This is a terrible word - VKS

In Moscow, there is a server part that converts and commutes a video signal, channels diverge from it to the courts of the regions and other state bodies

For 8 years of working with video conferencing, I realized that a novice system administrator has a very simple attitude towards video conferencing: what, they say, is Skype and Lync to think for users - and for all business. In general, communicators at the level of Facetime and similar quite well, and, most importantly, cheaply solve the problems of small and, in some places, medium-sized businesses.

In big business, the situation is different. As a rule, there are own secure communication channels (physical or virtual), and information should not leave the corporate intranet in principle. In addition, there are requirements for image quality, equipment, integration with existing telephony and even translation services.
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An example of one of the tasks solved by our team is the connection of arbitration courts throughout the Russian Federation. The transport layer is an MPLS network for 114 objects: optics is more often, but there are also satellite channels for remote regions. HD-picture can be forwarded at the conference point-to-point, or at multipoint from 4 without the participation of the center to 40 ships based on the central server. There are channels outside, for example, to other government agencies of the Russian Federation. It is possible to broadcast conferences within the network for online viewing of meetings. All HQ meetings are recorded for further distribution of copies to the parties. With the advent of the SCS, changes were introduced in the AIC, giving the parties the right to hold meetings using CCS and replacing personal presence. Tasks of meetings of the Presidium, meeting of scientific advisory councils (NCC), and distance learning of court staff are also being solved.

Basic things

As a rule, the company grows to normal video conferencing systems in three ways:

1. Because of the need to hold meetings, for example, branch managers in a geographically-distributed structure. For example, the director of a telecom or retail may collect the heads of departments once a week all at once. Skype does not suit, because shoving all the participants in the room in a single webcam does not work. And the quality floats much ...
2. At the request of security guards who really want to be sure that the picture and sound does not leave the limits of the encrypted intranet channels. From their point of view, it is better not to chat at all except personally and turning everything off, and if it does not come out personally, then at least without third-party software and hardware.
3. Due to the requirements for a general VKS system for Russian divisions of foreign companies.

Currently, there are no large companies in the market that, to one degree or another, would not implement video conferencing systems within their IT infrastructure. The main orders are related either to upgrading systems for new requirements for improving the quality of pictures / sound, installing new hardware (automatically prompted cameras, curved telepresence screens that “complete” the conversation), or deploying new branches.

The first trend of recent years is the increase in resolution . As a rule, old systems are upgraded to HD, which requires the replacement of iron in negotiations and an increase in computing resources. The second important trend is the ability to connect participants with tablets, iPhones, laptops from home, business trips, and so on. As a rule, it begins with the fact that one of the managers wants to have access to a secure video conferencing system from home, and then comes the understanding that all employees, using a bunch of corporate VPN and video conferencing systems, can communicate anywhere and in any way. Although, admittedly, many sacrifice safety for convenience and cost savings.

The third important trend is cost reduction . The newer the solution, the cheaper it is, as a rule. Algorithms are being improved, and many tasks can be shifted to the terminal hardware (the same iPhones processors from the 5th generation make it possible to perfectly solve the tasks of processing complex video streams), sometimes it is much cheaper to deploy a new system from scratch than to build backward compatibility with existing solutions. Everything is calculated on specific cases.

Transport

The best case is the company's intranet channels. If we are talking about a bank, Russian Railways, the oil industry, or a cellular operator, this may well even be our own backbone network in Russia, if it is about retail, insurance, etc. - their physical channels at least between several branches and the data center. Next - VPNs with a guaranteed channel from the branch office to the data center. Quite often, there are own two-way satellite channels. The worst case of connectivity in terms of stability and security is through the “shared” Internet.

On corporate intranets, traffic of video conferencing systems, as a rule, has a fairly high priority - first, service alarms like DDoS protectors, commercial data like ATM exchanges, and then VCS packages. Communication protocols compensate for partial packet loss, but no one needs a jerky picture: at the highest level, the effect of having a face-to-face presence is appreciated as much as possible.

When evaluating a vendor for integration of video conferencing, the transport network is almost always taken into account: for example, Polycom can save a channel well in some cases, Cisco allows you to implement everything systematically, taking into account subsystems (right away, telecom, personal video conferencing systems for unlimited "User mobility).

Modern technologies, for example, the SVC (Scalable Video Codec) codec, make it possible to offload from the computing power, and, consequently, reduce the price of the central node of a multipoint conference, implementing only the routing of incoming streams on it.

Thus, for example, solutions for multipoint videoconferencing allow either — traditionally — to collect all the video streams on a central server, process them there and give the formed signal to all participants (for example, several pictures of participants in one window). Or - in the SVC environment - using powerful modern terminal equipment and a good transport network, skip these video streams directly, and the assembly and disassembly is done on codecs in the negotiations.

Tsisko still has MediaNet technology, which allows using an external monitoring system to monitor the traffic passing process, detecting errors on specific network devices of this vendor - routers / switches, which makes it easy to detect errors and bottlenecks during video conferencing sessions.
In general, vendors are approximately on the same level in the development of algorithms, and if someone rushes forward, the rest are “pulled” somewhere in six months or a year. The choice of a vendor is either a matter of an already used system, or an economic miscalculation in a particular situation. There is also such a thing as a corporate standard: if 10 years they used, say, Polycom, they will choose it again, because there are no surprises.

