Does IPTV work if user is on VPN connection?

[ROBERT TOGONON]

This question came up at work, does IPTV work on a VPN connection using DSL or cable high speed?

[Richard Burts]

To answer your question I think it will be necessary to be more specific about the VPN connection.

A critical factor is that IP TV is transmitted via multicast. IPSec which is usually the foundation of IPSec is for unicast IP packets.

So if the VPN were a VPN client to concentrator type of connection then I would expect IP TV not to work. And when I tested it at a customer site it did not work.

However that customer also does site to site VPN (router to router) with IPSec and GRE tunnels. It allows any end station behind one router to communicate with any end station behind the other router. And it does support multicast. (We are using it primarily to carry dynamic routing which uses multicast and it works very well.) So I would expect that IP TV would work just fine over VPN if the VPN connection uses IPSec with GRE.

HTH

Rick

[ROBERT TOGONON]

Thank you for your reply Rick.

Our VPN users are using IPSec protocol on an ISA server.