the threshold is based

Manual extended reportorDaily, weekly or

monthly report the apply or generate button must be pressed for the settings to take action.

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4.16.2 Ext. Reports — Extended report list

The extended report list contains all the extended reports generated by the VBC; both the manually and/or automatically generated pdf documents. The list is split up into two tables that may be switched between by pressing the buttons; Manual extended reports or Automatic extended reports.

The ﬁelds in each table may be changed by pressing the

Fields..

button, if there is a ﬁeld that is not

important to have in the tables it can be removed by pressing the corresponding checkbox.

The ﬁelds shown in the table are generally the parameters entered in in the

Manual extended Report

tab, except for Job number and sites.

Job

– a value that gets incremented each time a report is generated this is a global variable for

Manual extended reports and Automatic extended reports.

Sites – the number of sites included in the report.

Press view to download and open the corresponding report.

4.16.3 Ext. Reports — Auto extended reports

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The automatic extended reports tab gives the opportunity to select when and how often the an extended report will be automatically generated.

Click the checkbox and select at what intervals the report should be generated, daily, weekly or monthly. For weekly reports the day of the week when the report are to be generated can be speciﬁed. Similarly for a monthly report the day of the month can be speciﬁed. The reports will be generated at

01.00 on the selected day(s).

Check the checkbox in the

Email report

row and enter one or more email address, separated by a

comma. Each generated report will be emailed to the selected recipient(s).

The parameters for the report is shown under the Settings column, these are set in the Manual extended report tab by selecting the Edit for the appropriate report for the Action setting.

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4.16.4 Ext. Reports — PDF Report

The PDF report title page

The front page of the PDF report, a company logo may be imported.

The PDF report summary page

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This page of the extended report shows a short summary about the speciﬁc report, sites and SLA thresholds.

The SLA thresholds shows what ETR parameters that are being monitored, how many corresponding error-seconds for the number of days speciﬁed and corresponding error-seconds for 1 day. If the checks are added into one groups then this page will show which probe alarms are used for each of the groups.

The PDF report Alarm-graph page

The alarm-graph is similar to the ones found in the ETR 290 section on each probe, if there was a No TS sync at some part of the day. The alarm-graph will be red at some point. The alarm-graphs will show entire streams or single services depending on what selected in the Manual extended report section. Alarms that are grey all the time are disabled in the probe. When generating the report it is possible to omit checks which are not of interest or to group several checks together.

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4.16.5 Ext. Reports — Alarm poll and report status

The alarm poll and report status section will provide information about the last report generation from the VBC, if a device was unreachable or the VBC succeeded in getting the alarm, this section will tell what went wrong or not.

Alarm poll and report status

#: Number of the blade

Blade type: Device type, either probe or extractor

IP address: The IP of the selected device

Uptime: Uptime in minutes

Seq no: Sequence number of the last alarm message received

Last alarm poll time: What the time was when the VBC fetched the alarm list from the device

Alarm poll status:

Status of the alarm poll, did the VBC manage to fetch the alarm list from the device

Last report:

When was the latest report data generated for the selected device. This should normally be done once every hour

Report gen. status: Provides information on the status of the last report data generation

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BridgeTech vbc VBC User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Contents

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Sites and Blades

1.2 Users and Access

1.3 How to Use This Manual

2 INSTALLATION AND INITIAL SETUP

2.1 System Requirements

2.2 First-time Installation

2.3 Deploying in a Virtualized Environment

2.4 Verifying Correct Initial Setup and Software Activation

2.5 Initial Setup Troubleshooting

2.6 Upgrading From a Previous Version

2.6.1 Using an Installation Script

2.6.2 Using Software Activation

2.6.3 Using a full reinstall

2.7 Accessing the User Interface

2.9 License Details

3 REMOTE DATA WALL

3.1 Introduction to the Remote Data Wall

3.2 Accessing the Remote Data Wall

4 THE VBC GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE

4.1 Login

4.2 Live

4.3 Monitoring

4.3.1 Monitoring — Top Level

4.3.2 XML Alarms

4.3.3 Monitoring — Site

4.3.4 Monitoring — Blade

4.4 Blade alarms

4.5 Graphics view (Graphics option)

4.6 Stream view

4.6.1 Stream names, class and interface

4.6.2 Stream view — Selected

4.6.3 Selected Stream Compare MediaWindow

4.6.4 Selected Stream Compare ETR

4.6.5 Selected Stream Compare Streamdata

4.7 Thumbs view

4.8 Service view (Transport Stream Service View option)

4.8.1 Service view — Thumbs

4.8.2 Service view — Selected

4.8.3 Selected TS Service Compare ETR

4.9 Map

4.10 RDP

4.11 RDW

4.11.1 RDW — Canvases

4.11.2 RDW — Devices

4.11.4 Web Widget

4.11.5 Textbox Widget

4.11.6 Thumbnail Widget

4.11.7 Loudness Widget

4.11.8 Media Window Widget

4.11.9 Alarms Widget

4.11.10 RF Graph Widget

4.11.11 Clock Widget

4.12 Equipment

4.12.3 Equipment — Device software

4.13 Alarm setup

4.13.1 Alarm setup — Message Fwd

4.13.2 Alarm setup — Scheduling

4.14 Timeline (requires Archive Server)

4.14.1 Choosing what to inspect

4.14.2 Navigating in time

4.15 Reports

4.15.1 Reports — Manual Report

4.15.2 Reports — Report list

4.15.3 Reports — Auto reports

4.15.4 Reports — Import logo

4.15.5 Reports — The PDF Report

4.16 Ext. Reports

4.16.1 Ext. Reports — Manual extended report

4.16.2 Ext. Reports — Extended report list

4.16.3 Ext. Reports — Auto extended reports

4.16.4 Ext. Reports — PDF Report

4.16.5 Ext. Reports — Alarm poll and report status