Voice and Video Conferencing Fundamentals

Design, develop, select, deploy, and support advanced IP-based audio and video conferencing systems

Scott Firestone, Thiya Ramalingam, Steve Fry

As audio and video conferencing move rapidly into the mainstream, customers and end users are demanding unprecedented performance, reliability, scalability, and security. In Voice and Video Conferencing Fundamentals, three leading experts systematically introduce the principles, technologies, and protocols underlying today’s state-of-the-art conferencing systems. Discover how to use these concepts and techniques to deliver unified, presence-enabled services that integrate voice, video, telephony, networks, and the Internet—and enable breakthrough business collaboration.

The authors begin with a clear, concise overview of current voice and video conferencing, including system components, operational modes, endpoints, features, and user interactivity. Next, they illuminate conferencing architectures, offering practical insights for designing today’s complex IP-based conferencing and collaboration systems.

Topics covered in this book include video codecs, media control, SIP and H.323 protocols and applications, lip synchronization in video conferencing, security, and much more. Throughout the book, the authors draw on their extensive experience as Cisco® technical leaders, showing how to avoid the most common pitfalls that arise in planning, deployment, and administration.

Voice and Video Conferencing Fundamentals is for every professional involved with audio or video conferencing: network and system administrators, engineers, technology managers, and Cisco solution partners alike. Whether you’re involved with design, development, selection, implementation, management, or support, you’ll find the in-depth knowledge you need to succeed.

Scott Firestone holds a master’s degree in computer science from MIT and has designed video conferencing and voice products since 1992, resulting in five patents. Thiya Ramalingam is an engineering manager for the Cisco Unified Communications organization. Thiya holds a master’s degree in computer engineering and an MBA degree from San Jose State University. Steve Fry, a technical leader in the Cisco Unified Communication organization, has spent the last several years designing and developing telephony and conferencing products.

• Thoroughly understand the fundamentals of audio and video conferencing over IP networks

• Architect networks for optimal performance and reliability in conferencing applications

• Leverage new advances in video architecture, from emerging codecs to distributed implementations

• Understand how SIP and H.323 compare, and when to use each

• Optimize synchronization between audio and video

• Secure conferencing traffic without compromising performance or connectivity

• Learn how to evaluate vendors and make better buying decisions

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1 Overview of Conferencing Services

Chapter 2 Conferencing System Design and Architecture

Chapter 3 Fundamentals of Video Compression

Chapter 4 Media Control and Transport

Chapter 5 Signaling Protocols: Conferencing Using SIP

Chapter 6 Signaling Protocols: Conferencing Using H.

Chapter 7 Lip Synchronization in Video Conferencing

Chapter 8 Security Design in Conferencing

Appendix A Video Codec Standards

This book is part of the Cisco Press® Fundamentals Series. Books in this series introduce networking professionals to new networking technologies, covering network topologies, sample deployment concepts, protocols, and management techniques.

Category: Cisco Press/Networking

Covers: Voice and video conferencing

1587052687

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 2 Ratings

summarises key complex algorithms - 2009-04-27
Reviewer Rating:
Here's a technical offering from Cisco that explains voice and video conferencing. Maybe its best aspect is that it summarises the dense, voluminous encoding standards, which are virtually unreadable in their original documentation. The book is directed towards a programmer. It explains the ideas used in the encoding algorithms for video compression. Very sophisticated and numerically intensive steps that squeeze out as much redundant information in consecutive frames as possible.

That's just to encode and decode video. Then the book also goes on to the Realtime Transport Protocol and the Session Initiation Protocol. The basis for VoIP. Though perhaps surprisingly, VoIP doesn't seem to garner a mention.

The book is useful, and not confined to Cisco products. The descriptions are germane to any industry products in this field. Given Cisco's leadership in Internet routing, it is commendable that it offers an authoritative text like this book.

VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!! - 2007-07-20
Reviewer Rating:
Are you a network or system administrator? If you are, then this book is for you. Authors Scott Firestone, Thiya Ramalingam and Steve Fry, have done an outstanding job of writing a book for those that are involved in the design, development, deployment and support of audio and video conferencing products.

Firestone, Ramalingam and Fry, begin by reviewing the elementary concepts of conferencing, describing the various types of conferences and the features found in each. Then, the authors review conferencing system design and the underlying components used in their construction. Next, they discuss the basics of video compression algorithms used by four major codecs: H.261, H.263, H.264 and MPEG-4 part 2. The authors also discuss the basics of Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) and Real-Time Transport Control Protocol and their usage in conferencing systems. They continue by discussing the fundamentals of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and its relevance to audio and video conferencing. Then, the authors provide a brief overview of the H.323 protocol, with an emphasis on conferencing systems. Next, they analyze the end-to-end data pipeline of a video conferencing system and discuss the process of achieving lip synchronization in an RTP-based video conferencing product. Finally, the authors go into depth on many aspects of video conferencing security, including encryption, authentication, attack prevention, firewall traversal, and network-level hardening.

The goal of this most excellent book is to provide an understanding of different video conferencing deployment models, including centralized and distributed architectures, by using real-world examples. Perhaps more importantly, this book provides a comparison of the most widely used video codecs, in a concise reference format.

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