Application Delivery Management

Video Insight

The Video Insight feature provides an easy and scalable solution for monitoring the metrics of the video optimization techniques used by NetScaler appliances to improve customer experience and operational efficiency, providing benefits such as:

  • Manage the network during congestion in peak hours.

  • Improve video play consistency and reduce video stalling.

  • Enable new video service offerings (for example, Binge-on video services).

  • Enable customers to select the best sustainable video quality.

  • Provide a consistent user experience for the subscriber.

While optimizing the video traffic, the NetScaler appliance uses a special mechanism to dynamically pace the video bit-rate and a random sampling technique to estimate the savings from the optimization technique. For more information about the NetScaler Video Optimization feature, see Video Optimization. When you integrate NetScaler appliance with NetScaler Console, it collects key information from the video data flowing through the NetScaler appliance. You can use this information to compare the optimized and unoptimized performance of the ABR video traffic, determine the savings due to optimization and so on.

Note

The statistics of the unoptimized sessions provided in NetScaler Console corresponds to the sessions that you had selected of random sampling in NetScaler appliance. For more information about Random Sampling, see Video Optimization.

Video Insight in NetScaler Console provides metrics for the following types of video traffic:

  • Progressive Download (PD) videos over HTTP

  • ABR videos over HTTP

  • ABR videos over HTTPS

  • YouTube ABR videos over QUIC

Configuring Video Insight

Note

Video Insight is supported on NetScaler instances with NetScaler Premium license. The NetScaler Premium license is supported for NetScaler Telco platforms (VPX T1000 and VPX-T).

To configure Video insight on a NetScaler instance, first enable the AppFlow feature, configure an AppFlow collector, action, and policy, and bind the policy globally.  When you configure the collector, you must specify the IP address of the NetScaler Console server on which you want to monitor the reports.

To configure video insight on a NetScaler instance, run the following commands to configure an AppFlow profile and policy and bind the AppFlow policy globally.

add appflow collector <name> -IPAddress <ipaddress> -port <port_number> -Transport logstream

set appflow param -videoInsight ENABLED

add appflow action <name> -collectors <string> -videoAnalytics ENABLED

add appflow policy <name> <rule> <action>

bind appflow global <policyName> <priority> [<gotoPriorityExpression>] [-type <type>]

enable ns mode ulfd

enable feature AppFlow

Sample

add appflow collector col1 -IPAddress 10.106.76.15 -port 5557 -Transport logstream
set appflow param -videoInsight ENABLED
add appflow action act1 -collectors col1 -videoAnalytics ENABLED
add appflow policy appol true act1
bind appflow global appol 1
enable ns mode ulfd
enable feature appflow
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Viewing the Video Insight metrics in NetScaler Console

After enabling Video Insight in NetScaler Console, you can view video optimization metrics such as, video classification, data volume, peak data rate, and ABR video plays. These metrics help you analyze your network and optimize the videos for improved subscriber experience, operational efficiency, and other performance criteria.

To view the Video Insight metrics in NetScaler Console:

  1. In a web browser, type the IP address of the NetScaler Console virtual appliance (for example, http://192.168.100.1).

  2. In User Name and Password, enter the administrator credentials.

  3. Navigate to Analytics > Video Insight.

    Video insight

Note

The values provided by the legend OTHER in the charts represent the non-ABR and non-PD data in the video traffic depending on the filter you have selected:

  • All – Sum of non-ABR (HTTP, HTTPS, and QUIC) and non-PD (HTTP) data in the video traffic.
  • HTTP – Sum of non-ABR and non-PD data in the video traffic.
  • HTTPS – Sum of non-ABR video data in the video traffic.
  • QUIC – Sum of non-ABR video data in the video traffic.
Video Insight