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Cisco sets sights on video future

Tony Chan | December 11, 2008 | 0 Comments

The proliferation of video and other forms of rich media is changing the nature of networks today, a trend that calls for a new generation of equipment and technologies at the network level, says Cisco.

The company announced at its C-Scape annual analysts briefing event yesterday, what it calls its medianet strategy, which will provide the market with a broad range of technologies and devices that will optimize networks to handle not only video transmissions within the network, but also the production and delivery of content to different devices, including mobile phones.

“The reason why this is signification is, video, and other types of rich media, is rapidly becoming the dominant type of traffic in networks. In fact, networks which were originally designed for data communications are straining under the architectural load of video and other types of rich media,” Cisco US-based VP of marketing David Hsieh told CommsDay.

According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index Forecast for 2007-2012, professional and traditional broadcast video content will become 80% of all Internet video viewed on PCs and laptops by 2012, while traffic associated with user-generated video content will triple during the period. At the same time, more than 4 billion videos streams per month is expected to be delivered through Internet-enabled set top boxes, such as those used by IPTV services, or game consoles, by 2012.

In order for networks to better support video, they will need more intelligence to provide the user quality required by video, while a new class of technologies and devices will be needed to handle different applications.
“The way we are going to do that is enable customers to create media, by enhancing our existing routers, switches and gateways and other types of networking products with technologies that make video work better, and by introducing completely new classes of devices that add new capabilities to the network,” Hsieh said.

MEDIA EXPERIENCE ENGINE
The first new product of the medianet strategy is the MXE (media experience engine) 3000, a network appliance that, according to Hsieh, will let networks take video in and transform it, change its format, its codec, its frame rate, its aspect ratio, as well as give operators the ability to conduct various types of post production editing, including colour correction, adding captions, adding graphical overlays, directly to the video stream. “We can do this automatically and we can do this in the network,” he added.

“This is part of Cisco’s broader video strategy. One is enabling any-to-any content, secondly, simplifying the deployment of video by looking at it end-to-end, understanding the capture devices, the cameras, the displays, the hardware and software that power video systems, and by adding intelligence to the network on an end-to-end basis.”

The strategy also includes the company’s Visual Quality Experience (VQE) technology that optimizes video port over IP networks and its Advanced Video Services Module that enables terabits of video streaming – both introduced with the firm’s ASR9000 Edge Router in November.

THREE MEDIANET TECH CATEGORIES
According to Hsieh, Cisco’s medianet technologies fall into three main categories that aim to make the network more media-aware – so it can recognize and optimize video; more end-point-aware, so it knows which devices it is delivering the content too and has the capabilities to optimize that content, such as reformatting, adjusting resolutions and so on, for that device; and more self-aware, so it knows the conditions on its paths, and optimizes video traffic to maintain the user experience.

These technologies will give the network the intelligence to ensure the best user experience, in scale, and in continuous streams without disruptions, Hsieh said.

“When 15,000 people hit the play button, you want all the people to have the same experience,” he explained. “If networks are smart, they can actually guarantee the delivery of a continuous stream and they can adapt that stream to ensure that it is continuous. So for example, it might eliminate a frame to ensure the video is continuous even though it might go from 30fps to 20fps. In extreme conditions, it might even reduce the resolution of the video. So it will be continuous but you might lose a little bit of sharpness during the time of congestion.”

OPERATOR DEALS: Cisco announced its first operator customer for medianet technologies – Portugal’s Sonaecom, who has selected Cisco’s video platform for its Clix SmarTV IPTV service. At the same time, AT&T announced that it will now offer businesses the ability to make intercompany Telepresence calls.

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