Magento: Nothing Without the Right Hosting Provider?
Magento hosting is renowned for being incredibly flexible and resilient as a platform upon which many businesses create robust eCommerce sites. However it matters little if you don’t have the right hosting provider in place to run it. In the following article we consider the most important steps to choosing the best Magento hosting platform for you.
1. Choose the right hosting provider
As people embrace the Internet in all walks of life, your ability to earn revenue online becomes crucial. Any website downtime, poor navigation, etc. leads to customer frustrations. If they can’t see the site, research or buy products, it means of a drop in revenue for you. Power outages and website bottlenecks must be minimised at all costs and this requires solid web hosting.
Make sure your hosting is with a company that is honest, transparent and reputable. Such companies deliver professional expertise, customer retention and an excellent support network. This will ensure that any outages or issues are quickly fixed, so that your site remains constant, backed-up, functionally sound and performance savvy.
2. Don’t be seduced by cheap online deals
You can easily find very cheap and enticing server hosting platforms that ‘appear’ too good to be true. In an age of online advertising it is very easy to be tripped up by hidden costs and long-term SLAs with companies that have neither the capacity nor reputation to service your eCommerce needs.
Don’t be seduced by cheap hosting that doesn’t have the network bandwidth to keep your site running efficiently. So many businesses make this mistake and become frustrated. The cheapest options often come with long term tie-ins, run poor performance server specifications and have negligible expertise to deliver adequate support.
3. Keep content at the forefront of your mind
Products, content and navigation are the building blocks upon which any good eCommerce site is built. Using a platform like Magento provides tremendous flexibility to incorporate different types of content for a savvy online audience. These people are heavily guarded and guided by search engines (Google, Bing) and social media (Facebook, Twitter) which in turn are smart to the whims and ways in which people interact. They also love new and engaging content.
Your ability to attract new audiences via content that is navigable has to be factored in with your host provider. Understand the content you should be publishing and how people should be navigating to it. Whether it’s products, pricing, support or blogs, the potential to be visible via search results and social media is huge. But you must understand how content fits into your online strategy.
4. Build and manage relevant links
There are many ‘black hat’ (fraudulent) ways of building traffic and transient popularity to an eCommerce site – through masses of links, content scraping, etc. As an online business, trust and relevancy are critical. Make sure your eCommerce platform has the necessary security provisions, tools and analytics to help make sense of site management. It is very important to monitor and measure the effectiveness of your site, verify visitors, backlinks, speed of access, etc. Your hosting provider should create an environment that is safe and secure, without compromising speed and agility of the website itself.
5. Maximise the potential of customer data
Arguably the most significant advantage of running an eCommerce platform with a powerful hosting provider is that it allows you to collect masses of customer data and make it relevant. This better serves them and empowers you through aligned business strategy and operations. Being able to track user history and gather insights into their interests and preferences allows you to tailor sales programs, PR initiatives and more with far greater accuracy. As customer cycles change on a seemingly daily basis, classifying demographic behaviours based on purchasing decisions and interactions with the site creates considerable competitive advantage.
With an integrated and powerful data warehouse, your eCommerce platform should be able to maximise the potential of the two most important commodities to your business, historical and real-time data. When tracked over time, this combination allows you to monitor key trends. Paying attention to customer responsiveness to your business, products, offers and the different marketing strategies you use, is tremendously powerful. In essence your eCommerce platform can help you understand the dynamics of your business, maximising growth potential.
Magento hosting is the most powerful and popular open source eCommerce platform in the world today. From planning, to testing, to deployment of an eCommerce site, Magento, on the right hosting environment, provides optimal performance, user experience and efficiency of service.

The article will provide a reader with information on Cisco’s small business 100 series wireless access points including features and Cisco WAP121 Wireless-N Access Point with Single Point Setup.

Cisco Small Business 100 Series Wireless Access Points combine business-class features with the reliability and performance needed for small business networks. The Single Point Setup feature makes deployment of multiple access points easy and cost effective.

