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Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

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Re: Fiber for building [Consultants welcome]

said by Guspaz:

Neither. Direct to their IPTV customers.

That's not "neither" - that's retail. As in what their customers pay to purchase a box from them to use.

Contrast this with wholesale, which is what Zazeen pays for the boxes for the purpose of resale to those customers.

pstewart
Premium Member
join:2005-10-12
Peterborough, ON

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said by yyzlhr:

IPTV boxes are a lot cheaper than STBs with QAM tuners. Also the head end equipment is far less complicated with IPTV.

They are about the same depending on models/specs. Head end less complicated with IPTV - how do you figure that?
yyzlhr
join:2012-09-03
Scarborough, ON

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You'll never derive the true cost by comparing the prices that the MSO charge. For example, Rogers charges $320 for the exact same box that Videotron sells for $99.

I think a more fair comparison would be TiVo. TiVO PVRs are about $200 to start but their IP only STB is only $100 to start.

Also with QAM STBs, you'll have to pay a company to license their middleware. With IPTV set top boxes there are a myriad of low cost and even free options to choose from.
yyzlhr

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said by pstewart:

said by yyzlhr:

IPTV boxes are a lot cheaper than STBs with QAM tuners. Also the head end equipment is far less complicated with IPTV.

They are about the same depending on models/specs. Head end less complicated with IPTV - how do you figure that?

With QAM you need modulators to modulate the signals and send them out to your end users. The more channels you carry on your system, the more modulators you'll buy. You also have server racks that run the middleware software and all the backend tools.

With IPTV, pretty much everything is handled by a bunch of servers. With the power output of modern servers, the amount of rack space required would likely be a lot less than all the rack space you'd need for all your QAM modulators.

pstewart
Premium Member
join:2005-10-12
Peterborough, ON

1 recommendation

pstewart

Premium Member

said by yyzlhr:

said by pstewart:

said by yyzlhr:

IPTV boxes are a lot cheaper than STBs with QAM tuners. Also the head end equipment is far less complicated with IPTV.

They are about the same depending on models/specs. Head end less complicated with IPTV - how do you figure that?

With QAM you need modulators to modulate the signals and send them out to your end users. The more channels you carry on your system, the more modulators you'll buy. You also have server racks that run the middleware software and all the backend tools.

With IPTV, pretty much everything is handled by a bunch of servers. With the power output of modern servers, the amount of rack space required would likely be a lot less than all the rack space you'd need for all your QAM modulators.

I'm not sure what you are getting your information but IPTV is a lot more than a "bunch of servers". It all depends on how you are designing your headend to operate and how much of the "functions" you are doing in-house.

For me I found the transition to IPTV much more involved and a lot more "moving parts" in the system than a traditional headend. It's a very complex system to understand and operate.

Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

Gone

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Not only that, but anyone who uses a free or low cost solution just for the sake of it being free or low cost that lacks any sort of support in a production environment is an idiot.
yyzlhr
join:2012-09-03
Scarborough, ON

yyzlhr

Member

Vmedia doesn't license any middle ware. They did this on purpose to keep costs down.

pstewart
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join:2005-10-12
Peterborough, ON

pstewart

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said by yyzlhr:

Vmedia doesn't license any middle ware. They did this on purpose to keep costs down.

We are confusing terminology here. I can't comment on VMedia and how they are deployed but unless I'm mistaken they are doing unicast delivery using "over the top" video distribution within a "closed network".

This is much different from the traditional IPTV model which uses multicast delivery for the video streams.

Each model has different options for controlling/managing the STB's

Gone
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Fort Erie, ON

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said by yyzlhr:

Vmedia doesn't license any middle ware. They did this on purpose to keep costs down.

They also only encode video at 1.5-1.7Mbit/s with 2.0 audio. They did a lot of things to keep costs down. You get what you pay for.

Guspaz
Guspaz
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join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC

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Zazeen's bitrates are higher, if memory serves (quality was decent when I tried it) and they do lease middleware.

Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

Gone

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Yes, I was for going to point out that Zazeen is doing it in a better way, and it is reflected in the quality of their offering versus their nearest competitor. I believe they're doing ~4mbit which is the same as Bell satellite and they also pass through full 5.1. For these reasons I would sign up for service from Zazeen, but the same cannot be said for Vmedia.
yyzlhr
join:2012-09-03
Scarborough, ON

yyzlhr

Member

Yep Zazeen licenses the Minerva platform which is used by many small to medium sized IPTV providers. It was also used by Telus when they first launched IPTV.

Vmedia on the other hand built their own solution on top of Android and doesn't have to pay any licensing fees. It's not as refined as Minerva but it's still a fully functional product. Also the bitrate has nothing to do with the choice of middleware.

It would be very difficult to pull of what Vmedia did on QAM based STBs. With IPTV there are so many manufacturers to choose from which again keeps costs down, and also there are a lot more SoC options when it comes to IPTV boxes so you have a lot more flexibility with the type of experience you want to deploy and the cost of deploying that experience.

Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

Gone

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said by yyzlhr:

Also the bitrate has nothing to do with the choice of middleware.

Duh? My entire point is that everything they have done has been done to be cheap. And as I already said, you get what you pay for.
aereolis
join:2003-06-12
Brampton, ON

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Since you are paying for all the fishing of this stuff, it's advisable to think about the future too. With bringing only one ethernet line to each unit if one day rogers want's to come in, you'll have to go through this exact same thing all over again! If you put in a multiple core fiber to each unit, say 4. One for bell, one for robbers two for you and then just don't terminate the ones you don't use but have them in place, and it means future proofing yourself. The biggest part of fiber costs these days are in the labor parts, fusion splicing and installing the connectors. Not the costs for the fiber cables them selves. The costs per foot for fiber are getting very near the same now as coaxial or twisted pair (carrier grade coaxial, tri-shield with proper braid, same for tp). Even if you went with having the ethernet installed in the end, it would be advisable to pull a 4-6 count fiber to each unit at the same time for future-proofing. Just ensure you use the right fibers, these days rogers is using single mode on 9 micron fibers.

elwoodblues
Elwood Blues
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join:2006-08-30
Somewhere in

elwoodblues

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Why would I pay so Robbers and/or Bell save money?
btech805
join:2013-08-01
Canada

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From my understanding, backhauling with Atria can be quite expensive on a month to month basis. However if you were to provide 100mbps to each of the 32 units, and charge the going rate for it it could be quite profitable to you. It would of course have to be slightly cheaper than say Rogers or Bell, or any other TPIA of course offering similar speeds. My suggestion would certainly be to run ethernet to the units, where the tenants could then utilize their own or a supplied wireless router. The cost of running fiber to the units and the added equipment (and space) is not worth it. Especially at 32 units, I highly doubt distance would be an issue. You could also more accurately control speeds to each unit based on what the tenant is paying for with a managed switch in the basement of the building, feeding the cat6 risers.

Depending on where you are in Ottawa though, Bell is beginning brownfield FTTH deployments in SFUs and MDUs, with most of the MDUs scheduled to be upgraded over the winter.

elwoodblues
Elwood Blues
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join:2006-08-30
Somewhere in

elwoodblues

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I thought Rogers or was it Shaw? bought Atria.

BACONATOR26
Premium Member
join:2000-11-25
Nepean, ON

BACONATOR26

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Rogers bought Atria. For all intents and purposes it is now Rogers Business.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

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said by pstewart:

Sure you can - but what would you put at the endpoints for management? There's obviously many different ways to deliver services - just saying that ONT/PON has many advantages (and costs).

When you have straight GbE from the comms-room router to each apartment, you can do all the traffic management from the router instead of the CPE.

pstewart
Premium Member
join:2005-10-12
Peterborough, ON

pstewart

Premium Member

said by InvalidError:

said by pstewart:

Sure you can - but what would you put at the endpoints for management? There's obviously many different ways to deliver services - just saying that ONT/PON has many advantages (and costs).

When you have straight GbE from the comms-room router to each apartment, you can do all the traffic management from the router instead of the CPE.

