Feature Story

January 7, 2008

Clearly, video is taking consumer electronics by storm and has become the pivot point for home networking. Cisco calls this development "visual networking." This concept also reflects the growing importance of mobility and social networking for consumers. Having a home network-a "connected home"-is just one element of what people now want from their entertainment and communications services. The TV, the personal computer, and portable devices such as "smart" cell phones all now play an equal role in a consumer's visual networking experience. Most importantly, individuals don't want to choose between devices. They want them to work together to make it easy to access and use their favorite video and communications tools wherever they may be.

To discuss the development of visual networking, News@Cisco spoke with Ken Wirt, Cisco's vice president of consumer marketing. His credits read like a who's who of companies and products that have defined innovation in Silicon Valley. His product launches include Treo smart phones at Palm, one of the world's first MP3 players at Diamond Multimedia, the Newton personal digital assistant at Apple, and the home computer with Atari. The following text is modified from a recent News@Cisco Podcast.

How is video changing home networking?

Ken Wirt: Video is dominating home networking and Internet technologies. It is that simple. The appetite for all types of video from high definition TV programs and movies to the wide range of Internet content is exploding. During just one month in the United States last year, 9 billion video streams were viewed over the Internet by 133 million people. And that is just the beginning. Over the next four years, the number of devices capable of playing networked video is projected to increase 17-fold. But on the flip side of all of that interest in video is the unavoidable fact that it is a very demanding medium. The most demanding. We consider video 10 times more complex to run over a network than audio. So Cisco and other consumer electronics companies have their work cut out for them.

What does Cisco view as the key issues in developing video technologies for home networking?

Ken Wirt: Well, it all starts with the consumer. What are people really looking for? There are really three things. First and foremost is ease of use. If it's not easy to use, people are not going to adopt the technology. Sure, you will always have the techno geeks and the early adopters, but for a technology to gain mainstream popularity, it has to be as simple to use as the TV, a car radio, or a DVD player.

The second factor for consumers is quality. Vision is the most highly developed of the human senses, so people are even more sensitive to flaws in video images than, say, the sound of a telephone conversation. The rapid growth of high-definition television and flat screen TV sales illustrates that if people have a choice, they will go for higher quality video. Whatever you do, you need to take care of your video as it travels over a network so it arrives as crystal-clear as possible.

The third issue for consumers is mobility. Sometimes convenience trumps quality. In other words, while people love their 55-inch plasma TVs, they eventually have to leave the couch. But they still want to be entertained and informed. So people like to view video on portable devices, such as laptops or smart phones. This is what we refer to as the "3-screens" concept of visual networking. Video needs to look great and be easy to use not just on the TV but also on a personal computer and a portable device like a cell phone. These three types of video devices should not be islands unto themselves, but, rather, integrated so individuals can move from one to the other without losing access to their favorite video archives or services.

What are some examples of how Cisco is helping develop video for consumer networking?

Ken Wirt: We're working on all fronts to facilitate visual networking. Our efforts start with TV service providers, such as cable companies and telcos, to help them build sophisticated networks that can deliver high quality video content, particularly HDTV. We are also helping them develop interactive features-such as video-on-demand and digital video recording- that let people control when and how they watch their favorite shows. And we're working with service providers to help them boost Internet connections to the home so people can get even better access to videos through their computers and home networks.

So that gets the video into the home. Once it arrives, we are developing products to make it easier for individuals to use video and other content as they wish. First, we are rolling out broadband gateways and hybrid set-top boxes. The gateways help connect an Internet link to the TV and other devices throughout the home. The hybrid set-top boxes not only deliver traditional video content but also allow access to streaming video from various types of Websites, which could be viewed on both the PC and the TV. And with our Linksys home networking products, we are making connections between devices easier. For example, we are rolling out wireless routers that are tuned to give priority to and maintain the quality of video as it transmits across the home network. We've also created tools such as the Linksys Easy Link Advisor, which helps people set up and maintain their home networks. So let's say you have a game system and you want to be able to play games on the Internet. Well, to do that you have to open a certain port in a router. Regular people don't know how to do that, but this software can do that for you. We're also helping build 3-screen connections with wireless routers and storage systems that integrate with set-top boxes.

In other areas, we are partnering with devices manufacturers, such as Nokia, Vodafone, Sprint, and Skype to better tie portable devices to visual networking systems. And we're partnering with content providers and media companies to help them prepare and manage their video so it can travel across the three screens of visual networking options with the fewest hiccups or quality issues. I think the lesson in all of this is that there is no silver bullet device that will solve all the challenges of visual networking. It is system-wide challenge. All the parts connected to a video network must work together to maintain the quality and ease of use of any video application or service.

What is the role of social networking in the use of video?

Ken Wirt: This is another interesting aspect of video usage, and one of the reasons we prefer the term visual networking to describe the changes in how people are using networking technologies to access entertainment and communicate. There is now so much content available, simply searching for an item isn't adequate anymore. Searching is what you do when you lose your car keys in the couch. The way people find video is by friends telling them what to watch. They say, "Check out this five second video called 'Dramatic Chipmunk' on You Tube." Now if somebody didn't tell you, you would never search for a video called "Dramatic Chipmunk." But friends tell you, you read about what other people have said on your Myspace, your Facebook, and your other kind of social networking pages. Now, imagine being able to recommend content based on the behaviors of the millions of people you don't know around the world. That's the power of social networking. You find video and other content through communities of friends or really, communities of people with shared interests. So with social networking, it's really more about discovery than searching. This has important implications for any company that wants to offer video services. A simple database of titles might be okay, but perhaps a way to sell more video is by offering some type of social networking discovery tool. In response to this need, Cisco has set up the Media Solutions Group that specializes in building software that integrates video content with social networking tools. Like most of visual networking, we're just at the beginning of this development. It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.