1.2. GUI and Data Layout Description

During monitoring, Elecard Boro registers a lot of parameters based on which you can make a conclusion about quality of a stream sent via the network. For easier data perception, there are several data layouts in the system:

  • Live data / data for the past period;

  • Thumbnails / graphs / tables with numerical data;

  • General characteristics for the bunch of streams / Detailed parameters of specific tasks, etc.

On the left panel there is a set of icons (buttons) and each of them enables data layout in a predefined way.

Views in Elecard Boro system

Icon

Layout Name

Data displayed

Number of monitored streams

BlockView

BlockView

Provides real-time block representation of all analyzed services. A card color corresponds to the alarm severity level.

All / Consolidated streams

MosaicView

MosaicView

Displays stream thumbnails as a mosaic with error flags indicating active triggers and availability trend. Frequency of thumbnails update depends on settings of a particular task.

All / Consolidated streams

LiveView

LiveView

Displays streams as real-time dynamic stripes indicating registered issues or events. Updates each second.

All

TableView

TableView

Displays real-time quantitative characteristics of streams in a table form. Includes IPTV and OTT tabs.

All

Journals

Notification and Record journals

Common (for all tasks) journal of registered alarms events and journals for different notification profiles (SNMP, E-mail, PagerDuty, Webhook, Telegram) + Records journal.

All

GraphView

GraphView

Displays graphical representation of MulticastRate and IAT:MLR/DF:MLR on a short interval (20s) + basic QoS parameters for IPTV streams represented in the table form.

All

KpiView

KpiView

Displays in the table form statistics of errors for all analyzed streams and provides the tool for scheduling recurring reports about the service quality.

All

Working With Views

MosaicView

The view is designed for displaying channel thumbnails. Additionally, it provides the possibility of tasks consolidation. A displayed thumbnail is randomly selected from the streams group. IPTV tasks take priority. Upon clicking a thumbnail, a window with detailed information opens. If the alarm trigger fires for a task, an error state is displayed as a colored card. The color of a card corresponds to the severity level of a fired trigger. If a task has the enabled KPI availability profile, a KPI graph for the 8-hour monitoring period will be displayed. When grouping several tasks, there will be a graph for a task with the most critical state. When hovering a graph, a popup window with 24-hour availability graph will appear. To go to the full statistics, click the graph within a popup window.

../_images/MosaicViewScreen_en.png

BlockView

The BlockView is designed to compactly display all analyzed services. With the smallest scale possible, the view may display up to 1000 tasks on the screen with 1920x1080 resolution. Some fixed view scales are available. Like MosaicView, it provides task consolidation. The mode of ranging blocks in accordance with errors severity level is implemented.

../_images/BlockViewScreen.png

LiveView

Attention

The current LiveView implementation is aimed only at displaying of mentioned events and states while the system may register significantly more events. It is recommended to configure a notification system and combine use of notifications and Alarm journal monitoring together with any of views.

On the page, a list of streams is displayed. Each stream is shown as a horizontal stripe. When hovering a mouse, the hint with the description of a stream state at the chosen moment is displayed.

The stripe color displays the stream state:

  • - Ok - no registered states or events

  • - Stopped - task is stopped (a task will disappear after a page update)

  • - Server lost connection to the probe - server cannot connect to the probe

  • - No signal - a source error, the probe cannot receive data for analysis

  • - Several broadcasters - several broadcasters are detected in the same group

  • - Video freeze - a video freeze is registered

  • - Download bitrate low - segment download speed is low (download speed goes below the warning threshold)

  • - TR101290 (PID error) - data for the specified PIDs does not occur during the specified period

  • - TR101290 (Audio/video PID error) - data for the specified Audio and Video PIDs does not occur during the specified period

  • - Task has no subtasks - HLS or DASH has only a Manifest task and doesn’t contain any subtasks / the task analyzing a SRT stream has only a Master task and doesn’t contain any subtasks

When the event is registered, a vertical bar appears:

  • - Timestamp discontinuity - detecting discontinuity of the timestamps (PTS/DTS for MPEG-TS) when the absolute difference of timestamps values exceeds the set threshold

  • - CC error - loss of transport packets

  • - PAT error - PID 0x0000 does not appear every 0,5 sec (configurable parameter)

  • - PMT error - sections with table_id 0x02, ( i. e. PMT), do not occur at least every 0,5 sec (configurable parameter) on the PID which is referred to in the PAT

  • - TS sync loss - two or more successive Sync_Byte_Errors are detected and disappears after five or more successive sync bytes are received (synchronization is achieved again)

  • - Sync byte error - a sync byte 0x47 is missing in the successive packet (after 188 or 204 bytes)

  • - Playlist loading failed - a playlist cannot be downloaded

  • - Segment loading failed - a segment cannot be downloaded

  • - SCTE-35 - SCTE35 timetamp is received

The larger the browser window resolution, the longer time interval will be displayed on the graph. When clicking a stripe, a page of the analyzed task opens.

In case ETR 101 290 errors are registered in the stream, the stream thumbnail will display the number of priority (TR1, TR2, TR3). If errors of several priorities appear, the most critical priority will be specified. For example, if TR1 and TR3 errors are registered for the stream, the thumbnail will display the TR1 priority.

../_images/LiveViewScreen.png

TableView

In this section, all statistical information is grouped into a table that allows to perform comparative analysis of QoS and QoE parameters for IPTV or OTT streams. The IPTV tab displays the extended set of Ethernet parameters, which is available within this view only. For a stream bitrate, maximum and minimum values are additionally registered what allows to estimate the range of values. If you select the option of grouping tasks by probe, the total statistics for bitrate and CC errors is available. If needed, the table can be exported to the XLS format.

Journals

On the Journal page, there is a list of alarm events registered by the system in the real-time mode. New events dynamically replace previous records, thus making the page scrollable. Active states are displayed at the top lines of a table with colored indicators of their severity level. When registering several events of the same type within the same stream, they are grouped into one record. Along with Alarm events, other notification types and records are registered in corresponding journal tabs.

GraphView

The Graph View is designed to provide the visual monitoring of basic QoS parameters for IPTV streams. The compact view of presented information and advanced filtering via tags allows performing comparative analysis of some streams, e.g. analysis of the same stream at the input and output of a headend.

../_images/GraphViewScreen.png

KpiView

KpiView is designed to display statistics of errors for all analyzed streams and to schedule recurring reports about the service quality.

The Health tab represents a real-time report about the quality of analyzed streams in the table form. The statistics contains the following key metrics: Losses, Service Availability, BadSource, Alarms firing statistics, Active Alarms. Statistics is displayed for the last 24 hours and for the last 15 minutes. The view allows for quick health estimation of each service without switching to other views or journals, it also presents the Service Availability trend.

Service Availability is a new parameter the Boro system registers. It is calculated as a percentage ratio of error-free monitoring time to total monitoring time. The metrics is based on the SCTE 168-6 standard. To register errors, the “error second” term is used, which denotes a second within which at least one error has occurred. Triggers affecting the Service Availability are included in the separate profile. The user by himself chooses a set of triggers within a profile that the system will register.

The mini-graph of availability trend represents changing of the service total availability for last 24 monitoring hours. One division equals to 2 hours. The division color corresponds to the color map of Service Availability levels set in the KPIService Availability section. When clicking the mini-graph, the window with statistics for each 15 minutes opens.

The Reports tab allows for scheduling recurring reports about the service quality. The report may include all parameters available on the Health tab. Report can be one-time (for the user-selected period) or recurring for the previous day or week.