Local cable television advertising involves managing diverse commercial content from many sources and inserting it into cable lineups. This process is complex for a company like Adlink, which delivers commercials across 80 cable systems covering 99% of homes in Los Angeles. As Adlink's private network becomes more integrated with public networks, it faces new security concerns. Solsoft was brought in to help Adlink centrally manage security policies across its heterogeneous network using Solsoft Policy Server. This solution helps automate security management and enforcement to address Adlink's changing needs.

1. Local cable television advertising is a tricky business.Commercial content comes
from many sources.National commercials are generated by Madison Avenue
advertising agencies,while local content comes from both regional and local
agencies.Collecting,managing,and distributing this diverse content and then
inserting it into various cable lineups is a management headache.
Sending television commercials
over the Internet raises security concerns
About Adlink
Adlink sells TV advertising
in Los Angeles across
44 cable networks.
S O L S O F T @ W O R K
“In the past, we relied on the privacy of
our network for security,” says Andrew
Dahl, the staff engineer at Adlink. But
how quickly things change.
“Our first task is to protect ourselves from
ourselves,” Dahl says, explaining that as
Adlink’s distribution network gets more
tightly linked with its business network,
the integration that results ends up
exposing the content-delivery network
to the outside world. Now Adlink must
worry about the sorts of things that plague
all net-enabled businesses: hackers, the
theft of proprietary information, Internet
scams, and worms, viruses, and Trojans.
Adlink first turned to Cisco to address its
security needs. “We were evaluating several
Cisco products, but what we really wanted
was a product that would not only secure
our network, but also could help us manage
the entire network from a central location,”
says Dahl. “After getting a clearer picture of
our needs, Cisco ended up recommending
a company called Solsoft.”
Solsoft was brought in to add policy
management to the basic goal of securing
an increasingly complex network. Adlink
delivers television commercial spot content
over Layer 3 IP via an ATM network. The
commercials are in MPEG format and
are transported from six different source
locations to over 80 video advertising
servers throughout Southern California.Each
advertising server then inserts commercial
content on one of the 44 cable networks
that Adlink serves. The 3500 insertion
points mentioned earlier each contain
opportunities (“avails”) for approximately
200 thirty-second commercials per day.
This represents nearly 700,000 commercial
insertions being performed within the
Adlink network on any given day,along with
additional error message traffic and other
diagnostics. In total there are approximately
1 million transaction or status messages per
day traveling on the network,in addition to
the very large MPEG files and schedule files.
That’s a lot of traffic.“Up until recently,Adlink
operated on a closed, private ATM network
with no other points of ingress, but due an
increasing need to integrate the data from
our various partners, we are having to open
our network up to allow multi-domain/owner
data paths,” says Dahl.
In Southern California,a company called Adlink
handles this complex task.Adlink maintains a
distribution network that delivers commercials
to the cable system operators covering 99%
of the cable homes in the Los Angeles/Palm
Springs “DMA”(Nielsen ratings terminology
for designated marketing area), the second
largest market in the US. Those cable systems
are physically segmented into 80 separate ad
insertable or “targetable”zones,each carrying
44 ad insertable cable networks.
The matrix of 80 zones by 44 networks produces
a set of over 3500 insertion points, each
requiring MPEG files and schedule files (along
with the return of logfiles and management
information) on a daily basis 365x24.
The key to this business is the ability to deliver
content over an IP network. However, as
Adlink’s previously private network becomes
increasingly tied into public networks,a new
concern has emerged:security.
Private Networks are No Longer Private
44 cable networks in the Adlink digital interconnect...
A complex task
T V & N E T W O R K
A D L I N K S T A T I S T I C S
Adlink has grown to become the nation's leading
digital interconnect capable of delivering several
hundredthousandspotsadayto 80cablesystems
where they air on 44 cable networks. Adlink's
systems are linked by 4,000 miles of IP/ATM network,
covering an area of more than 22,000 square
miles in Southern California.
LOS ANGELES DMA STATISTICS
Total Population:17,242,485 *
Total Households:5,554,300 **
TV Households:5,431,140 **
Adlink Cable Households:3,100,000 **
** Source:Nielsen,Los Angeles,Jan 2005
+ Nielson Palm Springs,Nov 2004
* SRC:Total Population,Average HH Income,
Ethnicity (based on Adlink universe - 2004
est.based on 2000 census)
Andrew Dahl, Staff Engineer

2. S O L S O F T @ W O R K
Adelphia are merging their corporate networks with
various private networks; distribution networks and
business networks are feeding into one another more
and more; and Adlink has to accommodate all of these
trends. Solsoft’s Policy Server helped them create order
out of chaos.Policy Server is an open system
for the centralized management of firewalls,
routers, switches, and VPNs. What made this
solution so appealing to Adlink was that it
actually manages heterogeneous security
environments. Most vendor management
software is designed to work only with that
vendor’s own gear. With Solsoft a customer
can combine various best-in-class products
from such companies as Cisco,Juniper,Check
Point, Nortel, and Symantec, and make all of
these products work together holistically.
