The ANSI/SCTE 168 series of Recommended Practices describe IP video networks at MSO Headend, Core, and Hub networks. While all these configurations carry media over IP, the video flow types and distribution, link speeds, and possibly QoS policies are different at various locations. Different mixes of traffic types such as VoIP and data may be present in some locations and not in others. The recommended baseline tests in this document are intended to represent the operation of network devices in these three applications. These baseline tests provide a common set of reference results that can be used to preliminarily screen equipment and configurations during the selection, configuration, and deployment process. They will provide results to determine if the equipment under consideration provides a level of performance that is “in the ballpark” of that intended for an application. The test results indicate a per-program availability for extended “soak” tests of long term delivery of a number of realistic simultaneous video flows. They will also indicate how program availability will be affected by certain types of common realistic network events often experienced in operating complex live networks. Devices that take longer to recover from faults, that cannot accommodate simultaneously arriving persistent packet stream packets, experience crashes, or occasionally lose data for whatever reasons will fare less well in these tests compared to designs and configurations that are optimized for high availability.
ANSI/SCTE 175 2017 (R2021)