Cisco touts video over enterprise WLANs

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 20 January 2010 05:05

Business IT - Technology

Cisco has introduced its 'media-ready' wireless LAN - a set of enhancements to its 802.11n product offerings enabling these networks to support the delivery of high definition video.

The technology was unveiled with an announcement that it would be used by Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), a privately endowed university in Rochester, New York, to deliver learning applications to students over its Cisco Unified Wireless Network - a combination of wired and wireless network technologies designed to addresses the wireless network security, deployment, management, and control issues enterprises face.

The Cisco media ready WLAN is enabled by VideoStream, a set of new features for the Cisco Unified Wireless Network that optimises the performance of multimedia over the wireless and wired network, and supports the medianet platform.

According to Cisco, "VideoStream removes the challenges associated with streaming video over the wireless network by delivering reliable multicast, the enforcement of video priority levels and resource reservation control. These help ensure the quality of existing wireless media sessions is maintained as additional wireless video streams are added to the network."

In addition, Cisco is extending AssureWave, a solution verification programme designed to simplify customer adoption of mobility solutions, to validate the performance of rich media solutions, including those from Cisco and its technology partners.

Video communications is becoming an increasingly important component of intra-organisation communications, and more of this video is moving to high definition with the introduction of HD video systems from leading manufacturers like Polycom and Tandberg (being acquired by Cisco). At the same time the flexibility and economy of wireless over wired local area networks in leading to increased penetration and predictions of the all-wireless enterprise network.

It would clearly be undesirable for this trend to be blocked by the inability of WLANs to support video. Yet, as this Cisco white paper points out, the challenges are considerable. "Wi-Fi introduces a set of network performance characteristics-including variable data rates, packet loss, and multicast unreliability - that work against some of the traditional approaches to guaranteed quality of service (QoS)," it says.

Enterprise mobility via dual mode WiFi/cellular handsets is also a big driver for the use of wireless rather than wired LANs, but this, according to Ovum is not Cisco's initial focus in making its WLAN offerings 'media-ready'.

Ovum analyst, Claudio Castelli, said: "The 802.11n standard requires more power than the 802.11g. This, combined with the high processing capacity required for HD video, will increase the strain on the batteries of dual-mode smartphones, which are already struggling to cope with existing WiFi requirements. As a result, most early applications will be based on laptops, cordless desk phones and video signage, rather than on handsets...Mobile video is likely to be restricted to more niche applications, such as applications for education and training. Current examples include the provision of visual translation of lectures for deaf students, but we are convinced that a few more will follow."

He added: " In general, mobile video hasn't taken off. Video consumption on mobiles over 3G networks is considerably lower than initially envisaged, and we don't yet see enough compelling benefits of video for dual-mode phone users at enterprises to change the story for Wi-Fi networks. In addition, to take video beyond the enterprise Cisco will need to integrate this with its FMC solutions and rely more on its telco partners."