Seamless Communication, Zero Video Lag

With the rapid development of th e Internet and the ongoing digital transformation of enterprises, audio and video services have become crucial in the network infrastructure of corporate campuses. Many companies use video conferencing as a significant tool to enhance office efficiency in their daily  operations.

For instance, a well-known bank i n Europe operates across more than 20 countries, serving over 40 million users globally. However, as the business has expanded in recent years, the demand for audio and video  conferences has skyrocketed, averaging nearly 3,000 video conferences daily. The quality of video conferences directly impacts the efficiency of company operations, especially at the headquarters, where senior management and core departments frequently expressed dissatisfaction with the video conferencing experience. Despite the full support of the IT team during critical meetings, there were frequent complaints about video lag, causing disruptions.

What are the reasons for video lag in conferences?

Firstly, traditional campus networks employ a "best-effort" strategy, where the network makes every effort to process user requests and transmit data. However, during network congestion, indiscriminate packet loss may occur. For instance, when there is simultaneous downloading and video services in the network, both services can perform well if there is sufficient bandwidth.However, limited bandwidth resources can lead to a competition for resources, resulting in bandwidth contention, particularly in the access layer,causing business blockages.

Secondly, unlike network connectivity issues, experience-related problems involve a broader scope and more network elements.They also exhibit high mobility, unpredictability, and randomness. IT teams often invest significant manpower and resources without being able to pinpoint the root cause,  leading to silent troubleshooting and an inability  to determine optimization measures.

Huawei Audio and Video Conference Experience Assurance Solution

Huawei's solution for ensuring the experience of audio and video conferences in campus networks involves the integration of AI recognition engines,application management engines, and experience measurement engines. This comprehensive approach covers the entire lifecycle, from planning to operation and maintenance, aiming to elevate the quality of audio and video conferences in campus environments

The AI recognition engine primarily leverages the intelligent application recognition capabilities of devices to identify audio and video traffic. It categorizes the traffic and assigns priority markings based on the identified applications.

The application management engine ensures that the tagged audio and video traffic is consistently prioritized in the scheduling queue and receives preferential forwarding within the campus network. This implementation creates a dedicated express lane for audio and video services.

The experience measurement engine utilizes iPCA with flow detection technology to conduct quality assessments, including packet loss and bidirectional latency, for specified applications, particularly SaaS applications, across each hop of the network devices. In addition, Huawei's iMaster NCE campus network digital map enables end-to-end critical application experience measurement from the wireless air interface to the wired side. Leveraging both temporal and spatial dimensions, it allows for real-time fault localization within minutes, ensuring end-to-end support for video conferencing experiences.

After deploying Huawei's audio and video conference experience assurance solution, the video conference quality at the European bank significantly improved, leading to an 80% increase in satisfaction and a 90% decrease in complaints. The corporate leadership has identified this project as a benchmark initiative and plans extensive promotion. There are future plans to deploy the same solution in countries such as Germany, Spain, Austria, and others.

As office software and communication methods evolve,video conferencing is becoming a core business operation for enterprises. In this context, the quality of audio and video conferences is increasingly crucial for businesses, with its application scope continuously expanding. Addressing the challenges and complexities of ensuring audio and video business in the campus network, Huawei's audio and video conference experience assurance solution will continue advancing through technological innovation and practical implementation. This aims to elevate the audio and video conference experience, ensuring the smooth operation of enterprise business.