IP Video. Is it reliable yet?

[George]

Thinking about going IP versus ISDN? With our current technology, taken as is, can we truly say that IP video is reliable enough to overtake ISDN connectivity in terms of reliablility and quality?

Local network infrastructure plays an important role. Sure your local IP network may be great, but what about the distant end? There are so many variables that the local network engineer on both ends must be aware of that it can be daunting at times. If the local engineer isn't familiar with H.323 video traffic over their network you could be in for dissapointing conference results.

For example; a VTC connection needs about 20% more bandwidth on IP than the requested call rate. This is for extra control packets and various overhead for RTP and IP headers. In addition, the link bandwidth should not be loaded with more than 75% video traffic (the rest is needed to run routing services). If there is other message and data traffic on the link, it probably should not be loaded with more than about 30% video traffic.

What do you think? What are your experiences with IP video? Have you gone the ISDN route and decided IP video is better for your particular needs?

[pbraatelien]

George,
I like this forum. There are not enough smart people on here yet to make me feel intimidated (except maybe you and Gary)and I know by the time there are, my posts will be so old they will probably be archived!

Anyway, my experience (somewhat limited by not trying it on local networks) has been that yes IP is ready for prime time with some limitations. I have sold Glowpoint (which is a much better service than ISDN- (that should start a flame somewhere)), and I regularly do demos on my cable modem. I truly believe that if you can configure your IP network for video, you will be able to utilize it and be able to disseminate it more than ISDN based video. With that said, you run into the problems of managing Gateways, MCU's, Gatekeepers, firewalls etc.
(thats where Glowpoint excels (did I mention any bias there?)).

If you would have asked me this same question two years ago, my answer might have been different (I did not believe that you could carry effective conferecing over the internet). Now with the proliferation of Broadband, I think IP video is here and lets say our thanks to ISDN (for all its quirks and limitations) and dump it.
Paul

[George]

Hello pbraatelien,

Thanks for the compliments on the forum and your great posts so far. You're doing fine, and as for the smart people, I am working to get them here. My paid advertising campaign will probably start this week and being as to how I've only found 1 other forum with even a category devoted to VC, it shouldn't be hard to get a good membership building pretty quickly. Heck we got over 10 in 1 day with no advertising other than a couple of posts in another forum!

I too think it's "way cool" to have a VTC CODEC in your home. Until I make the move from gov to the private sector I'll probably never get perks like that.

As for this post, I'm not gonna flame you (though you were reeeally really asking for it :D just kidding) but I've just got a few comments. I agree that ISDN has it's limitations and can definitely be quirky. In fact let's just call it what it is, old technology. The reason I bring up the "what about the distant end" factor however is because there are so many end users out there who's local techs have a couple of routers and switches thrown together and call it a network that it's absurd. When you say prime time, to me that means enterprise level reliability and even worse DoD. Which brings me to my inspiration for this thread. We've got a VTC site out in the deserts of the Middle East that has a Tandberg 1000 which uses IP to connect to a local Tandberg 6000 that has a 384k ISDN circuit back to the US. Guess which of the 2 connection types on either side of that Tandberg 6000 routinely drops or causes problems. Good ol IP. Granted we're talking about a tactical site and part of the network IP path is a direct microwave shot, the fact is that the call goes fine when they are the only ones on the network. We've noticed the problem starts when that network tries to carry more than 2 conferences at once. It's just like with your situation. If you and 2 of your neighbors were on a multipoint call with a couple of other people in a different state. You'd probably run into some problems. Bandwidth being so expensive, TCP networks are often configured to save as much of it as possible. As in the case of your cable ISP networks (shared bandwidth) it would take a major network overhaul to be able to advertise that they can support 384k video calls dependably.

I'm not well versed on the Glowpoint thing, but from what I've heard, it's a contained network service. Is that correct or am I way off the mark there? If it is then how do they guarantee their service to points beyond? It seems pretty promising if maybe they're standards can be adapted as true ITU standards, but as logn as they keep things proprietary it may serve to actually slow the spread of IP video to the masses.

