Video and the Network (redoux)

The overarching theme at C-Scape was Video as it has been repeatedly in the past. Video of course drives huge increases in network traffic and demands for high quality network services, so for a network equipment vendor it must be an important topic. What is different this year is: (1) Cisco products are starting to drive video loads directly (TelePresence) and (2) Cisco has introduced a family of video network products. Ultimately video end-point devices will include meta-data by which they can identify their needs to the network (bandwidth, quality of service - in the interim Cisco will let switch ports act as a surrogate for the connected device). The first notable product is a transcoder that transforms common video formats - Cisco's goals is that any media can be experienced from any endpoint (a future version will do real-time transcoding). Video is integrated with WebEx already. There is no doubt that video will play an important role in the network (anyone who has experienced Cisco TelePresence or HP Halo Room will agree). The more interesting question is "how much?" Cisco hasn't tried to answer that yet. While there are some jobs (like John Chambers') that are defined by non-stop meetings, I believe that for most people trying to get a job done the goal is fewer, more-effective meetings, not more meetings. That suggests a bound to how much video a normal organization will drive.