There is no no doubt that a great part of the ROI from VC comes from avoiding international travels. But that’s where the network problems begin. How do you secure connectivity and bandwidth to arbitrary destinations?
What do you think?
As the market for video conferencing is maturing, businesses’ requirements are evolving from standard definition (SD) to high definition (HD) in order to enjoy a true telepresence experience. In the high-end of the corporate video conferencing market, businesses utilise several conference rooms with multiple HD monitors and HD cameras into one telepresence meeting session.
These advanced video conference and telepresence solutions demand extreme network capacity and reliability. Many corporations extend their infrastructure to support video in their intranet using dedicated links. Besides being very costly and demanding to operate and maintain, the low flexibility and interoperability doesn’t match the expected experience for high quality internet-based visual communication.
Tags: arbitrary destinations, IP network, video conferencing
Reliability is most important feature for the Telepresence / Videoconferencing users. It definitley requires a “good” network (bandwidth and QoS). A dedicated video network is always better but costs much more. The Video / TP applications (mission critical or not) is what impacts mostly the ROI.
Ease of use as well as high quality video and audio are less important to some extend as long as the entwrk brings reliability to calls. Then will come security which is mostly network related.
What is a “good” network? What requirements should I be looking at? Thanks!
A “standard quality” call will typically use 512-768 kbps bandwidth. “High quality” calls (e.g., 720p resolution) will use 1-2 Mbps.
It is important to note that shorter bursts of video data may need more than these average figures! You should also think about how many endpoints would be used simultaneously at your LAN.
This required bandwidth must be available at all links in your network path. If your local ISP connection is sufficiently provisioned, and you still experience problems, you may consider using Media Network Services.
I helped set up and maintain a HDVC roll out. VLAN990 Priority Switching over a 100mb network globally allows a 768k call to be bridged for many sites and the jitter and bandwidth loss running QOS is not noticable. Thiers a PRI line to the gatekeepers as well so external callers with 512k plus equipment on ISDN can also join calls.
10mb networks will bottle neck depending on network loads during the busy periods and calls will down speed jitter and be blocky.
VLAN990 is the way forward on a 100mb network Germany NewYork and the UK in HD with less than .2 seconds delay end to end and picture quality as good as you can get for the reliability.
We did many tests and trials and this combination of topography and call bandwidth works really well on a support VLAN990 network.
Mind you once you have seen 768k globally ISDN looks like a copied VHS tape even at 384k and clients expectations will be raised that much higher.
Thanks Tarik and Howard. Very helpful!
What about video conferencing overseas? How can we ensure the required bandwidth throughout the network path?