Time for a Bigger Pipe?

In some cases, setting rules with users and implementing network appliances will give you adequate control over the video situation. But for companies with heavy video consumers, you may also decide you need a better Internet connection.

Nascar came to this conclusion and recently installed a 20Mb Internet connection, replacing a 3Mb T1 in its Daytona office at about the same monthly cost. (Nascar’s provider, Brighthouse, brings fiber right to the building and offers competitive rates.) Nascar currently has a 5Mb connection in its Concord, N.C., office and is looking for alternatives to T1 for its other offices in Charlotte, N.C., New York City and Los Angeles.

Later this year, Worling will also deploy multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network infrastructure to tie offices together with 1.54Mbps data connections.

“[MPLS] will allow all the offices to talk to each other without routing through one central point like the Daytona office,” Worling says. “We currently share point-to-point T1s that point back to the Daytona office with our voice applications.” With the MPLS design, data from branch offices won’t have to travel back and forth to Daytona as much, which improves the WAN bandwidth picture.

Still not convinced you need to change the way you manage video? Well, clogged pipes and lethargic apps are not the only problems the video explosion is introducing to the enterprise. Does the word storage get your attention? How about security?

Wait...It Gets Worse

As companies create more video, IT must store it. And video files aren’t small. Worling must store a growing amount of video that Nascar uses to do crash analysis. His storage requirements and costs are rising, so he must get more efficient. “We just bought a SAN and are consolidating some storage,” Worling says.

At Purdue University, Interim VP for Information Technology and CIO Gerry McCartney says it’s hard to forecast the video clip volume on the network in the next few years, and this complicates his storage planning.

“We’re seeing an increase in e-mail storage, and we attribute part of that to videos sent via e-mail,” he says. Purdue students currently get a storage limit of 500MB (after that they must clean out their mailboxes), but the college may increase that limit to 1GB, partly due to the video factor, he says. That means Purdue’s e-mail servers require more storage.

The university is also having to increase storage due to video training that it’s using to teach employees ERP applications, McCartney says.