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QOS for video conferencing question

steigja
Level 3
Level 3

Company A has 2 remote sites and an HQ. The media is Multiaccess. The sites are connected all on the same subnet using metro ethernet. The connection to the main site is 1 gig while the other sites are 10 meg. A video conference between remote site A and B is having poor quality because a user from site B is downloading a large file off a server from the HQ at the same time at 7 mb's. What can be done to give video conferencing QOS if the metro ethernet providers network is best effort? Some video conferencing also occurs between the HQ and remote sites.

2 Replies 2

smalkeric
Level 6
Level 6

Before traffic can be handled according to its unique requirements, it must be identified or labeled. There are numerous classification techniques, including Layer 3 schemes such as IP Precedence or Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP).

In many cases, traffic classification is done at the edge of the network by the video terminal or an Ethernet switch such as the Catalyst 6000. In these cases, the trust boundary is extended to the edge of the enterprise network and resides in the access or distribution layer.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns394/ns158/ns280/net_design_guidance09186a00800d67f6.pdf

Joseph W. Doherty
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

What you could do is set aside or "reserve" bandwidth for video conferencing. For instance, assume a single video conference stream consumes 500 Kbps. Also assume we want to allow for up to two streams (one HQ to remote, and one remote to remote) at both remote sites we're need to set aside 1 Mbps. Additionally assume remote sites have little traffic between them, so we'll set aside another 1 Mbps for data transfers between sites.

With the prior assumptions, and using shapers, HQ is not allowed to send more than 8 Mbps of data to either remote site, plus just one video conference of 500 Kbps. Each remote site will not send more than 1 Mbps data to the other remote site, plus just one video conference of 500 Kbps.

Adjust bandwidth shaper allocations as necessary.

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