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Voice and Video aren’t just for your wired network anymore!

Since releasing enhanced voice and video capabilities earlier this year, we have seen growth in the number of video and voice applications running over Meraki wireless networks.  Physical security and voice/data convergence have been implemented broadly over wired networks in the last decade, but providing these applications over wireless networks is a more recent trend.  Our customers have been able to deploy these applications easily and reliably by utilizing a number of features in the Meraki solution:
1.       WMM and Power Save capabilities enable wireless devices to obtain quality of service (QoS) and conserve battery power, respectively, when associated to a Meraki wireless network.  With these features, wireless surveillance cameras and VOIP handsets can stream audio and video content with the best performance available, and at the same time, spend less time docked in battery chargers.
2.       Offline mode allows multimedia devices to continue operating in the LAN, even if connectivity to the Meraki Cloud Controller is not available.  Surveillance cameras can still stream to monitoring stations on the LAN, and mobile handsets can continue to place or receive calls, regardless of network changes outside the LAN.
3.       Bridge mode provides seamless connectivity between wireless and wired devices.  With this feature, surveillance cameras, DVRs, VOIP phones, monitoring stations, and any other networked devices that send or receive multimedia data can discover and connect to each other without any network barriers.
4.       VLAN tagging helps ensure that wireless multimedia traffic gets QoS prioritization over the wired network.  Wireless surveillance cameras and VOIP handsets can associate to Meraki over a dedicated SSID, whose traffic can be VLAN-tagged to get VIP treatment by the upstream switches and routers.
5.       Meraki’s mesh networking technology just works, without any additional configuration.  Meraki access points communicate with neighboring Meraki access points to provide wireless coverage in areas where Ethernet ports are not available.  In this way, an administrator can deploy a video monitoring environment or a wireless VOIP network quickly and easily.

All of these features work in concert to provide a superior multimedia experience over the Meraki wireless network.  As an illustration of this capability, below is a screenshot that one customer sent us, depicting 15 wireless surveillance cameras streaming video across a Meraki network to a DVR on the LAN.

video cameras

We are excited about this convergence in voice, video, and data over the wireless LAN, and we will continue to invest in features that make this convergence easier and more reliable for enterprise customers.

-Posted by Jed Lau