Following dvbSAM components are realizing the transport stream monitoring for DVB-H, DVB-T, DVB-S and DVB-S2:

• SAMager Agent
  On the one hand SAMager Agent connects to all dvbSAM components involved in the monitoring tasks and collects & aggregates all status information from these components continuously.
  On the other hand SAMager Agent provides theSNMP control and status interface to the SNMP backend used by the operator.
  
  
• SAMcorder
  SAMcorder, the central input/output processor of dvbSAM, receives the DVB multiplex via RF, ASI or IP interfaces and provides the received data for further analysis to SAMbera, SAMesg and SAMbuddy.
  SAMcorder monitors in realtime all relevant parameters of the entire multiplex on RF layer, MPEG2 (ETSI TR 101290) layer, MPE layer, IP/UDP/RTP/SDP layer, EPG layer, DVB Subtitle layer and Teletext layer. Furthermore it analyzes OMA BCAST SCP and OMA BCAST DRM keystream messages.
  
  
• SAMitor
  SAMitor monitors in realtime the Audio/Video layer and detects Audio and Video freeze, Audio silence and signal loss .
  
  
• SAMesg
  SAMesg monitors the ESG bootstrap and ESG containers of all Electronic Service Guides contained in the multiplex simultaneously in realtime, performs plausibility checks, monitors update cycles and much more.
  
  

SAMager Agent provides a comprehensive SNMP MIB consisting of about 800(!) SNMP operations and TRAPs. It further fully supports SNMP tables and uses this capability to provide information about every monitoring detail.

For example, in ETSI TR 101290 a priority one check of the timing of all contained PMTs is required. If one PMT timing is out of range then the aggregated PMT monitoring result is "error". So if one PMT is out of range, in other monitoring solutions there is usually no information available anymore, whether all other PMTs are within the allowed range or not, only an error gets signaled in those solutions.

However, the SAMager Agent provides a table listing all information about all table entries (such as the PMTs in the example) separately. So the operator can analyze quickly whether e.g. the "PMT Error" affects the entire multiplex or only a single PMT.

Moreover, SAMager Agent even allows to take out a particular table entry (such as a particular PMT in the example) from monitoring via SNMP, thereby aggregating the sum status only from the remaining SNMP table entries. This is a very useful feature in case there are "known" errors within a multiplex which the operator does not want to be considered while building the aggregated status of a monitoring parameter.

This feature is supported accross all monitoring layers and used whereever tables are useful, making monitoring very efficient even if there are "known" problems inside the multiplex.

The SNMP MIB further supports sending of SNMP TRAPs, which can individually be configured in any regard.

For each TRAP it can be configured, whether:

• a TRAP shall get sent with every state change of the particular monitoring parameter or only, if the state gets worse
• a TRAP shall get sent continuously as long as a warning or error condition of the particular monitoring parameter is set or whether the TRAP shall get sent only once when the state changes
• a TRAP shall get sent for error conditions only or for warning + error conditions of the particular monitoring parameter
• a TRAP shall contain further detailed state information or just the new state of the particular monitoring parameter

This flexibility and the versatile configuration possibilites make it ideal for any monitoring purposes for DVB-T, DVB-H, DVB-S and DVB-S2.

Monitoring Network Overview - dvbSAM SNMP based monitoring