Dimensioning Internet Protocol Television Video on Demand Services

Abstract

The Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) subscription rate has increased steadily since the introduction of IPTV Video on Demand (VoD) services. We have developed a model to determine the optimum deployment strategy for delivering IPTV VoD network services from the IPTV service providers' perspective. The analysis technique in this paper helps us determine how to support a particular IPTV VoD deployment having a given number of customers that each must receive a contracted Quality of Experience (QoE). The main QoE measures considered are server waiting time, one-way minimum delay and access network bandwidth consumption. All these models are made considering heterogeneous network conditions. The QoE models will help service providers make network deployment decisions including the number of servers, distance of servers from a community and desirable access network bandwidth capacity. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.