They offer:
• Simplicity: Access points offer easy installation, intuitive web-based configuration, and integrated Setup Wizard.
• Fast, highly secure Wireless-N connectivity: Standards-based 802.11n enhances throughput and range for bandwidth-intensive applications.
• High-speed LAN connectivity: Fast Ethernet LAN interfaces help enable quicker downloads and also support bandwidth-intensive applications.
• Expandability: Using client bridge mode, expand a wired network wirelessly to a second Ethernet network at high speed.
• Scalability: Expand your wireless coverage by deploying multiple access points using Single Point Setup controllerless technology.
Cisco Small Business 100 Series Wireless Access Points also offer native support for IPv6, and a standards-based design that helps to ensure compatibility with other Ethernet or wireless devices. Integrated Power over Ethernet (PoE) simplifies deployment of access points, IP phones, IP cameras, and other network devices without a nearby power outlet or the cost of installing additional outlets.

Other benefits include:
• Energy efficiency: Energy-Efficient Ethernet and the power-saving radio scheduler help significantly cut power consumption.
• Highly secure guest access: Access points support separate “virtual” networks.
• Superior quality of service (QoS): Access points prioritize network traffic.
• Cisco Limited Lifetime Hardware Warranty: Get protection for your investment

Cisco Small Business 100 Series Wireless Access Points: Features
Enhanced Coverage, Security, etc.

With high-speed Wireless-N connectivity, Cisco Small Business 100 Series Wireless Access Points provide up to 10 times the coverage and 15 times the speed of Wireless-G networks. Small businesses can deploy wireless coverage over large areas with point-to-point and point-to-multipoint bridging using a wireless distribution system (WDS), or add more access points to expand the wireless coverage area using Single Point Setup controllerless technology.
The access points also offer advanced business-class security features to fortify your WLAN with Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2), rogue access point detection, and 802.1X with RADIUS authentication.

Other features include:
• Backward compatibility with 802.11b, and 802.11g network devices
• Integrated Power over Ethernet for lower deployment costs and easier installation
• Comprehensive Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) capabilities for advanced network management
• Sleek, elegant design with flexible mounting options (ceiling, wall, or desktop)
• Internal antennas optimized for superior performance

The article will provide a reader with information on Cisco Nexus 1000V InterCloud.

Nearly 50 percent of enterprise organizations are looking to implement hybrid clouds within the next two to three years, according to Forrester Research. With hybrid clouds, organizations can run their mission-critical applications in their own data centers, while offloading peak loads to cost-effective cloud providers. This optimizes both capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx), while better aligning IT costs with top-line business revenue and activity.

Cloud computing promises to break down traditional IT silos with their inherent inefficiencies and high costs and provide your organization with unparalleled flexibility, agility, and cost optimization, However, transitioning to the cloud successfully requires careful preparation and planning.

To help a user, Cisco had prepared an informative whitepaper: Transforming Enterprise IT Services with a Secure, Compliant Private Cloud Environment.  The article will helpe a user to:
• Develop a realistic set of objectives and expectations
• Understand the different cloud approaches and which is right for your needs
• Create a cloud approach that works for your organization
• Determine the key criteria for evaluating vendor offering and in-house and outside enablement services

Features and Capabilities

Let’s have a look at features and capabilities.
A hybrid cloud approach consists of simplified, transparent integration between an on-premises enterprise data center with a public cloud service provider. This integration includes:
• Highly secure Layer 2 networking connectivity between the enterprise data center and the public cloud
• The deployment of security and application services in the public cloud
• Management features for a hybrid cloud environment, including support for virtual machine (VM) mobility and lifecycle management.

To address these requirements, Cisco has developed the Cisco Nexus 1000V InterCloud architecture, which connects Cisco virtual data center environments to public cloud providers.

The primary features include:
Highly Secure Connectivity
The first component is the virtual switch that provides highly secure Layer 2 connectivity between the enterprise data center and the public cloud. This Layer 2 network connectivity allows workload mobility across locations while retaining the same IP address. It also provides local switching for the workloads in the cloud. No matter how remote the public cloud is, this Layer 2 domain overlay allows full workload mobility between servers in each location. Peak capacity and new virtual machines can be bursted to the cloud as needed, on-demand.

