Thursday, March 18, 2010

DPI Announcements - Cisco's Medianet Brings QoS For Video Using DPI

 
Cisco announced yesterday (here) the delivery of its "Borderless Networks Vision".

The interesting part for me is the MediaNet part, discussing optimization of video traffic:

" .. Medianet solutions enable businesses to take advantage of video applications to transform workforce interactions. Medianet technology enables the detection and optimization of video and video endpoints, as well as the allocation and prioritization of network resources so that video can be delivered from one type of device, such as a Cisco TelePresenceTM unit, to another type, such as a laptop or mobile phone. Medianet 1.0 is now supported on the new Catalyst fixed switches and Cisco ISR G2 routers"

Looking deeper into Cisco's documentation on Medianet shows it uses DPI

" .. Therefore, packet classification needs to evolve to utilize deeper packet inspection technologies in order to have the granularity needed to distinguish between different types of media streams ... QoS continues to evolve to include more granular queuing, as well as additional packet identification and classification technologies. One advance is the Cisco Programmable Intelligent Services Adapter (PISA), which employs deeper packet inspection techniques mappable to service policies. Intelligent features like PISA will continue to evolve at the network edge to allow application intelligence, enabling the network administrator to prioritize critical applications while at the same time control and police unmanaged or unwanted applications which may consume network resources..." (Overview of a Medianet Architecture -  here).

So we get here an additional level of traffic classification (and QoS) - not just "Video" but classifying the video itself – (see, for example, Cisco Media QoS Recommendations (RFC 4594-based)"


This is certainly important to enterprise networks - and could be interesting if deployed by ISP!

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