Bridge Premises Probe Gets OTT Analytics

Bridge Technologies has begun shipping an enhanced version of its microVB miniaturized digital media probe for subscriber premises. It combines the ability to report second-by-second data on all traffic passing through the set-top box with new functionality for analyzing OTT service quality.The microVB 2.0's OTT capabilities make use of specialized parameters developed by Bridge Technologies for monitoring adaptive bitrate streams. The device offers a protocol breakdown of all packets flowing between the residential gateway and the set-top box. Performance details such as peak, average and total bandwidth are given for all the packets categorized into 25 separate protocol summaries. The data is graphically represented.Each central microVB server can support thousands of microVB probes in individual subscriber premises. The premises probe self-connects to the server using either multicast or unicast protocols and automatically names each stream. Up to four simultaneous streams can be supported by each probe, with each stream measuring continuous data including bandwidth, media loss rate, inter-packet arrival time, and RTP drops. The microVB sends the collated data to Bridge Technologies' MDC controller/server for analysis and graphical presentation. All data are made available in XML format by the MDC to allow customized analysis by third-party systems.