Testing Controllers for NMOS Compliance

At the recent JT-NM Tested event, automated testing of controllers for NMOS compliance took place for the first time. This talk will describe the need for controller testing and how this was added to the NMOS Testing Tool to allow it to be used at the JT-NM Tested event. Controllers on professional media networks use the AMWA NMOS protocols to perform operations such as discovering media devices on the network (IS-04) and making connections between them (IS-05), allowing media flows to be set up between different devices. The NMOS Testing Tool is a freely available open-source software development. It has been developed by AMWA members to ensure that equipment that supports NMOS conforms to the specifications correctly. It allows vendors, systems integrators, and end users to self-test their equipment and has been extremely valuable in the drive to better interoperability between different vendors’ equipment. This includes being used at JT-NM Tested events, which allow vendors to obtain a JT-NM Tested badge and an entry in a publicly available catalog describing which parts of the NMOS specifications their equipment supports. However, until recently the Testing Tool was limited to testing only NMOS nodes and registries. At the previous JT-NM Tested event, controllers were tested but this was done manually, a very time-consuming and expensive process. To address this, Sony proposed and led an AMWA activity to add controller testing to the NMOS Testing Tool. This required a different approach to node and registry testing, involving a semi-automated framework that guides the user to perform a set of steps using their controller interface and then verifies the results automatically. The new controller test suite was successfully trialled at an AMWA workshop earlier this year, allowing it to be officially introduced as part of the recent JT-NM Tested event. The new controller test suites currently test only some key IS-04 and IS-05 functionality for controllers. To clearly define what else controllers should be able to do, another AMWA activity was launched to provide better guidance for implementers. This “NMOS Controller Specification” activity resulted in the addition of clearly worded controller sections to the IS-04, IS-05 and BCP-003-01 (transport layer security) specifications and the creation of a new implementation guide for controllers, INFO-005. These documents will be used as the basis to provide further additions to the controller test suites in future. This talk describes how the new test framework was created and how to use it. It also introduces the new controller sections in the NMOS specifications and discusses how these can be used to provide further additions to the Testing Tool in future, leading to better interoperability for everyone.