Video Applications

Video applications are similar in needs to voice applications, with the exception that bandwidth requirements are somewhat larger, depending on the encoding. It is important to understand the behavior of the video application being used. For example, in the playback of stored video streams, some applications can transmit large amounts of data for multiple streams in one spike, with the expectation that the end stations will buffer significant amounts of video-stream data. This can present a problem to the network infrastructure, because the network must be capable of buffering the transmitted spikes where there are speed differences (for example, going from gigabit Ethernet to Fast Ethernet). Key QoS parameters for video applications include minimum bandwidth and priority, and possibly buffering (depending upon the behavior of the application).