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Tag: bandwidth

  • PANDUIT Launches Fiber Optic System To Address Data Center Demands


    PANDUIT has introduced next-generation, high-speed data transport capabilities for the data center.

    The high performance, fiber optic system to connect server, storage, and network systems is aimed at meeting ever-increasing bandwidth and application requirements.

    Rick Pimpinella, fiber research manager at PANDUIT, said that as virtualization, consolidation, and convergence initiatives continue to grow more pervasive, so do the demands placed on the physical infrastructure.

    He said PANDUIT was launching its OM4 Fiber Optic System to meet the needs for faster processing speeds and greater storage capabilities, as well as long-reach and cross-connect deployments.

    "As a result of our continued research into multimode fiber performance and our active participation in standards committees, we can now offer the next progression in high performance optical connectivity," he said.

    "PANDUIT is able to offer a fiber system that exceeds the bandwidth specification being proposed in the draft standard for OM4."

    Pimpinella said the company’s OM4 Fiber Optic System offers high performance and seamless integration of 10 Gb/s Ethernet and 8Gb/s Fiber Channel network capabilities and beyond, to minimize physical infrastructure risk in the data center.

    He said it integrates multi-fiber low loss MTP and single fiber connectivity solutions with premium grade high performance laser optimized multimode fiber (with a minimum EMB of 5000 MHz·km) to deliver consistent performance and reliability of critical systems.

    The modular system includes pre-terminated cassettes, interconnect assemblies, equipment cords and harnesses.

  • Sandisk Sees Growth In Mobile Devices


    Sandisk expects increased demand for its mobile storage products as a result of continued growth in the smartphone, MIDs and notebooks sectors.

    The flash memory provider said demand for its mobile solutions was actually increasing – as were prices.

    Eli Harari, Sandisk’s CEO, speaking in its first quarter earnings this week, said he expected demand for NAND to continue to grow particularly for mobile and portable computing platforms.

    He said this would help absorb the industry supply growth projected for second half of 2009 and ensure price stability.

    Pointing to the changes currently taking place in the mobile market, he compared them to those experienced by the Internet in its early days.

    He said these would also have important implications for Sandisk’s mobile storage business.

    Apple’s iPhone and its App Store, RIM’s Blackberry Market, the adoption of Android by smartphone makers, as well as Nokia and Microsoft’s plans were all mentioned as playing a role in fuelling the demand for flash memory.

    "The opportunity for us is these devices will have to be content with wireless bandwidth and coverage limitations, making off-line, local caching of increased amount of data, central to devices’ usability," he said.

    "Paradoxically, the promise of always-connected devices in cloud computing is resulting in the ever greater need for local storage on the devices themselves."

    Harai said Sandisk was seeing increasing demand from "major players" in the mobile ecosystem for its mobile storage solutions, including Mobile Card, embedded iNAND and solid state drives for notebook PC’s.

  • Enciris Launches Low-cost HD Compression Solution


    Enciris Technologies has unveiled HD video compression technology aimed at solving problems with reducing bandwidth and storage requirements.

    The LT-100 is a Windows Media Video/ VC-1 HD video acquisition and compression board.

    France-based Enciris says it has been designed to meet the needs of demanding real time true HD acquisition and compression.

    A company statement said that the proliferation of HD video in all market segments has created a significant need for this type of compression technology.

    It adds that specialized, high performance dedicated hardware for real time compression is the only solution due to the massive computational requirements.

    "The low cost of the LT-100 now allows high quality HD compression to be used in product/ projects that previously would have been prohibitive," said the statement.

    "It is a perfect solution for the demanding needs of medical, surveillance, internet, broadcasting, videoconferencing, and video gaming applications."

    Enciris said the LT-100 captures video from both analog and digital HD and SD video sources including DVI, RGB, component, S-video and composite.

    An HD/SD-SDI option is also available.

    Additionally, the LT-100 can function as a HD compression coprocessor for video supplied by the host via PCI or USB.

    The LT-100 will compress HD Windows Media Video (WMV/ VC-1) up to advanced profile level 3 with resolutions from 176×144 to 2048×2048 pixels.

    The maximum compression frame rate is 240 frames per second at lower resolutions. At 1080p the LT-100 can compress 30 frames per second.

    All standard HDTV resolution are supported including the acquisition of 1080p60. The LT-100 can simultaneously acquire uncompressed video for preview purposes or occasional snapshots.

    Designed for low latency applications, the LT-100 outputs compressed video within only a few milliseconds of acquisition.