“Once we heard about Solsoft,”explains Dahl,
“we scoured the Internet for other companies
doing the same thing. There was no one else
doing what they do, and that made the
decision easy for us. We went with Solsoft.”
Using Solsoft Policy Server, Adlink’s Operations
and IT staffs were able to define, document,
deploy, and audit policies across its complex
system of networks. Solsoft’s policy-based
system hardens networks against attacks
and human error by making sure security
rules are consistent end-to-end – something
that in large, distributed, heterogeneous
networks is practically impossible to do
manually or through various vendor-specific
management tools.
Policing the flow of traffic
“We needed a management solution that could accommodate
changing security policies on a month-to-month,
week-to-week, and day-to-day basis,” says Dahl.
To harden its ATM network, Adlink first deployed Cisco
831 routers in core locations and Cisco PIX 525 firewalls
at their affiliate locations. This helped secure the point
of ingress for affiliate network connections,but a centralized
system was still needed to manage those different devices,
one that would not be cumbersome or require a heavy
amount of manual configuration.
With Solsoft Policy Server in place, complex security
policies comprising access control, network address
translation,and anti-spoofing rules are now consistent
and enforceable throughout the network.Only certain
types of traffic are permitted over the ATM network,
and return traffic is tightly controlled within the ATM
network, thus freeing the content-delivery network
from superfluous traffic.
“Return traffic was a problem,” Dahl says, “but through
the Solsoft console, we can eliminate a lot of unnecessary
protocols like telnet or ftp over the ATM network.”
Even if those ports are disallowed,in the past,affiliates
or even certain software programs could open them
back up. With Solsoft Policy Server, not only are those
Creating security policies isn’t enough
©1997-2005 Solsoft.Solsoft and Solsoft NP are trademarks of Solsoft.Solsoft product specifications are subject to change without notice.Solsoft is protected
by French patent N° FR97/13254 and may be protected by other US patents,foreign patents or pending applications.All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Solsoft,Inc.
2065 Landings Drive
Mountain View,CA 94043
USA
+1 (650) 428 2800 tel
+1 (650) 428 2804 fax
Solsoft S.A.
47-53,Rue Raspail
92300 Levallois-Perret
France
+33 (0)1 47 15 04 00 tel
+33 (0)1 47 15 55 09 fax
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Prinzenallee 7
40549 Düsseldorf
Germany
+49 (0)211 52 391 550 tel
+49 (0)211 52 391 507 fax
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1 Berkeley Street
London - W1J 8DJ
United Kingdom
+44 (0)20 7016 9090 tel
+44 (0)20 7016 9100 fax
E-mail :info@solsoft.com
www.solsoft.com
policies consistently enforced, but also the
change control process is carefully monitored
thanks to built-in reporting and workflow.
Centralizing the security management
function is a major theme in today’s
compliance-conscious IT environments.But
beyond the reporting that is so typical of
most security monitoring products,Solsoft
delivers intrinsic value by automating what
is normally an error-prone and labor-intensive
process,namely the configuration of security
policies across single-vendor and
heterogeneous networks.
“Solsoft Policy Server saves us a ton of time,”
Dahl noted. “Previously, if we implemented
a new security policy, we had to telnet into
every router and firewall and manually add
an access line entry. With Solsoft’s easy
front-end interface, what used to take several
hours now takes 10 minutes.”
Finally,Dahl says that Adlink was impressed by
the affordability of the Solsoft solution.
“Just from the time savings alone, we estimate
that we’ll see ROI within the first 24-30
months.”
T V & N E T W O R K
UPS
OC3
Connection
Cisco Router
T-1 DSU/CSU
Ethernet
DISTRIBUTION
CHANNEL
Connection to
Affiliate HQ’s
ADLINK / AFFILIATE
HEADEND
ADLINK
HEADQUARTERS
Workstations
Ethernet
T-1 DSU/CSU
T-1 DSU/CSU
T-1
Connection
Network
Distribution
Multicast
n CUBE
Alphaserver
RAID
Storage
Quality
control
MEPG2
Encoder
MEPG2
Encoder
nCube /
ADLINK-
Ad Insertion
System
nCube /
ADLINK-
Ad Insertion
System
nCube /
ADLINK-
Ad Insertion
System
nCube /
ADLINK-
Ad Insertion
System
Thus,even a simple matter such as controlling what types
of traffic flow over the network then becomes a concern.
Dahl believed that this situation would only worsen over
time. Cable operators are now looking to directly stream
commercials; major cable companies like Comcast and
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