Guest Column : Breaking Out With VLANs

A Better Approach to Audio/Video Bridging Networks

I attended my college class reunion last year (I'm not going to say which year), and when I arrived I found that we were all crammed into a big, crowded lobby. I had a heck of a time finding old friends and when I did, I had to stand really close in order to hear them. Smaller groups would crowd around and try to hold intimate conversations while some boisterous, uninhibited alumni would shout across the room for classmates they haven't seen in many years.

This was not an ideal scenario: lots of people talking and yelling made catching up in a meaningful way nearly impossible. Due to the noise level, you could barely understand what old friends were saying.

If, however, there were smaller breakout rooms where people in the same majors, departments or clubs could have gone, it would have made finding friends easier and the conversations could have been a lot better.

Let's keep this scene, and its potential solution, in mind while we discuss a similar predicament in the convergence of IP-based audio/video and home control devices with computers—cramming all of your devices onto one large network and expecting them to communicate efficiently and trouble free.

Evolution of the IP Network

A major trend in the custom integration channel has been the evolution of audio/video and home controls using the IP-based network infrastructure. The popularity and affordability of IP networking has driven the custom integrators to utilize this technology more and more. However with this development, a major problem has evolved over the past few years concerning sharing IP-based computer networks with audio/video and home control networks.

Having spent countless hours supporting dealers and installers, we've encountered a common problem that is caused by sharing the IP-based network. We have found that audio/video and home control devices send out a lot of broadcasts, which can clog bandwidth on the network, and thus affect the performance of the entire network for all devices.

In the past, with only personal computers on the network, if bandwidth is not sufficient, the computing experience was not impacted. The user's satisfaction was not changed if he or she receives a file in 30 seconds or 35 seconds. Unlike computer data networks that can tolerate a certain degree of unpredictable latency, video streaming, audio streaming and control systems cannot. The packets that carry audio and video must arrive on time and in order, and IP-based controls cannot lose critical command packets. Today's sophisticated home networks require the same robustness as an enterprise network in order to have a positive user experience.