OK enough, I said all that to say this. You're correct, IP video itself is ready for prime time. Our networks... well that may be another story. Your thoughts?



P.S. Who's your ISP and how much are you paying for that max upload over 128k.

[pbraatelien]

George,
I agree with you on your post. It is the bandwidth availability that makes IP so perilous. I have yet to see a company successfully implement IP over their own private network and incorporate all the accessories to allow users to connect to inside as well as outside users seamlessly. That is probably why Glowpoint has done as well as it has (and it has not been a barn burner). It is a contained network as you say and is way undersubscribed to negate any effects of congestion.
I have not seen that they do any kind of priority routing at the endpoint-they do not even touch that part of the config during setup.

With all that said they are the only IP network that connect to:
1. Other Glowpoint customers
2. The public internet community
3. ISDN based systems

Take care
ps:I am on Comcast which advertises 256K/3Meg for bandwidth availability hence the 192K restriction.

[George]

Yeah, in all that's still an impressive set of capabilities. I know of at least one gov network that can connect to both private and gov networks, but ISDN only.

In the end, if we ever want to get to the point where everyone can just pick up the phone and see grandma via video like in the movies, IP is gonna be the way it's done.

[mdr]

Hi,

I'm glad to see that users are talking about Glowpoint, and also relieved that there's some confusion as to what it is!

I, too, don't really understand how Glowpoint 'improves' upon ip unless it is similar to internet2 (and the Northern Crossroads) which many major US academic institutions benefit from.

Internet2, as I understand it, is a reserved pipe on the internet . Access to internet2 guarantees the user a minimum amount of bandwidth, useful for videoconferencing. I work with a distance education initiative that currently uses internet2 to deliver real time interactive lectures to a student cohort half way across the globe.

[pbraatelien]

MDR,
Welcome to the forum (this from a person who has only been on two days)
Glowpoint is a dedicated IP network using SDSL or T-1's pointing to a backbone mostly on MCI
The reason it is so much better than internet (or even internet2--possibly) is that it seamlessly allows you to connect to
1. Other Glowpoint users
2. Public internet users
3. ISDN users
It is an undersubscribed network with a lot of monitoring so their is never any congestion.
It also allows only video on the network for security and QOS reasons. It is populated with Gateways and MCU's both here and overseas all run by a central Gatekeeper.
That is probably the biggest difference between it and internet2 (do they run a Gatekeeper or is everything IP to IP?
And it works!!! I have used it for 2+ years and would never recommend to a customer ISDN--the whole idea of bonding 6 channels together to form a call is...well its haphazard. Call set up takes forever and the lines are constantly going down and there is no way to tell-other than by calling the phone company. Am I starting to sound like a sales puke yet.

Anyway-that my take and I await to hear any response on it
Long live IP!!

[mdr]

Thanks for the info on Glowpoint, pbraatelien!

Eeverything on internet2 is ip to ip. No Gatekeepers involved. I believe that access to internet2 is determined by subnet.

[Joe Vallender]

Being a rookie poster here, please look beyond any oddities. Working as a video engineer for MCI Conferencing, this forum is very interesting and will, no doubt, prove valuable.

Check out MCI Conferencing (http://e-meetings.mci.com) for our conferencing suite. For video, we provide multipoint bridging services for customers using ISDN, public Internet access and/or MCI Private IP network. Any combination of sites can be on the call.

Joe

[dndtech]

Being telephony raised, I have my reservations about IP. Until the IP infastructure is increased to handle all "on demand" bandwidth requirements, ISDN will remain as the connection of choice simply due to reliability. When was the last time you picked up your phone and there was no dial tone? Don't get a headache!! ISDN is reliable because it connects through the telephone network. Now when was the last time you had a "no" or a "slow" connection on your IP network. Ah. This morning.
IP is coming and we will all be there in the future, but until the IP world can boast five nines (99.999%) reliability like good ol telephony, wise administrators will leave their critical connections on ISDN.

My views. Other comments are anticipated.

