6.7. Video Services Command Reference

This command creates a text description stored in the configuration file for a configuration context. The description command associates a text string with a configuration context to help identify the context in the configuration file.

The no form of this command removes any description string from the context.

This command administratively disables the entity. When disabled, an entity does not change, reset, or remove any configuration settings or statistics. Many entities must be explicitly enabled using the no shutdown command.

When an entity is disabled, the operational state of the entity is disabled as well as the operational state of any entities contained within. Many objects must be shut down before they can be deleted.

Unlike other commands and parameters where the default state is not indicated in the configuration file, shutdown and no shutdown are always indicated in system generated configuration files.

This command configures the ISA LNS group.

This command configures an ISA LNS group MDA.

This command enables policies referenced in the config>port-policy context to be created under ports. These are the ports that link the carrier IOM to the ISA, and are hidden within the system (they cannot be created through the CLI). They are created automatically. Use the show port command to view information.

Currently only the port scheduler policy is supported. Each lns-esm port in the lns-group receives an independent port scheduler instance. The port schedulers are instantiated in the carrier IOM on the lns-esm ports that carry PPPoE traffic in the downstream direction towards the ISA before the PPPoE traffic is L2TP encapsulated.

The no form of the command removes the policy name from the configuration.

This command configures an ISA video group.

This command enables the ad insert server for the group. Ad insertion cannot be enabled if an FCC server or local RT server is enabled.

The no form of the command disables the server.

This command specifies whether or not the video analyzer is enabled for all streams on this video group.

The no form of the command disables the analyzer for the group.

By default, the video ISA has both client and server capability for RET (retransmission). The client capability can be disabled to enable higher performance

The no form of the command enables higher performance.

This command enables the FCC server capability for the ISA video group. FCC server cannot be enabled if ad insertion or the local RET server is enabled.

FCC server parameters can be configured in a multicast information policy or a service, but the parameters will have no effect if the FCC server is disabled or if the video group is administratively disabled (shutdown).

The no form of the command disables the FCC server.

This command enables the local RET server for the group. A local RET server cannot be enabled if an FCC server or ad insertion is enabled.

The no form of the command disables the server.

This command configures the primary video group ISA. Only one primary can be configured per video group when ad insertion is enabled. The maximum number of primaries per video-group for FCC and RD is 4.

This command provides a mechanism to reserve an explicit amount of egress bandwidth, in Mb/s, for RET for all the ISAs within a video group. If the amount of egress bandwidth is less than the reserved amount, FCC requests are discarded and only RET requests processed. The bandwidth is dynamically adjusted per ISA within the video group if an ISA becomes operational/non-operational within the group.

This command specifies whether or not stream selection is enabled on this video group.

The no form of the command disables stream-selection for the group.

This command enables the context to configure watermark parameters.

This command enables the context to configure watermark parameters based on the bandwidth.

This command enables the context to configure watermark parameters based on the session.

This command sets the watermark to trigger the SNMP trap if the FCC bandwidth or session exceeds the configured percentage. The bandwidth is the available egress bandwidth of the ISA. The SNMP trap is cleared when the consumption is lowered by 10%. For example, if the system resource of the available bandwidth is 10 Gb/s and the watermark is configured to be 90%, the SNMP trap is raised as the bandwidth exceeds 9 Gb/s (90% of 10 Gb/s). The SNMP trap is cleared when the bandwidth drops below 8.1 Gb/s (10% of 9 Gb/s = 0.9 Gb/s, and 9 Gb/s - 0.9 Gb/s = 8.1 Gb/s). The default value of the watermark is set at 90% of the system resources for both bandwidth and session.

This command sets the watermark to trigger the SNMP trap if the RET bandwidth or session exceeds the configured percentage. The bandwidth is the available egress bandwidth of the ISA. The SNMP trap is cleared when the consumption is lowered by 10%. For example, if the system resource of the bandwidth available is 10 Gb/s and the watermark is configured to be 90%, the SNMP trap is raised as the bandwidth exceeds 9 Gb/s (90% of 10 Gb/s). The SNMP trap is cleared when the bandwidth drops below 8.1 Gb/s (10% of 9 Gb/s = 0.9 Gb/s, and 9 Gb/s - 0.9 Gb/s = 8.1 Gb/s). The default value of the watermark is set at 90% of the system resources for both bandwidth and session.