Virtual Services Integration
This Cisco Nexus 1000V-based overlay connection includes vPath for routing traffic to virtual security nodes and application services in the public cloud. These virtual service nodes are deployed as virtual machines and can run on virtually any cloud infrastructure, while mirroring the sophisticated policy enforcement requirements in the enterprise data center. The Cisco Nexus 1000V InterCloud framework supports the existing Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual services, including the Cisco ASA 1000V Cloud Firewall, the Cisco Virtual Security Gateway for Nexus 1000V Series Switch, Cisco Virtual Wide Area Application Services (vWAAS) for WAN optimization, and virtual Network Analysis Module products.

Cloud Network Management
Management of the integrated hybrid cloud environment is handled by the newest 3.0 release of Cisco Virtual Network Management Center or VNMC InterCloud. VNMC InterCloud provides a single pane of management across enterprise data centers and public clouds. It shows the complete VM inventory in the enterprise data center and facilitates VM migration to a public cloud while retaining Layer 2 connectivity with the other enterprise workloads.

The article will provide a reader with information on video conferencing offers insight to E-Health.  The adoption rates for video conferencing are set to explode due to inexpensive easy access, offering new possibilities for healthcare delivery and treatment.

The Network Podcast in iTunes
It’s well known that we’re moving into a “perfect storm” of healthcare-related issues: an aging population, reforms such as the Affordable Health Care Act and an increasing premium on healthcare workers. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the U.S. demand for physicians will intensify with a predicted shortage of over 130,000 physicians by 2025.Yet medical advances and technical innovations, such as mobilization, also represent the perfect intersection of opportunity for healthcare providers and patient/consumer health. In fact, mobile technology is a large part of the curriculum for trainees at the Weston, Mass.-based Regis College School of Nursing, which mandates that every incoming student adopt an iPhone.
Students at Regis use their mobile devices as reference tools at the point of care and as a way to interface with EMR systems. Face-to-face video conferencing is one more extension of that mobile innovation set to transform how healthcare providers interact.

Today, cloud-based services and Web browsers offer video conferencing access to anyone with a mobile device. That’s because technology advancements such as cloud services, wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi, 3G/4G), mobility and browser-based conferencing are making video inexpensive and accessible, moving it closer to the brink of widespread adoption.
Gone are the expensive, underutilized video conferencing rooms found in many hospitals. Such dedicated systems are expensive to maintain, requiring staff expertise and maintenance.

Moreover, dedicated room systems are limited by built-in fixed capacity and an inability to communicate across platforms. For example, a PolyCom user may not be able to communicate with a ShoreTel user and vice-versa.
In contrast, cloud services and browser-based video conferencing allow inexpensive face-to-face interoperability, regardless of the system being used. In a healthcare environment, texting can be crucial in certain situations due to its brevity and fast response times.

However, video conferencing offers a richer, more nuanced collaboration possibility for a wide span of providers, from nurse practitioners and caregivers to neonatologists, cardiologists and other acute-care specialists.
In terms of patient care, video provides access to telemedicine for remote locations that otherwise lack access to care due to distance or other factors. In addition to teledermatology and retinal screening for eyecare, the electronic transmission of images could be beneficial for consultation and examination purposes in other fields of medicine that could utilize video conferencing.

Nurses and care providers, especially, are at the center of an information network related to patient health. Lab results, tests, patient requests and physician interactions all rely on effective contact with these primary caregivers.  In the age of mobility, cloud services and Web access enable clinics and smaller facilities—even doctor’s offices—to match the communications capabilities of large hospitals with sophisticated IT teams and ample budgets.

Physicians can now check in with patients at home who have a smartphone or a PC with Internet access, providing an additional level of assurance for both doctor and patient.  This portable doctor’s office enables physicians to remotely, examine patient symptoms and perform basic diagnostics and treatment-related tasks. Such technological innovations related to e-health are set to improve the delivery of care for patients, providers and doctors. Whether they will succeed in alleviating pressures resulting from the projected U.S. physician shortage remains to be seen.

Campus and data center switching networks differ in their requirements. An understanding of the two deployments and the specific requirements of each is imperative to choose the right Cisco switch. Each deployment type requires that switches have certain unique features.