[dndtech]

OK, if you are calling IP on a private network where you control the bandwidth allotment, IP is preferred. A standard QOS can be implemented to provide seamless connectivity. But as soon as you must leave your private premise, you are at the mercy of the public IP network, which as I stated above, is not yet ready to handle every "on demand" request. Coming, but not there yet.

[Liz]

Is ISDN that reliable? If anyone has tried to dial a 384 kbps into the USA from Europe at around 2pm GMT then the answer is definitely NO. I ran some tests over a period of 2 weeks from several UK to US sites and 1 in 6 calls failed to connect because a channel dropped. (200+ calls).

As for IP, well as you have all said it does come down to the network and when you have proper control of that network it is great. I have government client who I used to get several calls a month on our help desk where calls were dropping, not connecting etc. We moved them over to IP two months ago and I had to ring them last week just to make sure they were still there. External calls are still going out on ISDN at the moment but then not a great deal of companies are using IP intra-company due to security more than anything.

[George]

Welcome to the forums Liz, glad to see ya ;)

Man is pbraatelien gonna love you. Another IP advocate :). Well I'm pretty busy modifying things and fixing stuff in the forums. Just thought I'd drop in and say hi and welcome. I see you've been pretty busy. I plan to respond to a few of your posts as soon as I get a chance today.

Again welcome!

[jaron]

My experience with ISDN has been good, you can't fault it for connection reliability globally (apart from the call cost).

I think that in Australiasia the increased interest and deployment of Voice over IP is now helping fuel the move to video over IP. As you all know you need QoS of some form on a network as well as bandwidth in order to have a good experience with video over IP and as companies make the investment in the network to support voice, adding video is then another application.

I still wont go near the internet for video calls, am yet to be convinced that it will work well ... I prefer to recommend and deploy video within a private LAN/WAN its fine as you have control over the network.

[Entropy3XD]

IP vs. ISDN? I love em both. As an integrator I like to see mixed environments play well together. I say go with IP over the corporate LAN and to those other locations to which your IP pipes may be big enough go for ISDN. For H.320 support on the H.323 network, simply throw in a gateway.

Both networks are highly reliable, as long as the groundwork has been laid properly. My biggest issue with ISDN is that it either isn't ordered/configured correctly (support for data or bonding) or the physical layer has issues (usually within the clients building). Once ISDN is up, there should not be any issues unless a line is bad or the lazy telco tech just shuts off the link off to get rid of the blinking red light, without diagnosing the problem.

IP tends to be a bit more forgiving, but many people do not take into consideration what kind of endpoints they need to talk with before they implement. I have had clients switch over to IP only networks, cut service to their ISDN lines, then realize that they couldn't talk to some sites which were ISDN only. This was easily fixed by adding a gateway later.

A good example of an integrated network would be one of our clients, which is a major hospital center. They have three major hospitals which have high bandwidth trunks between them. They also have several outpatient centers in remote locations with very low bandwidth supporting only email and web traffic. Within the main hospitals, they use IP only, resulting in free calls. The outpatient centers only have one endpoint each, so the cost of upgrading the IP trunk for one system is not as cost effective as just getting that system 3 BRI lines. They have gateways at two of the hospitals and use a least cost routing method so that calls take the most cost effective path. For instance, if an IP site at hospital 1 wants to call an outpatient center they could call via the gateway at hospital 1. Hospital 2 may be closer to the outpatient center however, which means that a call out of the gateway at hospital 2 may result in cheaper per minute charges. With proper least cost routing, the IP system at hospital 1 would be routed (over IP) to the gateway at hospital 2. The gateway would then place the call to the outpatient center. This is VTC ZEN.

[Entropy3XD]

Correction on last post:

I say go with IP over the corporate LAN and to those other locations to which your IP pipes may NOT be big enough go for ISDN.

[Granitboy]

I'm working for a global company and 3 years ago I personally implemented IP devices all over EMEA. We never had any problem with them except sometimes the video froze or the audio drop (that’s the problem through the Internet); all of our systems are IP. We have kept a couple of systems with ISDN capabilities for externals conferences only, we are currently reducing costs and one of the most important is to use IP Video only.
I'm working on a new project to implement a MPLS Network to ensure CoS end-to-end and it will be the best solution to have quality, security and bandwidth availability.