This command sets the watermark to trigger the SNMP trap if the combined FCC and RET bandwidth or session exceeds the configured percentage. The bandwidth is the available egress bandwidth of the ISA. The SNMP trap is cleared when the consumption is lowered by 10%. For example, if the system resource of the bandwidth available is 10 Gb/s and the watermark is configured to be 90%, the SNMP trap is raised as the bandwidth exceeds 9 Gb/s (90% of 10 Gb/s). The SNMP trap is cleared when the bandwidth drops below 8.1 Gb/s (10% of 9 Gb/s = 0.9 Gb/s, and 9 Gb/s - 0.9 Gb/s = 8.1 Gb/s). The default value of the watermark is set at 90% of the system resources for both bandwidth and session.

This command configures a multicast information policy. Multicast information policies are used to manage parameters associated with Layer 2 and Layer 3 multicast records. Multiple features use the configured information within the policy. The multicast ingress path manager uses the policy to decide the inactive and active state behavior for each multicast record using the ingress paths to the switch fabric. The egress multicast CAC function may use the policy information as a basis for allowing or disallowing downstream nodes to join multicast streams. The system’s multicast ECMP join decisions are influenced by the channel information contained within the policy.

Multicast Bundles:

Default Multicast Information Policy

Explicit Multicast Information Policy Associations

Interaction with Ingress Multicast Path Management

Interaction with Egress Multicast CAC

With the addition of the multicast information policy, managing the CAC feature is simplified. The CAC monitor for the egress interface first searches the multicast CAC policy to determine if the multicast join event matches a configured channel range. If a match is found, it simply uses the local policy information. If a match is not found, it then searches the multicast information policy associated with the service or routing context to which the join event is associated. The multicast information policy returns the following information to the interfaces CAC manager:

The CAC manager evaluates the returned results according to the following rules:

Using the multicast information policy to store the CAC information allows a single centralized managed policy for all channel information, allowing the multicast CAC policies to only have bundle defined with the appropriate bundle bandwidth. The multicast CAC policy still may be for channel information in exception cases.

Interaction with Multicast ECMP Optimization

The multicast information policy is used by the multicast ECMP optimization function to derive each channels administrative bandwidth. The ECMP function tallies all bandwidth information for channels joined and attempts to equalize the load between the various paths to the sender. The multicast information policy returns the following information to the ECMP path manager:

This command overrides the default multicast information policy on a service or routing context. When the policy association is changed, all multicast channels in the service or routing context must be reevaluated.

If a multicast information policy is not explicitly associated with the service or routing context, the default multicast information policy is used when ingress multicast path management is enabled.

While a multicast information policy is associated with a service or routing context, the policy cannot be deleted from the system.

The no form of the command removes an explicit multicast information policy from the service or routing context and restores the default multicast information policy.

This command is used to create or edit channel bundles within a multicast information policy. Bundles are used for two main purposes. First, bundles are used by the multicast CAC function to group multicast channels into a common bandwidth context. The CAC function limits the ability for downstream nodes to join multicast channels based on the egress interfaces ability to handle the multicast traffic. Bundling allows multicast channels with common preference or application to be managed into a certain percentage of the available bandwidth.

The second function of bundles is to provide a simple provisioning mechanism. Each bundle within a multicast information policy has a set of default channel parameters. If each channel provisioned in to the bundle is able to use the default parameters for the bundle, the provisioning and configuration storage requirements are minimized.

Up to 31 explicit bundles may be defined within a multicast information policy (32 including the default bundle).

Once a bundle is created, the default channel parameters should be configured and the individual channel ranges should be defined. Within each channel range, override parameters may be defined that override the default channel parameters. Further overrides are supported within the channel range based on explicit source overrides.

A bundle may be deleted at any time (except for the default bundle). When a bundle is deleted, all configuration information within the bundle is removed including multicast channel ranges. Any multicast records using the bundle should be reevaluated. Multicast CAC and ECMP managers should also be updated.

