Industry: Manufacturing (Healthcare) Region: Americas Collaboration Technology: Webex Video Conferencing
Introduction
Recently, a global manufacturer of medical devices and software deployed a large Cisco Collaboration Meeting Room solution to improve communication and productivity among its employees. Initially, the company enlisted the help of a partner to implement the solution in order to save costs, but soon its workforce began complaining about poor video quality in their meetings.
This forced the IT staff to rethink what went wrong. Yet, when they took an initial look at the network to identify the root causes of the poor video quality, they found no problematic issues. Instead, they found:
At this point, they engaged Cisco Customer Experience to help them assess their situation and develop a strategy to get the video conferencing software to work as planned.
Expectations
The customer expected Cisco to perform the network validation; however the Media Network Readiness Assessment (MNRA) couldn't be performed as the majority of devices were built by third parties. Quickly identifying another route, the Cisco Customer Experience team proposed a Network Path Assessment in order to validate the video path for possible packet drops and network issues.
Cisco Customer Experience worked closely with the customer to understand its hop-by-hop network topology and the specific path traversed for video calling and web conferencing. It then created a network path based on its findings.
Using Cisco best practices, the team first examined the customer network's QoS settings, as it is primarily the underlying driver of both voice and video quality issues. In fact, it is the application's nature to be sensitive to packet loss, so if items aren't marked properly they'll be put in the same queue as data and will be delayed.
Through its analysis, the Cisco Customer Experience team identified that the customer's network topology was created incorrectly and that it was deviating from the validated design. Multiple packet drops were indeed occurring—both at the core and the edge—due to network configuration issues. For this reason and a few other minor ones, the customer's initial assumption of traffic flow was different from the actual flow.
Finally, in recommending further action, the team provided the customer with a list of Cisco best practices, helping to summarize the necessary changes that the customer should make.
Parting thoughts:
Although a Network Path Assessment (part of the Collaboration Network Readiness Assessment service) aided the company in identifying the sole critical issue that was causing video quality issues, it wasn't the first option to accept. Yet, because the customer had third-party collaboration devices, it chose not to conduct a proper MNRA and ended up in reactive troubleshooting mode. An MNRA would have identified the gaps in the network, along with recommendations for specific design improvements that would have aided in preventing future problems.
Using a proprietary tool customized for the MNRA service, Cisco can simulate actual traffic (even before deployment) to provide customers with a view of the network in terms of latency, packet drops, jitter, and QoS deployment. This, in and of itself, has been one of the most influential tools in helping to quickly assess a customer's situation and identify areas for improvement.
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