Multicast stream monitoring tools
Hello folks!We have an issue with some multicast streams. For some reason picture is very unstable in evening, during internet usage peak times. We have had monitor our links and uplinks and there wasn't any oversubscribtion. I looking for usefull multicast stream monitoring tool now. Any suggestion?Thank you!
Hi, On Mon, 25 Jan 2016, Murat Kaipov wrote:
Hello folks!We have an issue with some multicast streams. For some reason picture is very unstable in evening, during internet usage peak times. We have had monitor our links and uplinks and there wasn't any oversubscribtion. I looking for usefull multicast stream monitoring tool now. Any suggestion?Thank you!
one of my customers had issues with their iptv distribution and we consulted this guy. http://lutz.donnerhacke.de/Blog/Ueberwachung-von-Fernsehen-IPTV The solution he has, subscribes iptv channels on monitoring boxes and uses all kinds of heuristics to look into not just the packates but also the video inside the multicast streams. It turned out that in the specific customers case packet reordering was the issue which was easily eliminated. Hacing monitoring in place is also great for finger pointing issues where you want to prove that it's not your network but the tv station screwing up the signal. Greetings Christian -- Christian Kratzer CK Software GmbH Email: ck@cksoft.de Wildberger Weg 24/2 Phone: +49 7032 893 997 - 0 D-71126 Gaeufelden Fax: +49 7032 893 997 - 9 HRB 245288, Amtsgericht Stuttgart Mobile: +49 171 1947 843 Geschaeftsfuehrer: Christian Kratzer Web: http://www.cksoft.de/
On 25/Jan/16 10:48, Murat Kaipov wrote:
Hello folks!We have an issue with some multicast streams. For some reason picture is very unstable in evening, during internet usage peak times. We have had monitor our links and uplinks and there wasn't any oversubscribtion. I looking for usefull multicast stream monitoring tool now. Any suggestion?Thank you!
EXFO. It will cost some money, but is worth it. Mark.
On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 12:48:47 +0400 Murat Kaipov <mkaipov@outlook.com> wrote:
Hello folks!We have an issue with some multicast streams. For some reason picture is very unstable in evening, during internet usage peak times. We have had monitor our links and uplinks and there wasn't any oversubscribtion. I looking for usefull multicast stream monitoring tool now. Any suggestion?
If it is not capacity saturation, it may have something be membership stability. Not knowing anything about your IP multicast configuration, it is impossible to say anything concretely with certainty This is to say however, you may want to also be sure to monitor membership, interface, port, PIM, ..., states. All the way down to spanning tree recalculation, you may not notice it with unicast, but anything that might prevent a stream from being forwarded due to a join state disruption are sometimes the causes of these types of events. It is a bit old and may not be the latest copy, but here is a copy of Bill Nickless' very handy troubleshooting methodology you should have handy: <https://nets.ucar.edu/nets/docs/procs/troubleshooting/troubleshooting-multicast.pdf> Unfortunately there isn't much in that paper about Layer-2 related issues as I alluded to above, but hopefully it gets you part of the way there. John
If you are in the Video content delivery business using mcast then these folks are one of the leaders. You can put multiple probes and make sure your mcast coming off source is solid, through the core router solid, and at the edge... http://www.ineoquest.com/ they are not cheap but worth every dollar -----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of John Kristoff Sent: Monday, January 25, 2016 8:19 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Multicast stream monitoring tools On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 12:48:47 +0400 Murat Kaipov <mkaipov@outlook.com> wrote:
Hello folks!We have an issue with some multicast streams. For some reason picture is very unstable in evening, during internet usage peak times. We have had monitor our links and uplinks and there wasn't any oversubscribtion. I looking for usefull multicast stream monitoring tool now. Any suggestion?
If it is not capacity saturation, it may have something be membership stability. Not knowing anything about your IP multicast configuration, it is impossible to say anything concretely with certainty This is to say however, you may want to also be sure to monitor membership, interface, port, PIM, ..., states. All the way down to spanning tree recalculation, you may not notice it with unicast, but anything that might prevent a stream from being forwarded due to a join state disruption are sometimes the causes of these types of events. It is a bit old and may not be the latest copy, but here is a copy of Bill Nickless' very handy troubleshooting methodology you should have handy: <https://nets.ucar.edu/nets/docs/procs/troubleshooting/troubleshooting-multicast.pdf> Unfortunately there isn't much in that paper about Layer-2 related issues as I alluded to above, but hopefully it gets you part of the way there. John
On 25/Jan/16 16:41, Robert Jacobs wrote:
If you are in the Video content delivery business using mcast then these folks are one of the leaders. You can put multiple probes and make sure your mcast coming off source is solid, through the core router solid, and at the edge... http://www.ineoquest.com/ they are not cheap but worth every dollar
When evaluating Ineoquest against EXFO a couple of years at ago at previous employer, EXFO came out shining. I'll give Ineoquest another chance next time I'm running an IPTV network and see how far they've come since then. Mark.
hey,
If you are in the Video content delivery business using mcast then these folks are one of the leaders. You can put multiple probes and make sure your mcast coming off source is solid, through the core router solid, and at the edge... http://www.ineoquest.com/ they are not cheap but worth every dollar
I can recommend http://www.agama.tv/ We use it for general purpose monitoring but not so much for interactive debugging. Shameless plug: for debugging I wrote https://github.com/tarko/CCmon some years ago and it works great. Wanted to have alternative to all windows based software out there that will just report number of CC errors but will not support multiple streams (or copies of the software running), will not produce useful logs for correlation etc. -- tarko
On 25 January 2016 at 10:48, Murat Kaipov <mkaipov@outlook.com> wrote: Hey,
Hello folks!We have an issue with some multicast streams. For some reason picture is very unstable in evening, during internet usage peak times. We have had monitor our links and uplinks and there wasn't any oversubscribtion. I looking for usefull multicast stream monitoring tool now. Any suggestion?Thank you!
How are you monitoring this for oversub? SNMP graphs for pps/bps are not useful nor his looking at CLI pps/bps counters. You should monitor if there are queue drops on egress. If possible also monitor queue length, but not all platforms offer this information. My friend Occam says you're probably dropping packets. You could also subscribe to the stream with monitoring PC which runs something like this https://github.com/tarko/CCmon -- ++ytti
Yes, it is may be effect of microburst in our network or in link between our ISP and TV carrier.Thank you.
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 18:23:54 +0200 Subject: Re: Multicast stream monitoring tools From: saku@ytti.fi To: mkaipov@outlook.com CC: nanog@nanog.org
On 25 January 2016 at 10:48, Murat Kaipov <mkaipov@outlook.com> wrote:
Hey,
Hello folks!We have an issue with some multicast streams. For some reason picture is very unstable in evening, during internet usage peak times. We have had monitor our links and uplinks and there wasn't any oversubscribtion. I looking for usefull multicast stream monitoring tool now. Any suggestion?Thank you!
How are you monitoring this for oversub? SNMP graphs for pps/bps are not useful nor his looking at CLI pps/bps counters. You should monitor if there are queue drops on egress. If possible also monitor queue length, but not all platforms offer this information. My friend Occam says you're probably dropping packets.
You could also subscribe to the stream with monitoring PC which runs something like this https://github.com/tarko/CCmon
-- ++ytti
participants (7)
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Christian Kratzer -
John Kristoff -
Mark Tinka -
Murat Kaipov -
Robert Jacobs -
Saku Ytti -
Tarko Tikan