Orca, HP reach half million mark on IP TV

Orca Interactive today announced that it has done a benchmark test to demonstrate that its IPTV solution, RiGHTv 4.2, can serve an active subscriber base of 500,000 users.

The test, which was done in the Paramus, N.J., lab of HP, used the Orca solution running on an HP server platform with the HP-UX 11i operating system. Last year, Orca did a similar test with 100,000 simulated users. The goal this time around was to prove to tier-one carriers that the solution can scale to large user bases, said Yosi Glick, vice president of marketing and business development at Orca.

"We wanted to show the tier one operators that we are ready for prime time," he said. "We are aware that some of our competitors are unable to reach some of the same levels."

During the test, which was using WebLoad software, a mix of subscribers with different TV usage profiles was simulated. Among the other assumptions was a mix of interactive services such as video on demand and conventional television services, including a 1000-movie database and 300 TV channels. The simulation also generated 123,000 actions per minute.

Under that scenario, the Orca and HP solutions delivered an average response time of 3.5 milliseconds for common activities.

Beyond simply proving that the platform can scale, the benchmark tests also serve as a trial run, in a controlled environment, of something that can be timely and expensive to fix once it’s out the door, Glick said.

"When you build software you learn a few things about software development and one is that scalability can only be checked when you do the load," he said. "The other thing you learn is in case you are wrong and you can’t scale, it’s not like fixing a bug. It’s a total rewrite."