Enabling Broadcast-Quality Video in the Enterprise

Until recently, video in the enterprise was reserved as a general rule for training or conferencing, nevertheless companies are now expanding their use of video to share knowledge with employees and clients. Industry technology firm Forrester has found that 45% of business research users are already watching some type of video for work, during 44% of IT professionals say that their organizations are implementing or planning to implement enterprise IP video for internal use. This trend is expected to continue; a recent Cisco study estimates that by 2013, 55% of all corporate traffic will be video.

The way an enterprise shares information

While video can benefit the way an enterprise shares information and engages with clients, it poses myriad challenges for IT professionals whose job it is to maintain delivery of critical services over the network. For these IT professionals - especially those in large enterprises with many locations and varying bandwidth capabilities - delivering high-quality live and on demand video content to employees anywhere, at any time, can be a huge nightmare. The most significant challenges are guaranteeing security, achieving acceptable performance on all devices, and minimizing network impact.

Fortunately, enterprises can address these issues with new technologies that are coming on the market today. These technologies are enabling enterprises to distribute broadcast-quality video securely to every employee, whether they are in a conference room, at their desk, or on the road with a smartphone or tablet, without paying exorbitant web conferencing or content delivery network fees.

Key Issues Associated with Video in the EnterpriseStreaming video bogs down a corporate network much more than e-mail, Web surfing, or other enterprise activities. Streaming video can disrupt mission-critical applications just as ERP and CRM, slow access to enterprise email, and even cause complete network failure.

One way organizations try to get around this is by implementing technologies just as IP Multicast or CDNs, which distribute caching content servers between the central streaming media servers and receiving customers to lower the stress on networks between originating server and client. But, these solutions can be costly and impractical.

The fact is

The fact is, enterprises can solve these challenges with their existing IP networks or even the public Internet, without having to invest in expensive upgrades. For instance, the Internet has sufficient bandwidth to transport the amount of data that broadcast-quality video represents. It has limitless capacity, with the most advanced, high-speed fiber and satellite communications "pipes," interconnected by the most sophisticated routers and switches. To boot, today's Internet connections allow traffic to be highly secure, with robust encryption schemes like 64-bit AES.

But certain problems inherent to the Internet and private IP networks have been a barrier to their use as a delivery network for high-quality video. The mismatch of the needs of real-time broadcast quality video reflects the origins of the Internet, the TCP/IP protocol suite, and the routing algorithms and network technologies. Fortunately, enterprises can address these issues with new technologies that are coming on the market today.

The nature of the traditional Internet means that users must decide where they want to strike the balance among quality - whether the entire original stream is needed, or some loss is permissible - speed, and latency.

Efforts to use the Internet to carry real-time video have been unsatisfactory for the demanding requirements of enterprises and others. The RTSP, for instance, may be considered the protocol for video transport, nevertheless RTSP is only a framework, and lacks key features and functions necessary to broadcasters and flawless HD video services. Expressly, RTSP does not define specifically how the video can be securely streamed without startup delays, buffering, pauses, or lowering the video resolution.

Today, HDTV over the Internet is where VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) was a decade or more ago. Now, new technologies are being developed that can reliably transform video from poor and unreliable to broadcast quality, delivering the same, or better, experience that enterprise users get in their day in day out use of HDTV at home.

Delays Are Caused by High Latency, Buffering, and Packet LossA key issue with broadcast quality video over the Internet or a private IP network is high latency - delivery delays due to the video stream getting to, going through, and exiting the Internet. Some of the delays are caused by the processing needed to push the signal through the Internet's hardware. This processing starts from the encoders that compress SDI video into H.264 or MPEG 4 content and turn them into packets, to the routers switching packets from one link in the Internet to the at once, to the decoders de-packetizing the stream at the other end. Network devices may as well be performing compression, adding encryption or other security so that unauthorized users can't watch it. All of this adds latency.

The need to buffer the video

Another source of delay is the need to buffer the video, which delays video streams from starting up fast, within a second or two, to taking several seconds or even minutes. Compared to changing the channel, even the delay-previously-play - when a viewer selects an on demand video through a cable box - is faster than the buffering needed to play H.264 content over the Internet.

Still another source of delay is packet loss. With IP video streams, the video signal is split into a series of packets, which need to be re-assembled and played in the right order by the way. Some applications, like email, web surfing, file transfers and peer-to-peer downloads, can tolerate delayed packets arriving in the wrong order. Multimedia applications can as well be designed to be "lossy", or to require the entire original signal to be received with no packet loss. Telephone calls, for instance, can on the whole sound good enough in spite of some level of packet loss. But, broadcast quality video requires the entire original stream with nearly-zero packet loss. Packet loss creates overhead, so the network has to re-request the missing packets, or request in advance for extra packets. This forces buffering and overhead, holding up the delivery of the video stream until the missing packets have been re-sent or received in advance, impacting real-time performance, because:

As a result, many Internet-based video applications and streaming technologies don't deliver broadcast quality video because they lack the required HD quality, smooth, continuous delivery and playback, and reliability. This impedes the creation of innovative Internet-based video applications and services to benefit businesses.

Today, new video transport technologies are emerging that address the obstacles to delivering broadcast-quality video over the IP networks. These technologies are enabling outstanding performance with nearly no latency, superior reliability with nearly-zero packet loss, and the highest video quality with no tradeoffs in delay, resolution or stutter. Despite the varying and nondeterministic network conditions of the public Internet - where the amount of network errors, packet loss, jitter and out-of-order packets fluctuate every second - these technologies are capable of dynamically resolving the issues in sub-millisecond response time to deliver pristine, uninterrupted video. With minimum overhead to physical bandwidth, these applications remove jitter, recover and re-order packets, smoothen video flow, and regenerate video in its original form, all in real-time.

The best of these technologies offer complete end-to-end security using 256-bit AES encryption, and integrate with Active Directory for user- and group-level security. They enable the streaming of high-quality video to a variety devices for viewing, whether they are smartphones, tablets or PCs. Evenly important, these technologies allow users to retain their existing encoded content formats, existing HTTP/ HTTPS/ RTMP/RTSP streams, existing front-end applications, and existing business-process workflow, minimizing impact and changes to their existing infrastructure, applications and operations.

The growth of video communications noted

ConclusionA recent report from Forrester Technology on the growth of video communications noted, "If a picture is worth a thousand words, at the time a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words."

Israel Drori is founder and CEO of ZiXi, the leading provider of solutions and services that deliver flawless broadcast-quality HDTV globally via the Internet.