AV Technology - February/March 2009 - (Page 53) ➤ ARE YOU VIDEO READY? snooping and intrusion by malicious users is essential. • IP multicast streaming must be protected from video “hijacking,” and malicious users must be prevented from transmitting unauthorized video. • Network virtualization techniques are needed to segregate video traffic. SCALABILITY AND PERFORMANCE • Network scalability is critical to supporting increasing bandwidth demands as more video applications are deployed. To maintain optimal performance, the network should easily accommodate higher bandwidths, scaling to support Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop and 10 Gigabit Ethernet for uplinks into the core. • The network should allow video forwarding without introducing significant latency. • The aggregation network layers must support 10 Gigabit Ethernet to handle high bandwidth. • System scalability is important to maintaining optimal performance for memory and processing resources (Ternary content addressable memory resources [TCAMs]) in network switches. [Source: Cisco] Video applications introduce additional challenges to the underlying network infrastructure. To support these enterprise video applications, a tightly controlled network foundation providing the following services is required. OPTIMIZED VIDEO DELIVERY • The network must have quality-of-service (QoS) mechanisms to help organizations deliver video without disrupting business-critical traffic. • The network must have IP Multicast support to allow wide delivery to multiple clients. • A video-ready campus must have nonstop communication to ensure reliable video delivery in case of failure. • Video performance must be proactively monitored and measured across the network. • The network must have application intelligence to differentiate between business-critical and non-critical video streams. SECURITY FOR VIDEO APPLICATIONS • The network must have integrated video security to protect authorized access to video applications. • Mitigation of attacks and protection of traffic from ate a significant bottleneck to the smooth flow of video. Video is unlike audio (voice) or data. Data traffic is highly sporadic. Voice traffic is low bandwidth and packets are sent in a very regular pattern. The way video behaves on the network depends on the type of video you’re transporting. You will need to build your network’s architecture around the type of video you intend to deliver. If it’s conventional video destined to play out on a television, you’ll need a network with dependable bandwidth and very little jitter. Videoconferencing and streamed internet content will be much easier to transport. Careful study of the type of video you will transport, combined with care in designing and maintaining your network, is critical to high-quality video presentation. ■ Phil Hippensteel is an industry consultant and assistant professor at Penn State University. He can be reached at pjhippen@comcast.net. Got a comment? Contact us at AVT@nbmedia.com, and type the title of this article into the subject header. http://www.revolabs.com http://www.revolabs.com http://www.revolabs.com
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