Medianet Reference Guide - Cisco

Drivers for QoS Design Evolution
Chapter 4
Medianet QoS Design Considerations
Businesses recognize the value that media applications—particularly video-based collaborative
applications—bring to the enterprise, including:
• Increasing productivity
• Improving the quality of decision making
• Speeding time-to-market
• Facilitating knowledge sharing
• Fueling innovation
• Reducing travel time and expenses
• Protecting the environment
Corresponding to these values and benefits of media applications, there are several business drivers
behind media application growth, including:
• Evolution of video applications
• Transition to high-definition media
• Explosion of media
• Phenomena of social networking
• Emergence of “bottoms-up” media applications
• Convergence within media applications
• Globalization of the workforce
• Pressures to go green
These business drivers briefly described in the following sections.
The Evolution of Video Applications
When the previous Cisco Enterprise QoS Design Guide was published (in 2003), there were basically
only two broad types of video applications deployed over enterprise networks:
• Interactive video—Generally describes H.323-based collaborative video applications (typically
operating at 384 kbps or 768 kbps); video flows were bi-directional and time-sensitive.
• Streaming video—Generally describes streaming or video-on-demand (VoD) applications; video
flows were unidirectional (either unicast or multicast) and were not time-sensitive (due to significant
application buffering).
However, at the time of writing this document (2009), video applications have evolved considerably, as
illustrated in Figure 4-1.
4-2
Medianet Reference Guide
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