What problem does this solve?
As IP-based broadcast systems become more complex, operators are overwhelmed by excessive alarms that make it difficult to identify and address real issues in time-sensitive environments. In a live setting, even a short delay in diagnosis can lead to significant financial loss. AMWA set out to reduce this complexity and make fault recognition faster and more intuitive.
What was the industry workaround before this?
Traditionally, engineers relied on dense, technical alarm logs that often buried critical issues under a mountain of less relevant notifications. Identifying a root cause during live transmission failures could take precious minutes—time that broadcasters simply do not have. This often resulted in missed advertising slots or prolonged downtime, both costly and disruptive.
How does it help?
AMWA’s new traffic light-style alarm system, developed in collaboration with users and vendors, introduces a simple and effective visual interface for IP system monitoring. Green indicates normal operation, yellow flags reduced redundancy (where failure is imminent if one more component goes down), and red signals critical failure. It allows engineers to instantly grasp the network’s health at a glance. Demonstrations at NAB 2025, including a live setup with Pebble, showed how a dual NIC failure triggers a yellow ...
Who would this appeal to?
This system is particularly useful for broadcast engineers, network operators, and operations teams managing SMPTE ST 2110 infrastructures. It’s also valuable for large facilities with hundreds or thousands of sender/receiver devices, where quick fault localisation is essential. Any organisation aiming to simplify IP system maintenance and ensure on-air reliability will benefit from this approach.
For more information or to get involved, visit www.amwa.tv. Watch our interview here
