It was named “Breakthrough Technology of the Year” by a leading European publication at the Integrated Systems Europe show this past February.
It has the support of big names like Harman Professional and even bigger names like Cisco and Intel.
“It” is Audio/Video Bridging (AVB), a group of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) standards that enable reliable real-time audio/ video streaming over standard Ethernet. Welcome to the networked future.
Oh – you didn’t get an invitation yet? Still wrestling with copper snakes?
Can’t see the return on investing in one of the proprietary digital audio networking technologies that have been around for the last decade or so?
Clearly you’re not alone: fixed installations have been slowly moving toward Cat-5 instead of multi-core copper, but live sound and rental companies are not as eager to make the switch.
You know the reasons for that better than I. AVB aims to make them irrelevant, and in the process, it could change your world in fundamental ways.
Nuts, Bolts, Pipes & Valves
On the technical side, AVB is defined by an IEEE Workgroup. On the commercial side, it is promoted by the AVnu Alliance.
Both are growing. Originally, AVB was three IEEE 802.1 “network plumbing” standards:
• PTP (Precision Time Protocol), a.k.a. IEEE 802.1AS, synchronizes all network nodes to a common time reference using time stamping;
• SRP (Stream Reservation Protocol), a.k.a. IEEE 802.1Qat, guarantees Quality of Service (Qos) by reserving up to 75 percent of available network bandwidth so AV streams can travel within a “defended cloud,” free from collisions with asynchronous data like email or file transfers;
• QAV (Queuing and Forwarding Protocol), a.k.a. IEEE 802.1QAV, guarantees end-to-end latency of under 2 milliseconds over seven “network hops” without costly proprietary memory buffering schemes that increase network latency.
More recently, two configuration and control standards have been added to AVB. IEEE 1722, the AVB Transport Protocol (AVBTP), is near completion.
It sits in between the application layer and the network plumbing, allowing the logical connection of physically distant I/O devices from multiple manufacturers.
That’s right: multiple manufacturers, like the five who brought prototype products to the recent “plugfest” held at the Harman Professional Salt Lake City facility.
It’s cousin, IEEE 1722.1, which will allow Discovery, Enumeration, Configuration and Control (a.k.a. DE CC, a.k.a. “plug ‘n play”), is at an earlier stage of definition.