Default Bundle

Each multicast information policy contains a bundle named “default”. The default bundle cannot be deleted. Any multicast channel that fails to match a channel range within an explicit bundle is automatically associated with the default bundle.

The no form of the command removes a bundle from the multicast information policy. The default bundle cannot be removed from the policy.

This command configures the administrative bandwidth.

This command defines how the multicast ingress path manager determines the amount of bandwidth required by a multicast channel. The default setting is dynamic which causes the bandwidth manager to adjust the path bandwidth based on the current ingress multicast bandwidth. The alternative setting is use-admin-bw which causes the bandwidth manager to use the configured admin-bw associated with the channel. The use-admin-bw setting is enabled once the channels ingress bandwidth reaches the bandwidth-policy admin-bw-threshold value. The bandwidth manager uses the dynamic method until the threshold has been reached. If the ingress bandwidth falls below the threshold, the bandwidth manager reverts back to the dynamic method.

While operating in dynamic bandwidth mode, the bandwidth manager uses the falling-delay threshold to hold on to the previous highest bandwidth until the delay time has expired. This allows the bandwidth manager ignore momentary drops in channel bandwidth.

The bw-activity command in the bundle context defines how the current bandwidth is derived for all channels associated with the bundle unless the channel has an overriding bw-activity defined in the channel context. The channel context may also be overridden by the bw-activity command in the source-override context for a specific channel or channel range. The channel and source-override bw-activity settings default to ‘null’ (undefined) and have no effect unless explicitly set. The default-channel-info bw-activity default value is set to dynamic.

The use-admin-bw setting requires that the channel be configured with an admin-bw value that is not equal to ‘0’ in the same context as the bw-activity command using the setting. If use-admin-bw is defined in the default-channel-info context, then the default-channel-info admin-bw setting must not be set to ‘0’. A similar rule applies for channel and source-override bw-activity and admin-bw settings. Once a context has use-admin-bw configured, the context’s admin-bw value cannot be set to ‘0’ and the no admin-bw command will fail for that context.

The bw-activity command also supports an optional black-hole-rate kilobits-per-second keyword and parameter that defines at which current rate a channel should be placed in the black-hole state. This is intended to provide a protection mechanism against multicast channels that exceed a reasonable rate and cause outages in other channels.

The no form of the command reverts to the default parameters.

This command defines explicit channels or channel ranges that are associated with the containing bundle. A channel or channel range is defined by their destination IP addresses. A channel may be defined using either IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. If a channel range is being defined, both the start and ending addresses must be the same type.

A specific channel may only be defined within a single channel or channel range within the multicast information policy. A defined channel range cannot overlap with an existing channel range.

If a channel range is to be shortened, extended, split or moved to another bundle, it must first be removed from its existing bundle.

Each specified channel range creates a containing context for any override parameters for the channel range. By default, no override parameters exist.

The no form of the command removes the specified multicast channel from the containing bundle.

This command defines a multicast channel parameter override context for a specific multicast sender within the channel range. The specified senders IP address must be of the same type (IPv4 or IPv6) as the containing channel range.

The no form of the command removes the specified sender override context from the channel range.

This command enables the context to configure video interfaces and video services.

This command creates a video interface policy context that correlates to the IP address assigned for a video interface. This interface is created in a subscriber service to which the multicast information policy is assigned. If the specified IP address does not correlate to a video interface ip address, the parameters defined within this context have no effect.

The no form of the command deletes the video interface policy context.

By default, the video ISA will wait for 5 minutes before closing the RTCP session from the subscriber. The RTCP session can be adjusted from 5 second to 5 minutes. The timeout is applicable to both RET and FCC RTCP sessions.

The no form of the command reverts to the default.

This command configures properties relating to requests received by the video interface for High Definition (HD) channel requests.

This command sets the threshold value below which the FCC server will dent/drop unicast data sent to the FCC client during a fast channel change. Within the RTP extension header, the packet priority (PRI) (2 bits) and the fine-grained priority (FPRI) (3 bits) indicate the “importance” of the frame as to how essential it is to the video stream.

This parameter is only applicable if the FCC server mode is dent.

The no form of the command returns the parameter to the default value.

This command sets the burst rate at which the Fast Channel Change (FCC) server will send unicast data to the FCC client above the received rate to allow the client to catchup to the multicast stream.