    Drivers for WindowsXP/Vista and Linux are included. Under Windows, DirectShow is fully supported.

    A cross platform SDK is also available for Windows and Linux application development.

    Mac OS X support will be available soon. Available as a combination PCI/USB board, the LT-100-VC1 can be either placed in a PCI slot or be connected via USB 2.0.

    It is ideally suited for OEMs and system integrators. The LT-100-SDI is an optional HD/SD-SDI daughter card. A USB only module, the LT-100-VC1U, is also available which includes a 140x100x40mm enclosure.

    The LT-100-VC1US is the USB module with the HD/SD-SDI option. A hardware decompression feature will be offered Q3/2009 free of charge via firmware upgrade.

  • Meru Unveils Video-Over-Wireless Infrastructure


    Meru Networks has introduced what it says is the first wireless LAN solution optimised for delivering high-quality video over the new generation of IEEE 802.11n networks.

    The company’s Video Services Module (ViSM) is designed to address video-delivery issues specific to 802.11n networks – which are susceptible to unpredictable loss rates that can negatively impact video quality.

    The module applies application-aware optimisation techniques to web streaming and real-time multicast video, underlying technologies that enable a broad array of video applications, from wireless projection, IPTV and event simulcast to videoconferencing, telepresence and video surveillance.

    Vaduvur Bharghavan, Meru’s chief technology officer, said video-based applications are becoming pervasive in schools, health-care institutions and other enterprises because they boost productivity significantly for a relatively low cost.

    But he said high-definition video delivery over wireless is especially challenging because it combines the high bandwidth requirements of heavy data traffic with the delay sensitivity and loss characteristics of voice traffic.

    Vaduvur Bharghavan, Meru’s chief technology officer

    "And while 802.11n dramatically increases available bandwidth, it also increases per-transmission error rates," he said.

    "For multicast applications this translates to lost portions of video; for web video streaming it can mean stalled video or the loss of voice-video synchronization."

    Bharghavan said the power of the ViSM lies in its unique virtualized WLAN architecture, which gives every client device its own dedicated wireless ‘port’.

    "With Meru’s Virtual Port, each client gets its own copy of the multicast application traffic, delivered at the highest possible data rate and unaffected by the transmission or power-save behaviour of other clients," he said.

    "In other vendors’ legacy micro-cell solutions, which force all clients to share the same wireless resource, some clients will always suffer in terms of the timely delivery of multicast frames when other clients require buffering of traffic, thus causing multicast video delays for every client."

    The ViSModule works by using several mechanisms to deliver video traffic based on application and user characteristics.
    The company says this allows scaling to large numbers of concurrent video sessions without appreciably degrading user experience.

    • Application-aware prioritization: synchronises the voice and video components of a video stream, adapting the delivery of each frame based on its importance to the application. Higher-priority MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 marked frames are transmitted with greater assurance of reliability and timeliness.
    • User- and role-based policy enforcement: provides granular control over application behaviour (e.g., a teacher can be assigned higher priority than a student).
    • Seamless video-optimised handoff: proactively reroutes the multicast delivery tree to prevent lost video frames during a transition between access points, and ensures zero-loss for mobile video.
    • Multicast group management: optimises delivery to only those virtual ports whose clients are members of the multicast group, reducing network waste both wirelessly and on the wired network.
    • Graphical visualisation: reveals which clients are running which applications (data, voice, video) to aid in monitoring network-wide application performance.

    ViSM is available in June as an add-on module to Meru’s System Director software. For a network with 100 wireless access points, the module is priced at USD $7,995.

  • Movial Launches HD Video Calling for PCs


    Movial has announced a new software application that offers PC-to-PC, and PC-to-Mobile HD video.

    Victor Donselaar, president of Movial, said the Communicator PC 7.2 HD video calling technology significantly reduces the CPU and bandwidth utilization compared to other technologies.

    He said this enables users to run multiple applications at the same time.

    The video technology comes complete with high-quality, high-resolution, real-time, two-way video communications and advanced voice processing technology.

    It allows tight lip-synching of video and voice, which Donselaar said allows for much more natural conversation.

    “With Movial Communicator PC 7.2, subscribers can see and talk to a person as if they were sitting in front of them,” he said.

    “With high-speed Internet connectivity more readily available and video capture and display costs decreasing, users can finally enjoy a much richer multimedia face-to-face encounter."

