Introducing IP Video Telephony

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Classifying the functions and components of the Cisco IP video telephony solution
• Characterizing a video call in terms of the RTP stream types and codecs, and describing audio and video bandwidth requirements
• Comparing an H.323 video call in a Cisco CallManager environment with an SCCP video call
• Describing the two main factors that determine the bandwidth requirement for video calls and calculating bandwidth requirements
• Implementing call admission control within a cluster using the locations and regions of Cisco CallManager Administration
• Describing call admission control between clusters using a gatekeeper

Companies that want to enable video calls can install and use products from the Cisco enterprise video products portfolio. Video communication capabilities are integrated into Cisco CallManager Release 4.0. These capabilities extend several video features to benefit end users, network administrators, and enterprises as a whole. A common IP infrastructure for all communications not only provides an enterprise with reduced cost of ownership but with a faster return on investment (ROI) as users more readily and easily adapt to a system that can be deployed to the desktop. This chapter introduces the benefits, terms, and concepts of video telephony.