User Access Control and Segmentation A campus or branch office is where users connect to network wired or wirelessly, and every connection point is vulnerable to security breaches. Capabilities to allow access based on business policy, prevent users from interfering with other users and their resources, isolate infected and malicious devices and applications, and track users in the network are crucial features of a campus switch. Cisco Catalyst switches support IEEE 802.1x and security group tags (SGTs), which automate authentication and network segmentation for user groups and provide access based on user roles. The switches, in conjunction with Cisco Prime™ applications, can help administrators track and monitor every user. Additionally, Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches support Easy Virtual Network (EVN), which simplifies deployment of technologies such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), generic routing encapsulation (GRE), and Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)–Lite to segment users and groups in the network.

Globally, business web-based video conferencing traffic is forecasted to grow six fold from 2011 to 2016, a compounded aggregate growth rate (CAGR) of 45 percent1. Devices, such as computers, smartphones, cameras, and dedicated Telepresence units, used to send and receive video are proliferating. Helping ensure a consistent experience and the capability to troubleshoot problems are critical in all these scenarios, and the network plays a major role. Cisco Catalyst switches have Medianet features that enable lifecycle video solutions to assess network readiness for video with built-in IP service-level agreement (SLA) tools, automated troubleshooting, and per-flow and per-hop flow metrics to measure such factors as packet loss and network jitter.

Controllers to manage wireless access points are ubiquitous in campus and branch-office networks. These controllers can be a physical or virtual appliance or integrated into a LAN switch. The Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series supports the integrated Cisco Wireless Services Module 2 (WISM2). Cisco also has standalone wireless controllers that work in conjunction with the Cisco Catalyst switches.

The rising number of different applications places a huge burden on the network. Congestion and outages can occur, and network administrators need an accurate way to track the application traffic flowing through the network to troubleshoot and correct the situation. Cisco Catalyst switches provide Cisco Flexible NetFlow, Network Analysis Modules (NAMs), and Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR), which comprehensively scan the traffic and offer reports based on protocols, applications, and users.

PoE is a technology through which power can be delivered to end devices such as IP phones and access points from
a connected LAN switch through the LAN cable. Power consumption can also be managed from a central location,
which helps conserve energy and reduce costs. Cisco Catalyst switches support PoE, Enhanced PoE (PoE+),
and Cisco Universal PoE (Cisco UPOE™), which deliver 15 to 60 watts (W) per port. Cisco EnergyWise™ technology can be used to manage energy consumption of many end devices connected to the switches.

Cloud Security and Virtual Machine Awareness As the number of virtual machines increases, so do the challenges of configuring, administering, and troubleshooting the networks that connect them. Because today’s networks have both physical and virtual servers on them, visibility and awareness into both environments is critical. Network policies, dictating everything from quality-of-service (QoS) parameters to access control lists (ACLs), define the way that clients and servers, as well as their traffic, is supposed to behave on the network.

The article will provide a reader with information on Cisco’s stream admission and prioritization.

The Video Stream is an efficient, highly effective means of communication. It is also very bandwidth-intensive. Not all video content is prioritized the same. Organizations investing in video cannot afford to have network bandwidth consumed without prioritization of business-critical media. With stream admission, network administrators can configure media streams with different priorities based on importance within the organization. The feature can be enabled at the radio level (2.4 and 5 GHz) and at the wireless LAN (WLAN) or Service Set Identifier (SSID) level. It also gives administrators more control to identify specific video streams for preferential QoS treatment.
The configured video stream will have lower priority than voice and higher priority than best-effort traffic. All other multicast traffic will be admitted as best-effort traffic, even though it is marked for QoS for video priority.
Resource Reservation Control
As more and more users begin to use video on Wi-Fi endpoints, the ability to gracefully manage and scale a continuous, high-quality experience for fluctuating groups of users at any given time or location is critical. Resource reservation control (RRC) provides enhanced capabilities to manage admission and policy controls. Admission and policy decisions are performed based upon the radio frequency measurements, traffic statistics measurements, and system configurations. Because the availability of bandwidth is limited in the wireless medium, admission control becomes very important to control access and for the efficient use of the available bandwidth. The resource for which the client needs admission is the medium time, which is the air time packets consume in traveling over the air. RRC provides bandwidth protection for the video client by denying requests that would cause oversubscription. Channel usage is used as a metric to determine the capacity and perform admission control. Figure 3 illustrates how RRC works.
Multicast to Unicast
Native Wi-Fi multicast is not a reliable service. With unicast, acknowledgements (ACKs) help ensure reliability. If no acknowledgement is received, the packet is resent. For multicast there are no ACKs, so the Wi-Fi packet loss rate can be 1 to 2 percent or higher. This unreliability is a problem for streaming video. With multicast-to-unicast conversion, the frames are sent as unicast, allowing the access point to receive ACKs from the clients and to determine when frames need to be retransmitted (in the case of lost or corrupted frames).

