Cisco’s new video over IP push has been all over the media lately, e.g. the article by Jim Duffy of Network World or Peter Burrow’s post in BusinessWeek. The concept is called MediaNet and includes media (video) aware network elements such as “The Media Experience Engine 3000 (MXE 3000) is a processing platform that sits between an enterprise switch and router and is designed to simplify media sharing across the network by optimizing its delivery in any format for any device. It provides media conversion, real-time post production, editing, formatting, and network distribution for businesses developing targeted visual communications, Cisco says.”

This rings bells from the early days of Voice over IP. Cisco drove Voice over IP because of the traffic on the net and the need for quality networks, Cisco is in the business of selling network equipment. One interesting thing with voice is that it increased the number of packets on the network a lot, Voice over IP calls are typically relatively low bandwidth with many small packets to keep latency down. Routers, switches, etc  handle packets so the need for such network equipment increased. Cisco has also shipped more than 18 million IP phones since 1999.

Video on the other hand is much more bandwidth intensive than voice, also a driver for more network equipment and more advanced network equipment.  Cisco driving Video over IP is in my mind a good thing for the IP communications industry overall and video applications in particular.

Cisco pushing something creates opportunities!

Tags: network, video over ip, voice over ip

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