Policy control for IPTV domain

This paper intends to showcase the various areas in IPTV domain where policies can be applied. Polices are set of rules which regulate the usage of critical resources thereby enforcing QOS and security. The overall architecture of IPTV involves multiple transport capabilities and network aspects at the lower layers and infinite possibilities of primary and supplementary services at the application layer. The very thought of monitoring, controlling and billing the usage of resources throws open a Pandora box of problems of coordination and control. Added to this are facts of maintaining QOS and network performance aspects as defined in the SLA of the providers. QOS is Ubiquitous in IMS. Charging domains are created keeping in mind the content provider, portal operator, service provider, network operator & infrastructure provider. A central resource monitor, operating accordingly to the applied polices, facilitates the charging domain to get a common bill for all the services used in various IMS entities. This keeps both the customer and operators at multilevel, informed and content. Enabling end to end QOS and providing usage based charging are the 2 primary topics addressed in this paper. Some of the areas addressed by this paper are broadly summarized as following. ldr Integration and Percolation of operators SLA into policies and distributing them into concerned network entities in the IPTV domain. ldr Monitoring and controlling the network entities which have been provisioned with policies. ldr Centralized Billing and correlation of the network entities involved. ldr Enabling security at both application and network levels in IPTV domain.