I understand but there can be more that just traffic management - there can also be service management (depending on the deployment model). This discussion sounds like a 32 unit building for Internet only - a tough proposition to cover your costs.

What if you want to deliver multiple services with different levels of services and possibly multiple VLAN's (voice, video, Internet)?

Having an end-point device that you control adds cost but it also allows you to deliver multiple services and possibly cut down on support costs. For delivering just Internet service though, this is a tough sell.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

With Gigabit between the end-user's network and the ISP router, there is no bottleneck to do QoS over.

Provide a $50 unmanaged 5-8 ports GbE switch and tell the residents to plug their extra service devices into that. Most of these will pass VLAN tags just fine even though they provide no method to configure them but why bother with the extra complexity? Your router can intercept IGMP to control multicast groups and it can also intercept your VoIP server's address to redirect that traffic accordingly. The traffic for all popular N-play services is already easy enough to sort out without VLANs.

Alternately, provide nothing and make your VoIP, IPTV and everything else work through the resident's router using plain IPv4/v6. If residents have issues with any of their add-on services, tell them to connect the problematic device directly and if it works, blame their router... you would end up doing almost exactly the same troubleshooting even if you provided an ONT or other managed device anyway.

pstewart
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join:2005-10-12
Peterborough, ON

pstewart

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said by InvalidError:

With Gigabit between the end-user's network and the ISP router, there is no bottleneck to do QoS over.

There's a lot more to it than just providing a wide open Gig connection.
said by InvalidError:

Provide a $50 unmanaged 5-8 ports GbE switch and tell the residents to plug their extra service devices into that. Most of these will pass VLAN tags just fine even though they provide no method to configure them but why bother with the extra complexity? Your router can intercept IGMP to control multicast groups and it can also intercept your VoIP server's address to redirect that traffic accordingly. The traffic for all popular N-play services is already easy enough to sort out without VLANs.

There's so many problems with what you describe (from an ISP's perspective). This isn't about providing the customer with additional ports. It isn't about adding complexity - it's about simplifying and controlling the service delivery to the end customer.

If you passed along VLAN tags to a customer, how many folks will know what to do with them? Obviously some folks on these forums would but the other 99.9999% of customers won't.

How many residential customer routers have full multicast support in them? Even if you find one, then what would you do with that traffic - watch it on your computer with VLC? Then you are into STB management which for many reasons *has* to be managed by your provider (if it's IPTV specifically).
said by InvalidError:

Alternately, provide nothing and make your VoIP, IPTV and everything else work through the resident's router using plain IPv4/v6. If residents have issues with any of their add-on services, tell them to connect the problematic device directly and if it works, blame their router... you would end up doing almost exactly the same troubleshooting even if you provided an ONT or other managed device anyway.

Then you are talking about completely different services. VoIP vs POTS quality service delivered using IP, over the top video vs IPTV etc.

CFoo
join:2008-03-19
Nepean, ON

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It would be cheaper to run Cat6 to the unit compared to fiber. Your hardware and maintenance of the cable plant will be cheaper as well. Cat 6 will handle 10G up to 55m in a non-hostile alien crosstalk environment and 33m in a hostile alien crosstalk environment ie. if you run multiple 4-pair cables together and run 10G over them, then your limited to 33m. So it would be nice if you could setup a telecom room presence on each floor and distribute from there to each unit.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

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said by pstewart:

said by InvalidError:

Provide a $50 unmanaged 5-8 ports GbE switch and tell the residents to plug their extra service devices into that.

There's so many problems with what you describe (from an ISP's perspective). This isn't about providing the customer with additional ports. It isn't about adding complexity - it's about simplifying and controlling the service delivery to the end customer.

If you passed along VLAN tags to a customer, how many folks will know what to do with them? Obviously some folks on these forums would but the other 99.9999% of customers won't.

What extra complexity? Dumb unmanaged switches pass VLAN tags along with absolutely no user intervention or configuration. They plug it in, it works - they blindly pass it through based on MAC table learning like all other Ethernet traffic.

