Video Conferencing Equipment and Bandwidth How Much Do You Need?

If your company is considering adding video conferencing equipment one of things you will want to consider is how bandwidth will be required. Most of the video conferencing solutions now being sold are IP based as opposed to ISDN. Although ISDN is still being used the IP based systems are more economical.
There are several kinds of video conferencing solutions available for different user requirements :
Video Conferencing Software for Desktop video conferencing requires very little bandwidth and any DSL and cable service will easily meet the low band width requirements. The low cost and popular Polycom PVX Video Conferencing Software requires only 64 kbps to work. Standard DSL of the home variety has upload speeds of 336 kbps which is 5 times what the PVX requires.
Small Group conferencing equipment from 1 to 4 users in close proximity also use very little bandwidth such as the case with the PolycomVSeries systems like the V500. The V500 uses 128Kbps and delivers 30 frames per second.
Bandwidth requirements for Medium Sized Video Conferencing Systems for medium sized conference rooms with groups under 12 start to go up with additional features available such as content sharing and multi point conferencing. For a typical system such as the best selling VSX5000 series bandwidth requirements are as low as 56kbps at 30 Fields Per Second to 768kbps at 60 FPS. The faster the FPS, the higher the quality of the video conference.
Large System and HD video conferencing systems such as the Polycom HD9000 series require 1Mbps up to 4Mbps. A typical T1 is going provide 1.5Mbps of bandwidth with a bonded T3 delivering 4.5Mbps which can provide some over head for additional services.

To figure out how much bandwidth is going to be required for you solution a few questions need to be asked.

• What level of quality is required?
  
• Will you be using an HD codec?
  
• Will you be doing Multi Point conferencing?
  

If your company would like to talk with a bandwidth specialist or video conferencing specialist call us at 800-335-0229 or get an instant quote for bandwidth by clicking here http://www.telcom-data.com/pri/index.aspx

Vivek is an experienced content writer for conferencing products, a leading provider of conference call systems & wireless conference phones including VoIP phone accessories for conferencing solutions.