The only point where I'm not sure is if we need special requirements on our devices before to plug it on the MPLS. :(

[danasp]

Hello!

As others said before the problem with Internet is that you can not guarantee the quality end-to-end. On your LAN you always have the option to implement QoS to guarantee bandwidth as long as you have enough bandwidth to support the number of calls.
On the Internet you just have to trust there will be no or very little congestion... So I guess it all depends on your Internet connection and where you plan to make the calls.

We have, for over a year now, successfully used IP for our conferences to Paris, France. During this time we have had far less problems than we had with ISDN. In addition we have better video quality and quicker connection times. We usally run at 1920Kbps and if the conference disconnect for some reason it is max 2sec for us to dial and be connected again. Of course it helps that we are connected to the Swedish University computer Network(SUNET) which in turn is connected to NORDUNET -> GEANT. We also have some sites we just can't call with IP becuase of their slow Internet connection.

On our LAN we only use IP and we try to use IP as a first alternative when calling an external site. If the quality is poor with IP we choose ISDN. IP is always our first choice and then we use ISDN as a backup.

[kamel60]

Hello ALL

i am new in this forum and excuse my bad english !

the both ISDN and IP is necessary for videoconferencing. we are a french company working in videoconferencing business since 1983 for the french market and North africa market.We are also SATELITE PROVIDER (VSAT and INMARSAT).

We use the both connection ISDN and IP to connect a customer in Algeria. In this country ISDN lines don't exist and this customer is an international company need every week to make meeting with the others branch in the world. the solution is combination of the 2 systems. we install a videoconferencing system in algeria with IP connection. In paris we connect a RADVISION H323 GATEWAY with ISDN connection. the client can make IP Connection and ISDN with Radvision Gateway.

We install also a redundant connection with 2 INMARSAT TERMINALS. the client can make directly via ISDN a videonference session at 128 Kbps.

thanks

Kamel

[Tyson]

Hello - new member here with my first post.

We've been doing successful IP video for about 2 years now with very limited issues. The only ISDN we have is a pri that is located into one of our Accord MCU's. One benefit for us is most of our locations have large bandwidth circuits.

[madugur]

Hi,

Thanks for starting this up, we'll see how it goes... The subject of ISDN vs. IP deployment is pretty interesting. Simply asking is IP VC ready for prime-time is way too broad in my opinion. As another member had mentioned here earlier, the question more is whether your IP network is ready. We've had a fairly successful global IP deployment for a few years now. That isn't to say it doesn't have its problems, but it is far more successful that 384Kbps over ISDN ever was for us. The thing to note of course is that our network is private, we don't use Internet IP within the enterprise.

Even in terms of Internet IP, I'm hopeful as some of the newer packetloss concealment technologies come out.

To the point about PSTN being 5 9's reliable. Maybe, but definitely not the case when talking about 384Kbps bonded video conferencing. My experience has shown that ISDN is far more reliable in Europe than in the Americas and varying levels of quality everywhere else.

To go IP over our private network was the right decision for us.

Thanks.

[dndtech]

The largest problem with ISDN is configuration. I've found that most ISDN probelms occur at the switching centre. There are so many flavours of this technology that a simple oversight when the programmer sets a parameter (in the PBX, DMS etc.) incorrectly, the end point will not connect. The issue is actually that the users (VTC technicians) are not fully rehearsed with ISDN and not specific enough when ordering their requirement. The ISDN provider then programs a generic ISDN that may or may not be compatible with the VTC end point. Then the trouble calls start and everyone starts finger pointing. The service provider doesn't understand the VTC hardware and the VTC hardware tech doesn't fully understand ISDN. It's a Catch22. But once the connectivity compatibility issue is resolved, ISDN (at least up here in the Great White North) is rock solid. Rarely a failure to Europe, USA, and even remote sites over satellite. ('cept when finger pokin' exec thinks he's God's gift to VTC fault finding!!)

