Much of the content in this book was originally published by The Broadcast Bridge way back in 2017. Back then IP for broadcast production was new and everybody was evaluating it’s value and its practicality.

A mere six years on and IP is everywhere. The versatility and scalability it brings has moved it into the mainstream and established it as the central nervous system of broadcast.

Most new facilities are IP native, many broadcasters are running hybrid SDI-IP systems, and there are very few engineers for whom IP is not a key part of daily life.

The Broadcast Bridge has published hundreds of articles on IP and continues to push the boundaries, helping broadcasters evaluate the next generation of infrastructure - where IP is enabling cloud and microservices to create the next step change in our technology and workflow.

Throughout the evolution of IP for broadcast this series of articles has continued to draw significant traffic from search engines and our own site search.

This series has become a reference work for engineers and operators who need to understand the fundamental principles and technology of IP.

The content has been updated and edited to reflect the changing times. We hope it continues to serve the industry well.

The free PDF download contains all 14 articles in this series - and all the articles are available as individual web pages:

Article 1 : Basic Principles
The fundamental principles and terminology of IP based broadcast production systems.

Article 2 : Routers & Switches
How Routers & Switches reduce traffic congestion and improve security.

Article 3 : Resilience
How distance vector routing simplifies networks and improves resilience.

Article 4 : Host Configuration
All devices on a network are referred to as ‘hosts’ and they all need to be configured correctly.

Article 5 : Audio Over IP Basics
How AVB, AES67 and Dante address the challenges of using asynchronous networks to distribute audio.

Article 6 : Video Streaming
How efficient one-to-many video distribution is achieved over IP networks using multicasting.

Article 7 : Timing
How PTP addresses the critical challenges of timing in IP networks and brings additional flexibility to broadcast infrastructure.

Article 8 : VLAN’s
How VLAN’s enable the division of an Ethernet network into multiple smaller logical networks.

Article 9 : Ethernet
How Ethernet has evolved to combat congestion and how speeds have increased through the decades.

Article 10 : Security
The flexibility of IP and COTS brings with it the security risks of the internet and the need for robust processes.

Article 11 : Network Analyzers
Wireshark is an invaluable tool that enables engineers to examine network traffic in detail.

Article 12 : Measuring Line Speeds
It is essential for Broadcast Engineers and IT to reach a shared understanding of network speed and capacity.

Article 13 : Quality Of Service
How QoS introduces a degree of control over packet prioritization to improve streaming over asynchronous networks.

Article 14 : Delay Monitoring
We use buffers to reassemble asynchronous streams so we must measure how long individual packets take to reliably get to the receiver, and the maximum and minimum delay of all packets at the receiver.