Experience of developing an openflow SDN prototype for managing IPTV networks

IPTV is a method of delivering TV content to endusers that is growing in popularity. It is a paid service, hence the implications of poor video quality may ultimately be a loss of revenue for the provider. Consequently, it is vital to provide service monitoring and reconfiguration mechanisms to ensure quality requirements set out in service level agreements are upheld. This paper describes our experience of building an IPTV Software Defined Network testbed that can be used to develop and validate new approaches for service assurance in IPTV networks. The testbed is modular and many of the concepts detailed in this tutorial may be applied to the management of other end-to-end services.