IP eliminates the compatibility issue. As I stated in a earlier post, IP is the future and when the PUBLIC network is robust enough to handle on demand requests, IP will overcome ISDN. A few years yet. I concur that if your current PRIVATE network is properly engineered with QOS, that's the route today. Cheers.

[Toney]

This is certainly an interesting and relevant post. I agree with Madugur when he says that the question of whether IP VC is ready for prime-time is too broad. I work for quite a large, dispersed organization (oil industry) that is covered by a very good private network, with pretty good bandwidth (to at least all the bigger locations). We have been using VC for a good number of years now, previously, mainly over ISDN. But in the past 2 years or so, we have begun to ramp up our VC over IP usage. Although we have not deployed VCoIP uniformly, we do configure QoS at locations that have the bandwidth and the higher VC usage.
We have gone across the IP and are trying to actually deploy VCoIP to more locations bacause of a couple of big reason: reliability and cost. Since we have started using IP, our users have reported a far higher rate of success for VCs. Additionally, since we have such a geographically dispersed workforce that ISDN charges begin to make VC unviable. Not to mention that, sometimes across countries, ISDN handoffs between telcos is soemtimes shaky.
So our experience: in a controlled, private environment, IP is definitely the way to go. But we still block H323 traffic to outside of our firewalls for security and reliability issues. As a result, most, if not all our VC systems still have ISDN capabilities because we still need to communicate with parties outside of the organization.
ISDN is still very much with us, but I add my voice to dndtech's when he says that IP will overcome ISDN when the public network can handle VC calls more reliably.

[mazzarak]

It is possible to use the internet for your IP services, in fact many of our customers already do. But the whole point of the IP service is that you can beef up the bandwidth to your hearts content, whereas the WWW will only at most give you around 256 or 384. For some low usage customers this is more than adequate, but for the technophiles on here, this clearly is no longer viable.

Some of our customers run using an Equant backbone, and we manage an MCU on there, giving good solid dedicated IP service as high as the system can take.

[fitz]

Great site, I just finished reading all the posts for this issue. We actually have both ISDN and Glowpoint connections. We use Polycom MP's for the ISDN and Polycom FX on the glowpoint IP SDSL links. We added the IP systems into each ISDN location to add capacity and reliability.

We had our ISDN system in place for 4 years and constantly had problems with calls dropping, no audio, pixelation.... The problems were mostly at the phone company. It is amazing when you have them check for a problem they would come back and say they found no errors, everything looks fine and the problem you were having disappears.

With the Glowpoint systems the reliability is 100% better, call setup is about 7 seconds compared to ISDN at about 20 - 45 seconds(384 or higher call). You can reach ISDN systems domestic and International.
The down points we have seen with the Glowpoint service is dialing access numbers ahead of the video number on outgoing ISDN calls and ISDN systems calling into the Glowpoint network somtimes have problems getting the dial in number setup correct.

The bottom line here was that the users themselves have returned to using video for conferences.

[mguerrero]

I'm new to the site.

Have you guys checked out Masergy Communications? www.masergy.com

They are a Layer 3, MPLS, via RFC 2547, global service provider, provide 100% in-sequence packet delivery on an enforceable SLA and just won a triple play RFP from PolyCom.

Mike G.

[seifran]

Hello - I'm new to this site but it seems to be long overdue...Thanks to the organizers for getting it going.

I am in what may be a unique position (or not), but I look after a mixed deployment of Polycom, Tandberg, Sony, and Picturetel endpoints and an Accord MCU for internal use INSIDE A TELCO. I was given this duty because I also am support for ISDN BRI and PRI lines, so I might have a bit of a bias towards ISDN, at least initially.

You might think I would be pro ISDN, but my experience in dealing with other Telcos all over the world on troubles is similar to some of the posts - it just doesn't always work as advertised. As someone else said, once it is installed and configured correctly it will work very well LOCALLY (and usually in-country), but when calls cross into other countries (and sometimes just other telcos) it can become a bit of a dice roll. When you add in the different rates supported in different parts of the world (56K/64K), it is no wonder that getting 6 simultaneous digital connections can be difficult at times.