This parameter is only applicable if the FCC server mode is burst.

The no form of the command returns the parameter to the default value.

This command enables the Fast Channel Change (FCC) server and sets the mode to send the FCC unicast stream.

The mode indicates how the FCC server will send information to the client. When burst is specified, the FCC server will send the channel at a nominally faster rate than the channel was received based on the applicable fcc-burst setting. When dent is specified, the FCC server will selectively discard frames from the original stream based on the applicable dent-threshold setting. If no mode is specified, burst is the default mode.

The no form of the command disables the FCC server at that context and subordinate contexts.

This command enables the local retransmission server function for requests directed to the IP address.

The no form of the command disables the retransmission server.

This command sets the rate at which the Fast Channel Change (FCC) server will send unicast data to the FCC client during the handover to the multicast stream.

The no form of the command returns the parameter to the default value.

This command enables the use of multicast retransmission packets by the retransmission server in response to a number of identical retransmission requests.

By default, the retransmission server replies to all retransmission requests with a unicast stream directed to the client requesting retransmission. Enabling multicast retransmission on the retransmission server is an optimization where a number of identical retransmission requests received will trigger the retransmission server to service the retransmission request with a single multicast reply stream with packets of Payload Type 33. An example of where multiple clients will request retransmission for identical packets is if there is a packet loss in the Access Network which affects multiple clients.

For clients that received the original packets or requested retransmission and had the retransmission serviced in unicast, the multicast retransmission will look like duplicate packets and discard the multicast retransmitted packets. For other clients, the multicast retransmission will look like out-of-sequence multicast packets, so the client must support reception of out of sequence multicast for multicast retransmission for multicast retransmission to be used.

The threshold value for identical retransmission requested received by the retransmission server is configured when enabling multicast retransmission along with a sample interval and a hold time. The sample interval is the elapsed time over which the retransmission requests are counted. The hold time is a quiet period after a multicast retransmission is triggered on the retransmission server where an identical retransmission request will be ignored. After the hold time expires, a new sampling interval is started. Sampling intervals will be restarted until the packets for the multicast request are cleared from the retransmission buffer.

To illustrate the threshold count, sample interval and hold time, suppose the values are 5, 100 ms and 50 ms, respectively. The first retransmission request arrives at time = 0. In one scenario, assume the fifth identical retransmission request arrives at the server at time = 60 ms. In this case, the first four retransmission requests are serviced as unicast and the arrival of the fifth retransmission request triggers a multicast retransmission. All identical retransmission requests received between time = 60 and 110 ms are ignored. At time = 110 ms, a new sampling period is started and retransmission requests are serviced in unicast unless the threshold is passed again in the new sampling period. For a second scenario, assume the fifth identical retransmission request arrives at time = 25 ms. In this scenario, the behavior is the same except the new sampling period starts at time = 75 ms even though this is before the original sampling period was set to expire.

The no form of the command disables retransmissions using multicast, so all retransmissions will be sent as unicast.

By default, the video ISA will wait for 5 minutes before closing the RTCP session from the subscriber. The RTCP session can be adjusted from 5 second to 5 minutes. The timeout is applicable to both RET and FCC RTCP sessions.

The no form of the command reverts to the default.

This command describes the format to be used by Retransmission (RT) server to send retransmission packets. The RET server interface allows the payload type within the retransmission packets to be configured.

This command sets the rate of nominal bandwidth at which retransmission packets are sent to the retransmission client for requests directed to the IP address.

The no form of the command returns the parameter to the default value.

This command configures the per-client maximum number of sessions.

The no form of the command reverts to the default value.

This command enables the context within a video interface policy to configure properties relating to requests received by the video interface for Picture-in-Picture (PIP) channel requests.

This command enables the context within a video interface policy to configure properties relating to requests received by the video interface for Standard Definition (SD) channel requests.

This command configures of an egress per-subscriber bandwidth limit for the combined retransmission and Fast Channel Change (FCC) replies for requests received directed to the IP address. If the bandwidth for a request will exceed the bandwidth limit, the request is logged and dropped.

The no form of the command disables enforcement of an egress bandwidth limit.

