Summary

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The complete guide to planning and deploying networked multimedia.

Multimedia Communications is an indispensable resource for anyone who needs to make networked multimedia work in products, in business LANs or WANs, or across the Internet. It covers everything that engineers and network professionals need to know to plan for and manage multimedia traffic.

Start with a detailed understanding of the unique technical and performance requirements that surround networked multimedia, including throughput, error rates, delay, latency, and quality of service issues. Then, take a close look at the technologies and methodologies now available to maximize the performance of networked multimedia applications.

Compare compression technologies from the original MPEG-1 to the new MPEG-4 and discover new wavelet and fractal techniques that can dramatically improve compression rates. Understand the subnetworking issues that arise in networked multimedia and how to evolve your network to support these new applications. Compare your ATM options, including Classical IP-over-ATM, IP Multicasting, LAN Emulation, and native multimedia over ATM.

Multimedia Communications also includes expert coverage into new network and transport layer protocols for multimedia, including Multicast IP, IPv6, RSVP, ST2, the Tenet protocols, and RTP. It provides up-to-the-minute guidance for building reliable, end-to-end multicast networks, including choosing the right protocols and planning for scalability and efficiency.

Finally, you'll review the unique needs of each important networked multimedia application, including Internet MBone multicasting and video servers, push technology, videoconferencing, distributed audio, shared whiteboards, multi-party gaming, and more.

Multimedia applications stress networks as they've never been stressed before. If you're faced with planning or implementing these applications, Multimedia Communications is your single source for the straight answers and technical insight you need.