Next Stream Ltd. Company Blog

We are coming to a success. With some help and lots of work we are hammering problem after problem. We have stable playback on our set-top-boxes. Some modules are still rough around the edges, but the whole system is shaping up. Anyway, we can present Telco/ISP oriented, prototype IPTV system, capable of Multicast and Unicast video distribution. What is more important, flexible enough to adapt to the needs of any Internet Service Providers or Telecoms.

Our IPTV design currently consists of several layers and a number of modules:

• Video Data Acquisition
• Media Library
• User Management
• Load-balanced Content Distribution
• Theme-able User Interface
• HD-enabled Customer Premises Equipment

Basic prototypes of all of the above are present and working. Our work is focused on what I can describe as “commercialisation” of the particular products. We are fixing bugs, adding relevant features. Making devices and appliances user-friendly and intuitive is a main goal. We understand that the packaging sells. We want our customers happy.

But it is not all bells and whistles. We are fighting every day with the lack of standardisation in IPTV. Many protocols exist. Many hardware and software vendors. And all of them usually interpret every protocol in different way. Which is worse, many IPTV related protocols make room for disambiguations. It is usually, up to the implementor to decide how te deal with this. And most implementors do so they favour particular device or manufacturer. Which breaks compatibility, which requires dirty workarounds in the code.

Well, the RFCs give you freedom. They actually let you create unique product. When we speak of IPTV, they even let you break compatibility with proprietary extensions. But please, do know what you are dealing with, and please, do it right. One of my recent findings was that a big IPTV company “extends” particular IPTV related protocol with encapsulation of XML data in the payload. And I can find some logic in this. XML is, de facto, the standard for data representation these days. XML is well understood. XML is wide-spread. Many libraries exist to work with XML content.

What I don’t understand is how you can ship a product that works with malformed XML. And further more, why  would this product refuse to work with correct XML ?!

Please, make all our lives easier. Obey the standards !

Management Advertising, General, Tech

Wireless networks (Wi-Fi) surround us for many years. Yet it is surprising how little progress was made. Yes, we have 802.11i, we have 802.11g and 802.11n, but with all the nettops out there, simple wireless infrastructure is not enough. Most service providers use long-range wireless networking for low cost links, sometimes for redundancy. It is hard to cover big areas.

Really ?!

This is what we try to address with one of our projects. We have implemented complete wireless mesh solution and several of its advantages include:

• Unlimited scalability: Unlimited number of nodes. Whenever new area has to be covered, nodes can be added at will.
• Easy to use: One firmware image is enough. Just install our firmware, power the node and that’s it. Every new node will connect to the mesh and start serving as an access point to the potential clients.
• Powerful Monitoring: Every node reports its current network and health status to a centralized monitoring point.
• Powerful NOC Subsystem: You can monitor all your nodes from a single point, check their status and load. Even integrate terrain maps and node location into a specialized GIS.
• Powerful User Management: We provide centralized user management interface with the ability to create multiple user classes and apply restrictions instantly throughout the whole network. Once created, the user account is active, no matter which access point user tries to connect to.
• Flexibility: Our Wireless System works with broad variety of back-end sources and technologies. It can easily be integrated within a telecoms or ISP systems.
• Dynamic Routing: We use state-of-the-art dynamic routing protocols like OLSR and B.A.T.M.A.N. to provide reliable mesh infrastructure.
• Multipoint connectivity: Whenever you need redundancy or load balancing just add another connection to upstream provider. The whole mesh network will benefit from that. Dynamic Routing will take care to forward traffic to active uplinks until others are being repaired and best of all, no users will be affected.

What we are most glad of is that all those things are no longer on the drawing board. Our software empowers rapidly growing wireless service providers in Asia and Europe.

Management Advertising, Tech