This command enables the context to configure video parameters.

This command enables or disables the analyzer for the group.

This command enters the context to configure alarms for the analyzer (VQM).

This command configures the analyzer to check the continuity counter. The continuity counter should be incremented per PID; otherwise, it is considered a continuity counter error.

This command configures the analyzer to check for a PID within the specified interval.

This command configures the analyzer to check for the program association table (PAT). It is expected that the PAT arrives periodically within a certain interval range. It is possible to configure the type of alarm that is raised when the PAT fails to arrive within the specified interval. As the delay increases between two consecutive PATs, the type of alarm raised becomes more critical, from TNC to POA.

This command configures the analyzer to check for PAT syntax errors.

This command configures the analyzer to check for the program clock reference (PCR). It is expected that the PCR arrives periodically within a certain interval range. It is possible to configure the type of alarm that is raised when the PCR fails to arrive within the specified interval. As the delay increases between two consecutive PCRs, the type of alarm raised becomes more critical, from TNC to POA.

This command configures the analyzer to check for unreferenced PIDs that have not been referred in the PMT.

This command configures the analyzer to check for the program map table (PMT). It is expected that the PMT arrives periodically within a certain interval range. It is possible to configure the type of alarm that is raised when the PMT fails to arrive within the specified interval. As the delay increases between two consecutive PMTs, the type of alarm raised becomes more critical, from TNC to POA.

This command configures the analyzer to check for PMT syntax errors.

This command configures the type of alarm to monitor and raise through SNMP. The severity of alarms increases from TNC, to QoS, and then to POA. For example, if QoS alarms are configured, the analyzer only raises alarms and events related to QoS. The analyzer may raise alarms for POA events if they occur, but alarms for TNC are not sent.

This command configures the analyzer to check for TEI set errors.

This command configures the analyzer to check for synchronization loss errors.

This command configures the analyzer to check for a VID PID within the specified time interval.

This command configures the channel type for the bundle/channel. The channel type is used in the video policy to set various Fast Channel Change (FCC) parameters including the type of FCC and various FCC rates.

The no form of the command returns the parameter to the default value.

This command configures the minimum time duration, in milliseconds, of the Fast Channel Change (FCC) burst. The value of this object determines the starting point of the FCC burst. If the current Group of Pictures (GOP) has less than the minimum duration worth of data, FCC burst begins from the previous GOP.

The no form of the command reverts to the default value.

This command enables Fast Channel Change (FCC) for a multicast bundle or channel. Additional parameters such as fcc-channel-type should also be configured to match the characteristics of the bundle/channel.

The no form of the command disables removes the FCC configuration for the bundle/channel context and implies the setting is inherited from a higher context or the default policy.

This command configures the local port on which Fast Channel Change (FCC) requests are received. The value of this object can only be set for the default bundle and will be used by all bundles and channels.

The local-fcc-port port value is the only configuration parameter in the bundle “default” context.

The no form of the command removes the port from the video configuration.

This command configures the local port on which retransmission (RET) requests are received. The value of this object can only be set for the default bundle and will be used by all channels.

The local-rt-port port value is the only configuration parameter in the bundle “default” context.

The no form of the command removes the port from the video configuration.

This command enables the local retransmission server capability on the ISA video group.

RET server parameters can be configured in a multicast information policy or a service, but the parameters will have no effect if the RET server is disabled or if the video group is administratively disabled (shutdown).

The no form of the command returns the parameter to the default value where the RET server is disabled on the video group.

This command configures the time, in milliseconds, by which the audio packets are reordered in the ad stream.

Configuring this parameter depends on what is configured on the A Server and the GOP sizes of the network stream. Typically, this configuration should match the A Server configuration.

The no form of the command removes the time value from the configuration.

This command configures the retransmission buffer for channels within the bundle or channel range.

The no form of the command returns the parameter to the default value.

This command enables and configures the upstream retransmission server configuration parameters.

The no form of the command removes the upstream retransmission server configuration and implies the configuration is inherited from a higher context or from the default policy.

This command configures the source port for upstream RET requests. The source-port port-num value is the only configuration parameter in the bundle “default” context.

The no form of the command removes the value from the configuration.

This command assigns a video group ID to the channel.

