Analyzing IPTV set-top box crashes

Recent advances in residential broadband access technologies have led to a wave of commercial IPTV deployments. As IPTV services are rolled out at scale, it is essential for IPTV systems to maintain ultra-high reliability and performance. A major issue that disrupts IPTV service is the crash of the set-top box (STB) software. The STB directly resides inside the consumer's home network and provides the essential interface to both the user and the network to deliver rich content that goes well beyond traditional TV. To understand the potential causes of STB crashes, we perform an indepth statistical analysis focused on the relationships between STB crashes, video stream content, and user activities. Our initial results suggest that (i) impaired video streams may cause STB crashes, and (ii) continuous STB usage may gradually degrade the STB health over time.