Since your IPTV and VoIP devices are on a naked connection from that dumb switch to your ISP-grade router, you can access them directly for management and all the residents need to know is that their IPTV and VoIP boxes plug in the ISP-supplied box that plugs into the suite's internet feed.
said by pstewart:

Then you are talking about completely different services. VoIP vs POTS quality service delivered using IP, over the top video vs IPTV etc.

What difference?

"Segregating" traffic over the same wire with VLAN tags makes no difference when traffic gets injected and extracted directly at either end of the link: instead of extracting traffic from VLAN25 to forward it to your VoIP intranet, you add a routing table entry for 122.34.64.222 (or whatever your SIP server's address is) and route it to your VoIP servers, possibly through a VLAN, MPLS or whatever else between your edge routers and service edge routers. Your routers know what their preferred paths for any given services to any given subscriber is and you can do MPLS, VLANs or whatever else on the return path as well. This is even simpler in an MDU setup where the MDU has its own /27 or /26 and the router actually does control absolutely all traffic to and from each suite.

The net result is functionally almost exactly the same.

pstewart
Premium Member
join:2005-10-12
Peterborough, ON

pstewart

Premium Member

This friendly debate could go on forever... I am sharing what works and what is deployed currently in a number of providers in Ontario.

There is considerable differences between VOIP and POTS type service via IP and also between "over the top" unicast video vs IPTV multicast video.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

said by pstewart:

There is considerable differences between VOIP and POTS type service via IP and also between "over the top" unicast video vs IPTV multicast video.

But most of those differences vanish when intermediate hops between the carrier's router and the end-user are eliminated.

Sticking to VLANs is mostly about repeating an established pattern than a technical necessity at that point.

pstewart
Premium Member
join:2005-10-12
Peterborough, ON

pstewart

Premium Member

said by InvalidError:

said by pstewart:

There is considerable differences between VOIP and POTS type service via IP and also between "over the top" unicast video vs IPTV multicast video.

But most of those differences vanish when intermediate hops between the carrier's router and the end-user are eliminated.

Sticking to VLANs is mostly about repeating an established pattern than a technical necessity at that point.

The differences have nothing to do with "intermediate hops" between the customer and the ISP.

On the VLAN discussion, there are two common deployment methods used by ISP's who are doing this: CVLAN and SVLAN (customer VLAN model and service VLAN model).

Obviously we are doing to agree to disagree on how it's done and why it's done the way it is. Considering that almost every major ISP that has deployed traditional triple play uses the methods I have described, I am unsure what you are basing your comments on?
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

said by pstewart:

Considering that almost every major ISP that has deployed traditional triple play uses the methods I have described, I am unsure what you are basing your comments on?

Simple: just because this is the way carriers traditionally do it does not automatically make it the only way to do it.

There are dozens if not hundreds of ways of doing just about anything over IP. All you need is a tool chain to go with it when there is not one already.

pstewart
Premium Member
join:2005-10-12
Peterborough, ON

pstewart

Premium Member

said by InvalidError:

said by pstewart:

Considering that almost every major ISP that has deployed traditional triple play uses the methods I have described, I am unsure what you are basing your comments on?

Simple: just because this is the way carriers traditionally do it does not automatically make it the only way to do it.

There are dozens if not hundreds of ways of doing just about anything over IP. All you need is a tool chain to go with it when there is not one already.

I don't disagree that traditional methods don't always mean they are the best methods, however I am sharing with you how it's been done based on my personal experiences building, designing, and implementing many of these systems.

You have to ask yourself - why have thousands of providers deployed triple play using the same methodologies? Were all of us wrong in how we deliver these services?
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

said by pstewart:

You have to ask yourself - why have thousands of providers deployed triple play using the same methodologies? Were all of us wrong in how we deliver these services?

A national-scale carrier-grade deployment does not have quite the same build and large-scale manageability requirements as a single-MDU, single-router one... in a large network, the edge routers have thousands of users and possibly millions of sessions to manage so it might not even be possible to use what I suggested on those. For a small-scale network though, the router would be grossly under-used even on a busy day and have plenty of spare times to pick up the tasks that large networks usually delegate to CPEs.