Comments on: VBrick enables IBM Lotus Sametime with Streaming Video to the Desktop

By: Video Channels Rather Than Video Events | The Enterprise IP Video Blog

Video Channels Rather Than Video Events | The Enterprise IP Video Blog — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:05:36 +0000

[...] now a standard part of business productivity software for most enterprises. VBrick has released our IBM SameTime Plug-in which allows one-click access to live and stored video from within this [...]

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:05:47 +0000

Are you planning any integration with the new Sametime Meetings (not yet released)? e.g. you are running some training via Powerpoint and then play a video.

By: Garth Leach

Garth Leach — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:59:50 +0000

Without getting into all of the network design nitty gritty we can easily reach all points of the network using the following technology…and it can be a mixed bag of tech to reach everyone.

- MULTICAST – Any number of LAN User can access LIVE streams if that network is utilizing mutlicast (pretty common). In multicast the edget switch replicated packets and forwards to ports that are requesting. So..if 30 people on a group switch wanted to watch CNN it would only pull one stream across the WAN.

- REFLECTING Streams can be unicast(one stream) across the WAN to a LAN than reflected (repacketized in multicast) if the WAN link does not support multicast.

- UNICAST in a non-multicast capable network (smaller networks) you can utilize regular unicast. In which case it does become a math equation. Number of concurrent users, vs. available bandwidth. Again if the encoder providing CNN was on the same switch as the majority of the viewers then this is not an issue.

- HYBRID Parts of the network are multicast, some are not. Some offices are remote with a T-1 inbetween. You can multicast locally, transmit a unicast over the WAN to the remore office, and then multicast again locally. No WAN, we can do the same thing using the Internet as a WAN backbone (great for field employees). Our systems allow for all of those network environments and utilizes an intelligent video networking engine to guarantee that the viewers are only have access to local resources.

YouTube is strictly Internet and stricly unicast. This means you have to worry about the amount of available INTERNET bandwidth and LAN bandwidth. With VBrick and an Enterprise solution you have lots of distribution options that are designed to alleviate any pressure on the network.

Five years ago this would be a different story.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:44:31 +0000

Good point from Bob. If you have everyone streaming CNN stuff that could seriously impact network performance. Are there some estimates for a typical network 100mb/s or a Gigabit network on how many people could be streaming content before saturation? I know it depends on the source content, but use CNN or Youtube content as a typical stream.

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:05:13 +0000

I just found this post through a Sametime User Group on LinkedIn. This is cool stuff, but I am curious, on how this would impact the network? I don’t know that much about streaming video but I do know that we have Sametime users located all over the place (which is why we use Sametime).

By: Garth Leach

Garth Leach — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:14:47 +0000

@Dave – As Scott mentioned Sametime provides the User Interface. All of the heavy lifting of content aggregation, archiving, encoding, playback is done through the VBrick IP video solution which would appear seamless to Sametime users without effecting performance.

We agree with you about streaming becoming a part of UC. The Sametime Plugin is just the first development of many that will enhance UC.

By: Scott R.

Scott R. — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:06:35 +0000

As a developer who worked on this project, I can say that the plug-in acts as a mechanism to access data about available video and isn’t bogged down by the actual video stream itself. Once a user selects available video content, that stream is launched in a browser window which handles viewing. We’ve taken great care in preserving the the quality of the Sametime user experience and minimizing the load on Sametime itself.

By: Dave Olson

Dave Olson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:51:43 +0000

I like the idea. However it has to be done so that there is no penalty in peformance or interruption of other services Sametime or the Lotus Client provides. I think the video streaming is becoming more mainstream and will be a big part of Unified Communications. Great idea, and I like the modular approach Sametime provides for things like this.