Trilight Zone

[tricore]

-- IT leaders need to stay out in front of Internet video technology in order to anticipate corporate needs and what it will require to fulfill those needs in terms of money, time, expertise and infrastructure improvements.


Businesses can benefit in several ways from the technology, from multicasting corporate announcements to videoconferencing to content on Web sites that can help explain products and services to customers.

Technology can be as high-end as room-based videoconferencing systems with spatial audio or as simple as webcams attached to PCs for peer-to-peer sessions. Vendors that offer at least some components are as diverse as Tandberg Data ASA, Polycom Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp., Mitel Networks Corp., Avaya Inc. and Nortel Networks.

Either way, video on the Internet is at a stage of development similar to where voice over IP (VoIP) was just a few years ago, as technology changes rapidly and as businesses and regulators grapple with how to deal with it.

Here are 10 points you need to know about video on the Internet:

1. Recognize the different uses of video

Networks have different needs if they are going to support video on the Internet for educational purposes or for videoconferencing, as compared with streaming presentations presented as part of Web pages. Videoconferencing can eat up 220Kbit/sec. to 1Mbit/sec. per session, depending on the quality of the video. Streaming video can eat up 50Kbit/sec. to 2Mbit/sec., depending on the quality.

"How high end do you want to go?" says Bruce Wiatrak, product marketing manager for media servers at Audiocodes Ltd. "Do you want to be just a webcam and a PC, or are you talking a full-room system for videoconferencing with HDTV-type quality?"

2. Make sure network infrastructure is up to the task

This means an evaluation is in order, because the needs of videoconferencing are different from users accessing streaming video, for instance.

The quality of connections should be checked for delay, packet loss and jitter even if the company has successfully implemented a VoIP deployment. VoIP, for instance, has a higher tolerance for lost packets than video has.

The best way to evaluate a network is to simulate the exact traffic that will be on the network and see how it performs, says Kaynam Hedayat, vice president of engineering and chief technology officer at Brix Networks, which makes gear for such evaluations.

3. Look at the big picture if network upgrades are indicated

If more bandwidth is required for video as well as other new applications, it may make sense to go for a full network upgrade that supports Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop. "The best case is you don't need anything; the worst case is you need to rearchitect," says Hedayat.

Forrester Research Inc. advises to build on existing IP and collaboration platform investments. "For example, Microsoft users would look for vendors that integrate with [Live Communication Server]," Forrester says.

4. Put the technology on trial -- inexpensively, if possible -- to discover its possibilities and limitations

Testing uses for video can be relatively inexpensive, says IP communications entrepreneur Jeff Pulver, chairman of pulver.com. High-quality video cameras for in-house production cost less than $2,000, and there are Web sites that host video for free. "It's hard to compete with free," he says.

But free hosting is probably appropriate only for seeing how corporate video appears on the Internet, but not for live sites, he says. "There's a long list of companies that will host your content for free," Pulver says. "The big gotcha is viewers may have to sit through some advertising."

Editing suites for video available from Adobe are used to edit major motion pictures and daily TV shows, he says, but training may be an issue. "The need for the skill set to produce quality work still persists," he says. "People need to figure out the type of image they want to present of themselves and whether they want to host the content themselves or go to third parties."

5. Experiment with different video coder-decoders

They are responsible for translating video into IP, and they compress video at varying rates to use up more or less bandwidth. Over time, vendors have developed codecs that provide better quality at lower bandwidth, but the best way to know what to buy is to view samples using different codecs. The goal is to strike a balance between acceptable quality and the cost of providing more bandwidth. The rule of thumb, Hedayat says, is to shoot for the newest technology that saves the most bandwidth without sacrificing quality.

This may require extra effort. "Expect some issues that you might have to work with the vendor on," he says.

6. Make sure other network traffic doesn't eat away at video bandwidth and lessen quality

Once video is running, it is important to monitor network performance so quality remains high even as more applications are added to the network and traffic patterns change. If bandwidth-hog applications come onto the network and contend with video, it is better to know quickly and figure out what to do about it. This may call for bandwidth-management gear, separate VLANs or boosting backbone speeds. "Networks are not static," Hedayat says.