    Movial also announced that it has signed a deal with Cyta, the leading telecommunications company in Cyprus, which has launched an IMS PC play with its broadband telephony service bundle, powered by Communicator PC 7.2.

  • Flood Of Content Predicted For Real-time HDTV Video Streaming

    While more operators are beginning to offer HD video-on-demand services, live streaming video continues to pose infrastructure and bandwidth problems.

    HDTV.biz-news.com spoke to Alex Mashinsky, CEO of DigiMeld, about the challenges of streaming video – and developments that could open-up the service to millions of viewers.

    Alex Mashinsky, CEO of DigiMeld, was one of the first people to realise the internet’s great potential for voice, now he is just as excited about the possibilities it offers for video.

    He said the demand for real-time streaming of video was going to grow rapidly as high quality internet content was increasingly watched on HDTVs rather than PCs.

    “We are moving to a world where services from the internet do not look any different from cable TV,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge flood of content flowing to this environment, moving away from watching video on a laptop for five minutes at a time.”

    Alex Mashinsky, CEO DigiMeld


    Mashinsky said that while it was easy to get 16 million Americans to watch the same TV channel at the same time, it was impossible to do that with half-a-million viewers on the internet.

    “Voice was the first wave on the web. The second wave is video,” he told HDTV.biz-news.com from DigiMeld’s mid-town Manhattan headquarters. “But while everyone is focussed on it, we have not really solved the scaleability issue.

    Challenges Remain


    Video demands a lot of bandwidth and Mashinsky said traditional unicast and CDN solutions were limited in meeting the challenges on efficiency and scalability.

    He used the example of Oprah Winfrey’s attempt to stream live on her website, a move which caused the site to crash when more than 300,000 viewers logged-on.

    “We believe the only reason why we don’t have live TV on the internet is because no-one can really solve the scaleability and pricing issue,” said Mashinsky.

    “If you can address those two things, you would have linear streaming and on-demand streaming of movies and other things on a much larger scale than today.

    “Amazon, Netflix and Blockbuster have all launched streaming services but they are not launching new movies and having one million people watching at the same time. They rely on many people watching different things.”

    China Forging Ahead

    Mashinsky said China was way ahead of the US in live streaming technology, something it demonstrated during the Olympic Games when PP Live streamed live to 1.6 million concurrent online viewers.

    He said DigiMeld had used a team of former PP Live programmers to develop its grid-streaming technology that enabled massive numbers of viewers to watch content concurrently.

    It has tested the intelligent streaming solution with NASA Television, including a live internet broadcast trial of a shuttle launch to more than 100,000 live concurrent video streams.

    Essentially, the software harvests viewers’ unused uplink bandwidth to relay stream data and offload the stream traffic from the media servers. The company says this optimizes the overall load balance of the network.

    Unlike traditional CDNs or multicast network solutions, the DigiMeld solution allows each viewer in the grid-streaming network to simultaneously retrieve, view, and share streaming video data with other viewers within a safe and encrypted network.

    This approach differs from P2P file-sharing firms such as BitTorrent, which downloads an entire video file to a viewer’s hard drive.

    Mashinsky said DigiMeld only stores a portion of the streamed content in a viewer’s evanescent memory during viewing.

    This slice of video is continuously overwritten by newly-arriving streams, enhancing efficiency of network bandwidth and increasing copyright protection, including digital rights management (DRM).

    He believes grid-streaming is much more scalable because when the number of concurrent viewers explodes, the viewers will offload most data.


    Bandwidth Congestion Reduced


    Mashinsky said grid-streaming also puts less strain on media servers, while enhancing the QoS (quality of service) when the number of concurrent viewers is huge since more viewers can share data with each other.

    “Unlike BitTorrent, if you are not watching stuff, people are not using your bandwidth,” he said. “We are not over-loading the network with our requirements. It’s the opposite as we are balancing the upstream with the downstream.”

    Mashinsky said the software enabled adaptive streaming which sensed the customer’s bandwidth capacity.

    “It decides if it’s going to use HD or lower quality and links into other streams of people watching the same thing.”

    Opportunities For Content Producers

    Mashinsky stressed that DigiMeld’s grid-streaming was not a replacement for CDNs but could be leveraged within existing infrastructure to create greater benefits.

    DigiMeld was offering services ranging from those for customers that wanted to self-launch, self-publicize and self-monetize to those that relied on DigiMeld for hosting and distribution – or any mix in-between.

    The company has a self-publishing video portal, DigiMeld.tv that allows publishers to create live and on-demand video channels easily and monetize the content through subscription, paid and advertising based services.

