In-Store Radio Benefits – IT Managers

Minimizing Operational Costs

CampaignManager can be a truly end to end distributed audio management platform. Getting content from A to B is all very well, but when faced with choosing a system to manage your distributed radio network, more is required. How do CampaignManager and the Dappler player help in this regard?

Proactive Automatic Monitoring

Our system automatically monitors your network and will automatically intervene when an instability event occurs. This feature automatically restarts applications and even reboots machines avoiding costly site visits and downtime. For more information, see Minimizing downtime.

Working with your Network; Whatever that happens to be

The cost of deploying a network can be formidable and savings are sometimes possible by using existing network infrastructure. CampaignManager can use any network and does not require expensive static IP settings or the opening of firewall ports. This ensures our system can utilize existing customer networks with the minimum of fuss.

If you do deploy your own network, you can rest assured that CampaignManager will work with it, whether it be cellular connectivity, retail internet, WAN, Wireless or satellite.

Minimizing Bandwidth Usage

Our system helps minimize bandwidth usage in a number of ways.

- CM Node Server

CM NodeServer, which comes for free with the system, allows a single PC in a LAN to act as a kind of proxy server for all the other Dappler players in the local network. So, should the same content be scheduled to multiple units, the CM Node Server ensures that the content is only downloaded once and then distributed to each of the local Dappler players.

- Dappler Content Library

Dappler player itself maintains a content library. This ensures that the same content is never downloaded twice as the Dappler player will always use the locally stored file. CampaignManager also breaks downloads up into small chunks, so that should a connection fail, the Dappler player can start downloading from where it was interrupted, rather than attempting to download the entire campaign again.

- Media Distribution Black Out

Our distribution black out feature allows the system to suspend media distribution to take advantage of off-peak traffic tariffs and to ensure that the system isn’t competing with regular day-time business usage if the Dappler players are utilizing an existing business network.

Minimizing Down Time

- How does the software help me reduce site visits?

Very few non-LAN connectivity systems are truly “always-on”. Modems fail, connections drop and outages happen. Should the network fail, CampaignManager will continue to play back content indefinitely. CampaignManager will simply wait for the connection to come back up and synchronize as soon as a connection becomes available.

Because CampaignManager comes with an easy to use and powerful remote executable/scripting function, it is possible to write scripts or execute programs to do everything from rebooting a modem to resetting TCP/IP connections or DNS settings. In fact, any process one might want to execute at the console of the PC can be managed remotely by CampaignManager.

CampaignManager supports remote executables with command line parameters, BATCH Files, Windows PowerShell and even native .net language scripting. This effectively puts the IT administrator “at the machine” despite the fact it may be disconnected or thousands of miles away.

Three examples of using Remote Execution Management in the real world

- 3G Modem Connectivity Management

Despite all the hype, 3G networks, when compared to DSL are in fact quite unstable. Modems often appear connected to the operating system when in reality the connection has been dropped by the ISP or the modem hardware. A simple script, running at predefined intervals can be run by CampaignManager checking for connectivity and then performing any hardware specific commands such as a modem reset or diagnostics. This remote command could be a simple batch file, a Windows PowerShell Script or even a custom application developed in-house. CampaignManager manages the distribution and scheduled execution of these applications providing a greatly expanded range of options for managing connectivity regardless of the hardware or connection mode you’re using.

- Remote Software Updates

Imagine you are required to roll out a new version of your software or driver update. Your Dappler players are distributed over many hundreds of locations and are connected by slow or unreliable connections. In short remote desktop is not an option. In many cases a costly, slow and highly inefficient site visit would be required. Using CampaignManager’s remote command function, new updates can be packaged and deployed at the click of a mouse. The CampaignManager resource kit includes a self-update pack for the Dappler Player software so version upgrades can be deployed quickly and easily with no downtime and no site visits. Similarly, scripts can be prepared and executed to update practically any part of the operating system or associated 3rdparty software.

- Remote Registry, Network Settings Updates

Consider a scenario where you need to execute some network-wide settings update for your remotely deployed computers. Perhaps it’s a DNS Server change, changing an IP Address, updating the registry or even adding / removing Windows applications or system features. Does the in store radio software you are considering permit you to carry out these essential tasks easily? How would you undertake such a task? Because the Remote Command function of CampaignManager enables the distribution and scheduled execution of any program or executable script, there is nothing you can’t do remotely that you could now do sitting at the PC itself.

Securing your Network

The damage that can be suffered as a result of unauthorised access to your distributed audio network is not too difficult to imagine. Security has been first and foremost in our engineers’ minds throughout the design and development of CampaignManager. The application employs encryption, secure file transfer and other methods to protect your network. Listing encryption methods and network security protocols can sound impressive, but they all amount to nothing should someone gain physical access to the PC that runs your in store radio software. So, it is not enough to guard against external threats; the application itself must provide the first line of defense. We call this Application Security.