This command creates a video interface within the service. The video interface and associated IP addresses are the addresses to which clients within the service will send requests. The video interface must be associated with an ISA group using the video-sap command and have IP addresses for it to be functional.

The no form of the command deletes the video interface. The video interface must be administratively shut down before issuing the no video-interface command.

This command assigns an IP address to the video interface within the service. Video interface IP addresses are used by video service clients to direct requests for video server services. Up to 16 IP address/subnets can be defined. The addresses defined must all be distinct and cannot be contained within a previously defined address. In the VPLS context, only one IP address can be defined for a video interface.

The no form of the command deletes the IP address/subnet from the video interface.

This command enables the context to configure ad insertion (ADI) for the video interface.

This command configures channel parameters for ad insertion.

This command assigns an existing CPU protection policy to the associated service video interface. The CPU protection policies are configured in the config>sys>security>cpu-protection>policy cpu-protection-policy-id context. The number of RTCP messages per client will be limited to the number as configured under the policy.

This command specifies whether the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers 35 (SCTE 35) cue avails in the stream need to be forwarded or not. When specified to forward, SCTE 35 messages will be forwarded downstream. When specified to drop, SCTE 35 messages will not be forwarded downstream. They will be still be processed for local splicing decisions.

This command configures zone-channel parameters or ad insertion. The channel configuration along with the zone-channel configuration associates a network channel to a zone-channel and builds the store and forward relationship.

This command enables the context to configure SCTE 30 parameters.

This command configures the ad server address. A TCP session will be accepted for SCTE 30 messaging only for IP addresses that appear in this configuration.

The no form of the command removes the address from the ad server configuration.

SCTE 30 requires a TCP session per zone-channel between the ad server and splicer for control communication and it requires UDP sessions on which the video ad stream is sent. This command specifies the splicer’s control IP address to which the ad-servers should setup TCP connections and the data IP address to which the video ad streams should be sent.

The no form of the command removes the address information from the local address configuration.

This command adds a multicast service association to the video interface. This parameter is not required on the video interface when the service carries both unicast and multicast traffic.

When multicast and unicast are carried in separate service instances, the operator can set this parameter on the unicast video interface to form an association with the multicast service when replies need to be sent in the multicast service instance.

When multicast and unicast are carried in separate services when a downstream device (such as a DSLAM) can perform a service cross connect between the services and performs multicast replication.

The no form of the command removes the multicast service association.

This command assigns the IP address for the retransmission client on the video interface within the service. The RET client IP address is the originating address used for communication with upstream RET servers. If no RET client address is assigned, the RT client is operationally down as the RET client configuration is incomplete.

For a VPLS service, the RET client address cannot be the same as an existing address for the video interface, but it must be an address within a video interface subnet. For IES and VPRN, the RET client address can be the same as an existing address for the video interface or an address within a video interface subnet.

The no form of the command deletes the RT client address from the video interface.

This command configures a service video interface association with a video group.

The no form of the command removes the video group association.

This command enables the context to configure egress parameters for the service’s video SAP.

This command enables the context to configure in parameters for the service’s video SAP.

This command associates an existing IP filter policy with an ingress or egress video SAP. Filter policies control the forwarding and dropping of packets based on the matching criteria.

Filters applied to SAPs (ingress or egress) apply to all packets on the SAP. One exception is non-IP packets are not applied to the match criteria, so the default action in the filter policy applies to these packets.

The no form of this command removes any configured filter ID association with the SAP. The filter ID itself is not removed from the system.

This command associates an existing egress or ingress QoS policy to a video interface. If the policy-id does not exist, an error will be returned. Attempts to associate a QoS policy of the wrong type returns an error. Only one QoS policy can be associated with a video interface at one time in the ingress and egress contexts. Attempts to associate a second QoS policy of a given type will return an error.

The no form of the command removes the QoS policy association from the video interface, and the QoS policy reverts to the default.

This command assigns a gateway IP address for the video interface within the VPLS service. Because VPLS is a Layer 2 service and the video interface is modeled like a host within the service, the video interface needs a gateway IP to send requests to devices outside of the VPLS subnet.

The no form of the command deletes the gateway IP address from the VPLS video interface.