CNBC Asia Pacific Selects Juniper Networks for Live Broadcast IP Link

Juniper Networks® announced that regional business TV channel CNBC Asia Pacific has deployed its high-performance Ethernet switches to support live broadcasting from the Singapore Exchange. The Juniper Networks EX4200 Ethernet Switches are part of a complete end-to-end IP solution implemented by Nevion, a Juniper partner that addresses the broadcaster’s need for multiple video links in real-time.

The solution enables CNBC Asia Pacific to reduce its transmission costs by substituting Gigabit Ethernet for multiple point-to-point video links. At the same time, it provides greater scalability, allowing transmission of up to 15 SD-SDI video streams, and enhanced production capabilities with interactive communication between sites.

“In common with the financial markets we cover and the investment community we serve, we count on our production network to have absolute integrity and reliability,” said Peter Juno, senior vice president of CNBC Asia Pacific Operations. “Real-time IP networking video feeds have plenty of potential benefits, but they mean little if it entails any impairment of our quality-of-service. The Juniper and Nevion solution provides the performance, reliability and quality we need to embrace IP networking for professional broadcast TV production.”



Juniper Networks EX4200 Ethernet Switches provide the IP network connection between the Nevion systems in the remote studio at the Singapore Exchange and Starhub’s Gigabit Ethernet network. An identical system configuration located at CNBC Asia’s production center separates and decompresses the video back into SD-SDI. The system has fully redundant Ethernet links between the Nevion systems and the EX4200 switches, and between the EX4200 switches across the carrier network.

“Live broadcast television is extremely exacting in its requirement with a very low tolerance for latency and jitter,” said Andy Miller, vice president of Asia Pacific’s Enterprise business, Juniper Networks. “Juniper’s EX4200 switches are ideal for broadcast applications as they offer the high availability and reliability of a carrier-class system with the economics, flexibility and modest space requirements of stackable platforms. This solution provides CNBC Asia outstanding performance characteristics: up to 10-times compression that’s artifact free and has less than 60ms of latency end-to-end. Every element has been optimized with the Juniper Networks EX4200 switches, providing non-blocking pathways and carrier-grade reliability.”

The solution also includes Nevion’s standards-based and energy-efficient Ventura system for compression, multiplexing and protection and Flashlink for audio embedding. The Ventura modules provide visually-lossless JPEG 2000 compression of SD-SDI video, encapsulation of ASI video into IP with forward error correction, and advanced switching of compressed video at the receiver site. The Flashlink modules provide audio embedding into SD-SDI video at the transmitter sites and change over switching at the receiver sites for non-critical video signals.

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