For processing video streams, previously, “heavy” specialized servers with a lot of nicely warming data centers of video cards, supplied as ready-made PACs, were used everywhere. I must say, quite expensive because of the specificity of the solution (offtopic: some admins have tried to mine on these idle cryptocurrency sessions between video conferencing sessions). Today, a more traditional x86 architecture is increasingly being used, since everything can be virtualized and simply occupy a certain percentage of the power of its own data center or hybrid cloud for the operation of video conferencing systems. From the point of view of fault tolerance, no duplication of an expensive counter as an airplane is required, since if one of the x86 servers fails, applications can be migrated to the same neighbor. However, for large companies, due to the poor optimization of conventional servers for processing multi-stream video signals, large specialized servers are still being installed in the data centers.

Control

The trend of recent years is the simplest creation of a conference and the invitation of participants . Previously, say, in the mid-2000s, each conference was created by a system administrator, and, I must say, the task was not always simple and routine. When manufacturers of video conferencing companies realized that users often find it easier, to the great annoyance of a security officer, to dial each other through Skype, they made a normal GUI. Today, most manufacturers offer the possibility of collecting the conference by any participant, including from the phone if necessary.

One of the business tasks is to share desktops, send files, show presentations, connect data from external cameras (for example, for universities - one shows a lecturer, one - a blackboard, plus a presentation is broadcast) and so on. All this, as a rule, goes out of the box and is quite simple to configure as the integration of video conferencing systems proceeds.

VCS is tightly integrated with other subsystems in the company's IT infrastructure. For example, if there is a ready telephony based on Avaya solutions, it is very easy to stick into this network. Sometimes a bunch of corporate trackers and their counterparts are made so that invitations to video conferencing and meetings are one and the same.
Ordinary employees have more rights: now even with VKS in the workplace, you can call another employee to the conference, which 5 years ago was an impossible task for many systems.

Moderation and adherence to the protocol on important video conferencing sessions are almost never done by the speaker. For example, the president will not press the buttons: there is a protocol of the event, where it is written who, when and how he speaks, plus when someone calls someone, they are large numbers of these two, for example. Once again - at major events, the meeting protocol is first written, and then it is implemented by a special person in the conference, who is not visible. At regular meetings, there is usually no need for such a protocol.

Significantly simplified work with translation systems. Very often in our country and in Europe there is a situation when the leader is an expat and the conversation is in at least two languages. Here’s how it looks in terms of integration:



And from the point of view of a regular user, these are three numbers for a call: in Russian, in English and mixed, when there are no simultaneous interpreters. Conference space is logically one, please note.

Examples of solutions

I wrote about arbitration above, the only thing worth noting is that, like many other HQ systems, it developed over decades, and we did not start to do it. The connection between the courts is a good example of videoconferencing, which is needed by large businesses and state-owned companies.

The second example is the schools of the Stavropol Territory . There are 34 schools in which students cannot arrive at the place of study. For example, due to disability. The classes have an Eagle Eye Director device: when you turn on the microphone, it automatically directs the camera to the speaker. The same principle of operation has equipment UC Board for marker boards. The solution is used by teachers from other schools for meetings or open lessons. There is a moderation and management function for meetings, plus sending both text and voice messages. Now, Stavropol students who study remotely can simply connect to the class in which the lesson is taking place, and ask their questions out loud, discuss with classmates and respond to their homework. Given the characteristics of domestic Internet channels, some connect only to receive the VCS signal and uplink by sound.


Teacher's table


Ceiling microphone


Document camera


Class

For M.Video, we made a solution based on Cisco TelePresence . The task is operational management decision making for a large geographic retailer. First, a server core was built, video conferencing software was implemented by the directors of all stores and integration with the company's corporate services was carried out. At the same time, video terminals were installed at workplaces of top management and in the conference hall of the central office. At the second stage, the stores were covered, the core productivity increased threefold, video classes were developed for internal training. The hardware is as follows: Cisco TelePresence MCU 5320 multipoint conference servers, Cisco TelePresence Conductor conference distribution server, VCS Control, Cisco TelePresence VCS Expressway external connection management server, Cisco TelePresence Content Server recording and broadcast server, Cisco TelePresence System E20 videophones, EX90 video terminals; Profile 52 ”Dual and System QuickSet C20 4x and SX20 QuickSet 4x.

For Ingosstrakh, we made modifications and upgrades - we combined the Microsoft Lync system and the video conferencing systems based on Polycom equipment - this improved the quality of the video link and made it possible to record video conferences. Access of employees to UC from the Internet is protected by special means that ensure the safety of communications regardless of the location of users. They used a Polycom RMX2000 server, a bandwidth control server, a H.323 gatekeeper, a Polycom DMA 7000 SIP recorder; server recording and broadcasting sessions of video conferencing Polycom RSS 4000; monitoring server, address books Polycom Realpresence Resource Manager; VCS HDX 7000-720 codecs.

In recent years, I participated in the implementation of about 20 solutions of a different plan, mainly for large businesses (financial companies, the public sector and industry - about half of the projects). If you have questions about hardware, software or PAKs, or specific errors, write to EDmitriev@croc.ru, or ask directly in the comments. And on October 22 and 23 we are conducting a test drive with a demonstration of various solutions for modern video conferencing. Come, if you are interested to touch modern technologies.