It seems that most agree that IP is the future, and all I can say is that we internally changed out some of our old, ISDN only Picturetel systems with ISDN/IP capable units. We have had good results internally using IP, so the next phase of the upgrade will involve units that are IP only, and the Accord MCU will act as a gateway for those units to connect with ISDN sites if necessary. The reason we still need ISDN is that we do not have universal success with video connections over the Internet, depending on where the site is located and in some cases who provides their internet service. Sounds suspiciously like the ISDN scenario, except that the Internet world WILL improve, while the ISDN world is probably as good as it will ever get.

There is no doubt that IP will take over and in the long term ISDN will diminish. The functionality is there on H.323, but today unless you have a reliable global private IP network, the connectivity is not reliable enough globally with the Internet. We will have to continue with ISDN as backup until then.

[ech]

I work in a higher ed institution, so I have the luxury of living in a world of high speed research and education networks where we have plenty of pipe to support video. For what it is worth, I routinely conference with folks across the US and Europe, typically at rates between 384Kbps and 2Mbps, though I do dabble a bit in high-end 30 Mbps systems. I last used ISDN for a call in June, 2001.

Where there is appropriate infrastructure, IP is plenty reliable. I realize that's a big if in most cases, but where you can do it, it's nice.

[tjulian]

Even if we had the apprpriate infrastructure, I don't think our local network security group would allow H.323 communication that bypasses the firewall. That limits any IP connectivity to on-post systems, and those calls are rare....

As of right now, we don't have the infrastructure though....our network is just too busy to allow a clean H.323 connection. So the Army will be on ISDN for a while....

[vtjoe]

Originally posted by mdr@Apr 29 2004, 11:23 AM
Thanks for the info on Glowpoint, pbraatelien!

Eeverything on internet2 is ip to ip. No Gatekeepers involved.  I believe that access to internet2 is determined by subnet.
Internet2 (http://www.internet2.org/) itself does not guarantee huge bandwidth - it comes from the Abilene backbone (http://abilene.internet2.edu/) - 10 Gbps with OC-192. Videoconferencing calls are free (after you pay for the yearly Internet2 membership). All types of traffic travels across the network. QoS is not implemented – but with all the bandwidth it is not needed. So far I have seen almost zero packet loss over the network - very reliable.

You can also place video calls from Internet2 to the public Internet – but of course all that bandwidth goes away.

Internet2 is a set of routers that support experimental technology. For example, Internet2 is IPv6 compatible and has multicasting enabled across the entire network. This allows for things like the Access Grid (http://www.accessgrid.org/) – which is multicast videoconferencing – similar to using a decentralized MCU approach.

Yes, there is a gatekeeper that is part of Internet2 - though it is not required to use Internet2. It is part of ViDeNet (http://www.vide.net/). It is an international gatekeeper hierarchy – some members are part of Internet2 – some aren’t. It is based on a Global Dialing Scheme and is very impressive.

[onlai76]

No issues at all with the video quality? No freezing, tiling, etc? I am having some serious issues with my IP-based network and Radvision equipment. Any suggestions, comments on this equipment would help.

Thanks,

Onlai
New Member

[Entropy3XD]

No issues at all with the video quality? No freezing, tiling, etc? I am having some serious issues with my IP-based network and Radvision equipment. Any suggestions, comments on this equipment would help.

Thanks,

Onlai
New Member
Welcome Onlai,

Switchport settings can make a big difference with the Radvision equipment, as well as the software versions. What kind of equipment do you have and what are the versions of software? What type of Ethernet switch? What endpoints are you using and what are their software versions? What is the network infrastructure?


Post your answers to these questions, along with descriptions of the issues you are having under the MCU FORUM and we can start to hammer away on the problem and get you a solution.


Here is a thread from another VTC talk member who was able to solve their issues with the Cisco version of the MCU with a simple upgrade.

http://www.vtctalk.com/showthread.php?t=24888