- Application Security

CampaignManager in store radio software has security built in to the application itself and as a result your network is still secure even if unauthorised users gain access to your PC.

In most applications, being able to open the application also entitles you to being able to perform any action. CampaignManager allows you to password protect every important action. This can be anything from opening a project, to having the authority to publish content. Thus, even an unattended, unlocked PC is secure against unauthorized use as CampaignManager can request authorisation at every step of the content publication process. Using CampaignManager, you can also assign certain rights to individual users or groups of users. This allows large teams to work on collating media for your network, but restricts publishing rights to specific authorised users. The actions of each user are tracked and are auditable.

- System Security

CampaignManager is protected with Triple DES encryption, a technique often utilized by banks and governments. This ensures that communications are indecipherable to hackers. Almost all other distributed audio applications are vulnerable to ‘insertion attack’ exploitation. This exploit merely requires an attacker to place a file of their choice in the appropriate location to have it heard on your network, with potentially disastrous results. CampaignManager employs proprietary file hashing technology so that file insertion techniques will not work. If an insertion attack is attempted, Dappler player will simply skip the unauthorized media, and continue seamlessly.

How does the size of a deployed system affect the configuration?

Different sized networks will sometimes require different network configurations. You can operate even large networks from a single machine. CampaignManager is very flexible when it comes to how you setup your network.

For the majority of users, a simple configuration above will work best. However, as a network increases, so does the load. The size of a network will roughly determine the configuration you should consider. However, a better way of looking at this issue is to estimate what load the network will have. Estimating the load on your network can be done by combining the major factors which together will determine the load on your distributed media network.

What is the Ryarc Load Factor?

There are many factors which, combined, will help determine the Ryarc Load Factor. They are:

• How many Dappler players will be deployed?
• How often will they connect?
• How often will you change content?
• How much music/audio will you publish?
• How are your Dappler Players connected?

The first two factors in this list are by far the most important when estimating what your hardware configuration should be. You can think of this load factor as being a formula:

Number of Dappler Players / Connection Frequency (seconds) = Connections per Second (load factor)

The first two factors heavily influence how you should configure your network. The latter three factors will determine how much data traffic you will incur. The former factor weighs much more heavily on your configuration choice than does the latter.

Remember, no single factor can be used to determine the load.

- How many Dappler Players and how often will they connect?

This is the most obvious factor. The more Dappler players you connect, the more load on the system. However, a system with 10 Dappler players connecting once a minute will create as much load as a system of 100 Dappler players connecting every ten minutes. You can think of this load factor as being a formula:

Number of Dappler Players / Connection Frequency (seconds) = Connections Per Second (load factor)

The connection frequency has a bearing on how quickly your system will receive updates and how sensitive your monitoring is. Because monitoring is based on receiving a call from a player, if a player is connecting every minute, you will be alerted sooner to the failure or disconnection of a player.

- What should the connection frequency be?

Each time a Dappler player connects to the CM Service, a small amount of data is exchanged. This meta-data, whilst very small does add up. This can add to costs, especially if your network is connected by commercial cellular modems. You need to balance your own need to know whether a Dappler players has gone offline with the costs and load associated with more frequent connections. We recommend a 600 to 1200 second call interval for medium to large sized networks.

- How much Audio/Music will you publish?

If your distributed media network will push a lot of content out at regular intervals you will incur a traffic ‘cost’ for distributing that data. CampaignManager offers a host of features to minimize network traffic. However, large amounts of audio more often will equal greater bandwidth usage on your system. It is important to note that the volume of data to be distributed has only a small effect on what configuration you choose for your system. CampaignManager utilizes HTTP to distribute content and the processing load for distributing this data is relatively low. What content you publish and how often you publish it has relatively little impact on how you might configure your system when compared to how many Dappler players you have and how often they connect.

A Real World Example

To understand what kind of load your media network will have on a machine, it is useful to look at a real world scenario.

- Factors

- Results

Although the scenario above uses a long connection interval it is clear that the system has a very high level of ‘headroom’ when it comes to expanding the network. Theoretically, this system could be expanded to accommodate 7,500 Dappler players.

Summary

The demand the CM service places on the computer is relatively light. A standard modern server similar to the one above should be sufficient to run even very large networks. The load on the server does not increase in a linear fashion with an increasing Ryarc Load Factor. Because hardware performance varies so much, it is impossible to give a mathematical answer to how much load a CM Service installation will take. However, Ryarc Load Factors of 12 to 15 act as a good guide line. What does a load factor of 12 to 15 mean in practice?

- Using more than one Server

Unless your network is very large, scalability is unlikely to be the reason you would choose to scale the CM Service across more than one server. However, it is possible to do so. Using more than one server allows for unlimited scalability and redundancy. Contact the team at Ryarc for free consultation on your specific network configuration requirements.