TelcoTV: Zeugma, Roku team on enhanced Net video

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Zeugma Systems, the edge router vendor trying to redefine what intelligence at the edge means in telecom, teamed with Roku here at the Telco TV show to very visibly demonstrate the difference between best-effort Internet video and Internet video with smarter service delivery.

Zeugma’s SmartVideo application running on its Zeugma Services Node identifies specific video traffic and gives that traffic its own guaranteed bandwidth, assuring that SpiderMan 3 looks HD-sharp rather than PC-fuzzy. That means broadband service providers can deliver movies and TV episodes from Netflix online or from Roku digital video players with a guaranteed quality of service, said Andrew Harries, founding president and CEO of Zeugma.

“We’ve teamed with both [Netflix and its spinoff Roku] independently to demonstrate guaranteed top-level QoS,” Harries said. “This enables our customers to see, manage and monetize individual flows to individual subscribers.”

The idea, Harries said, is to deliver video quality over the Net, to either a PC or a TV, that convinces consumers to pay a little extra to the broadband service provider. “Our view is that our customers’ most pressing concern is how to insert themselves into the over-the-top value chain,” Harries said. “We want to be able to create situations for service providers to offer their subscribers, for a small monthly fee, a guarantee of service.”

The Zeugma Services Node combines edge routing with deep session inspection, which examines all traffic coming through the node, massive computing power and an open applications interface and development sandbox. When specific video traffic is detected, such as that from an online provider such as Netflix, the ZSN would automatically allocate bandwidth to that video stream for the duration of that specific session.

Zeugma is entering trials with Tier 1 and Tier 2 service providers of the application it demonstrated with Netflix and Roku at TelcoTV and is entering a trial with a Western European service provider that asked Zeugma to create an application for a localized video service. “We can do that in about 60 days,” Harries said.

Ultimately, service providers should be able to use the ZSN to be constantly developing new services, keeping those that succeed and discarding those that don’t, Harries said. “They can do in-service uploads and see what sticks,” he said.