    Mashinsky said the service was intended for clients that fell between large media companies, which typically used a CDN service such as Akamai, and peer-to-peer video typically found on YouTube.

    “We are trying to capture the middle of the tail to enable these content people to monetize their content in an easy way,” he said.

    Earlier this week, DigiMeld demonstrated grid-streaming’s worth as a video delivery platform by conducting the first feature-film broadcast over the internet simultaneously with the theatrical release of PublicScope Film’s The Third Jihad.

    Gregory Ross, of PublicScope Film, said DigiMeld TV enabled them to reach worldwide audiences with a television broadcast experience at greatly reduced costs.

    If DigiMeld can achieve that desired combination of quality and cost, there will be a lot more producers knocking on its door.

  • HD test success spells bandwidth boost

    BBC succeeds with world’s first reception of HD pictures over DTT using DVB-T2

    Test transmissions in the UK have successfully received high def pictures compliant to the DVB-T2 standard using a real-time demodulator.

    The BBC, which performed the tests, says this is the first time anywhere in the world that a live end-to-end DVB-T2 chain has been demonstrated.

    DVB-T2 is a new version of the DVB-T standard currently used for digital terrestrial television in the UK.

    It offers an increase in efficiency over DVB-T, which means more bandwidth will be available on the multiplex when it is reconfigured in tandem with digital switchover to permit the carriage of high definition services.

    That, combined with a switch from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, will allow for increased HD content.

    The UK’s analogue transmission ends in 2012 but some parts of the country will get the benefit of DVB-T2 earlier, with a few places going live next year.

    The current estimate is that in 2009 there will be three HD channels available in the UK, one of which goes to the BBC and the other two going to ITV, Channel 4 or Five.

    The BBC started DVB-T2 test transmissions from the Guildford transmitter in June.

    Justin Mitchell, leader of the BBC’s DVB-T2 modem development team, said: “Following the approval of DVB-T2 in June and the launch of test transmissions from Guildford transmitter the next day, we are delighted that on Kingswood Warren’s 60th anniversary our team has been able to deliver a working demonstration of a DVB-T2 modulator and demodulator.”

    The modulation and demodulation devices will be made available for licensing.

    There will be a demonstration of the DVB-T2 modulator and demodulator on the DVB stand 1.D81 at IBC in Amsterdam.

  • Breakthrough claimed for live HD video transmission

    NextIO technology allows real-time video encoding at under 3Mbps – making it possible to deliver live HDTV at compression up to six times higher than current rates

    Cable, satellite and IPTV providers will be able to pack more HD video onto limited bandwidth using technology developed by NextIO and Broadcast International.

    The pair have teamed up to combine NextIO’s ExpressConnect solution and BI’s ultra-high speed video compression technology.

    In a statement released before the IPTV North America show in Chicago, the companies said that the combined technologies would “change the video distribution world” by making it possible for video providers to deliver live HDTV at compression levels four to six times higher than is currently possible.

    Conservation of limited bandwidth resources has become a critical requirement in the broadcast, cable, satellite, mobile and IPTV markets, especially as bandwidth-intensive, high-definition video becomes the industry standard.

    At the Chicago show, NextIO, specialists in virtualized I/O solutions, and Broadcast International, producers of low-bandwidth video compression software, demonstrated a real-time video encoding at under 3Mbps.

    This is compared to the MPEG 2 standard of 19.4 Mbps at which most HD video is transmitted.
    The two companies say this will enable video providers to pack more HD video onto limited bandwidth.

    In a statement released before the Chicago show, they said the NextIO technology solves one of the most important challenges encountered by high-speed HD video transmission – limited and limiting input/output (I/O) throughput.

    “The ultra-high speed connections provided by the Next/I/O’s PCI Express-based ExpressConnect solutions allow maximum and scalable data flow to the system, commensurate with the processing power of the IBM BladeCenter environment,” the statement said.

    “This input speed, combined with the unrivaled power of the underlying CPU technology, enables BI’s CodecSys video compression software to deliver encoded HD video in real-time at breakthrough rates, under 3 Mbps.”

    Rod Tiede, CEO of Broadcast International, said the technology offered an “unmatched solution” to the challenge of video compression.
    “The scalability of the NextI/O design provides us the ability to deliver a large number of high definition video inputs to our system without delays and to take full advantage of the processing capabilities of the IBM platform,” he said.
    “Our aim is to shatter the bandwidth barrier completely with our solution.”