Amnis moves video to network edge

PALO ALTO - Amnis Systems, formerly Optivision, is scheduled to launch line of edge servers designed to push video delivery and processing functions closer to end users within a geographically dispersed company.

Amnis' video distribution and management products focuses mainly on high-quality MPEG video distribution used in distance learning, training and government applications.

The new edge server, which is schedule to ship in the second quarter, will help push high-bandwidth MPEG files closer to the source, freeing up smaller, congested WAN connections. It will be interoperable with the company's existing NAC series of video appliances, desktop playback clients and software for managing the video distribution network.

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PALO ALTO - Amnis Systems, formerly Optivision, is scheduled to launch line of edge servers designed to push video delivery and processing functions closer to end users within a geographically dispersed company.

Amnis' video distribution and management products focuses mainly on high-quality MPEG video distribution used in distance learning, training and government applications.

The new edge server, which is schedule to ship in the second quarter, will help push high-bandwidth MPEG files closer to the source, freeing up smaller, congested WAN connections. It will be interoperable with the company's existing NAC series of video appliances, desktop playback clients and software for managing the video distribution network.

"People using MPEG-1 and 2 are concerned about bit rates on the [WAN] because of the huge file sizes and bandwidth needed - up to 4M bit/sec," says Christine Perey, president of Perey Research and Consulting, and a member of the Network World Global Test Alliance. "MPEG-2 is up in the megabytes and not measured in kilobytes."

The Amnis servers will come with storage for serving video on-demand, as well as encoding capabilities for capturing and delivering video to other locations within the corporation.

The servers also can be used to help deliver live video more efficiently than a traditional "one stream for every user" approach using a form of IP Multicast. A single stream can be sent across each WAN link to the local edge server, where it can be broken into multiple streams delivered over a high-speed LAN, rather than every user traversing the WAN to pull down a stream.

For companies needing the quality of high-end MPEG video, content-delivery appliances and tools such as those being offered by Amnis, Minerva Networks and Optibaseiare useful for helping keep the strain that video can add to a network. However, Perey says the majority of enterprise video implementations are usually better served by video tools from vendors such as Microsoft.

"The price-performance ratio of Windows Media gets you every time," Perey says. Microsoft gives away its encoding and playback client, with the server software delivered as part of Windows 2000, making it an attractive option for cash-strapped IT groups.

Competing RealNetworks and QuickTime offer similar advantages with low-cost servers and tools.

Amnis declined to talk about additional product details and pricing.

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