BigBand Networks takes on network congestion with speedy grooming

BigBand Networks has introduced a broadband router that can add and create programming lineups “on the fly” from incoming satellite and off-air feeds, thus conserving bandwidth and increasing service-provider flexibility, according to Amir Bassan-Eskenazi, BigBand’s president-CEO.

“There is a requirement by the network to offer voice services, more content and more programming and be very efficient about the bandwidth that all those take,” said Bassan-Eskenazi. “Our product enables grooming, which is the ability to add and create lineups on the fly from the feeds that are coming from the satellites.”

Specifically, BigBand lets service providers sort through incoming multiplexed programming streams and create new lineups, he said. Without grooming, those streams must be carried in blocks over the cable system, to a device in the home that sorts out the unwanted or unnecessary programming.

Service providers get “the ability to give different feeds for different locations … in a carrier-class integrated solution that gives you more channels and better price performance than the current solutions that are offered,” Bassan-Eskenazi said.

In addition to statistically multiplexing the video content, BigBand’s technology also performs the key feature of rate shaping IP data streams, said Bassan-Eskenazi.

“It’s a combination of MPEG and routing solutions,” he explained. “Our rate-shaping technology allows us to give stat mux and rate shaping to multiple ports at the same time and do that in a much more efficient and cost-effective manner.”

Time Warner Cable, having tested the technology in front of 60,000 subscribers in Milwaukee, will deploy the technology on cable systems in Shreveport, La. and San Antonio, Texas, said Bassan-Eskenazi.

This “purpose-built, carrier-class platform … gives them the choice to buy a better solution and a road map to the future,” he said.

Service providers also can interface with existing feeds until they upgrade and replace existing equipment, he said.

“We just add functionality and the capacity and the better bandwidth management,” he concluded.