By enabling IEEE 802.11n data rates and providing packet error correction, multicast-to-unicast capabilities of Cisco VideoStream enhance the reliability of delivering streaming video over Wi-Fi beyond the best-effort features of traditional wireless networks.
A wireless client application subscribes to an IP Multicast stream by sending an Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) join message. With reliable multicast, this request is snooped by the infrastructure, which collects data from the IGMP messages. The system checks the stream subscription and configuration and collects metrics and traffic policies for the requested stream.

If the policies allow the requested stream, a response is sent to the wireless client attached to the access point in order to initiate reliable multicast when the stream arrives. The system also looks for available bandwidth and configured stream metrics to determine if there is enough airtime to support the new subscription. In addition, the system considers the prevailing load on the radio and the health of the media before making the admission decision. After all these criteria are met, a join response is sent to the access point. At this point the access point replicates the multicast frame and converts it to 802.11 unicast frames.

CiscoWorks LMS is an integrated suite of management functions that simplify the configuration, administration, monitoring, and troubleshooting of Borderless Networks. The medianet “plug-in” for CiscoWorks LMS provides workflows for setting up autoconfiguration and location settings to aid the provisioing and tracking of medianet endpoints such as digital media players and IP video surveillance cameras.

The medianet workflows enable the network operator to select the type of medianet to provision, and automatically prepare the network for deplyment and check to ensure the appropriate location attibutes are configured for tracking and monitoring purposes, reducing the chance for errors and time required to set up an end-to-end video infrastructure.
CiscoWorks LMS 4.1 can help customers configure autoconfiguration and location settings to aid in provisioning and tracking medianet endpoints such as the Cisco Digital Media Player (DMP) and the Cisco IP Video Surveillance Camera (IPVSC).
Cisco Works LMS can provide workflows to help users select the type of medianet provisioning they want in their network by providing high-level details such as how to prepare the network for DMP and IPSVC provisioning and how to enable availability monitoring of DMP and IPVSC, etc.
Depending on what user select, CiscoWorks LMS internally builds a workflow for configuring the features associated with users selection. For example, if user selects “Prepare network for DMP and IPVSC provisioning”, then CiscoWorks LMS runs a readiness check for Auto Smartports and location configuration and builds workflows for configuring Auto Smartports and location attributes in userr network.
Readiness Report for Auto Smartports
This check involves validation of proper hardware and software platforms that can support Auto Smartports. Readiness criteria for Auto Smartports remain the same as that for CiscoWorks LMS 4.0.

Readiness Report for Location
This check involves validation of proper hardware and software platforms that can support location attribute configuration at the device and port level.

Cisco VideoStream
Cisco VideoStream is a new set of features for the Cisco Unified Wireless Network that optimizes the performance of multimedia over the wireless and wired network. Cisco VideoStream provides the features needed to support the rich-media requirements of medianets. It removes the challenges associated with streaming video over the wireless network by enforcing video priority levels, controlling resource reservation, and delivering reliable multicast. These features help ensure that the quality of existing wireless media sessions is maintained as additional wireless video streams are added to the network.

The article will provide a reader with information on Cisco’s Media Services interface.
One of the critical aspects of a medianet is the need to provide tighter integration between the network infrastructure services and the rich-media endpoints and applications. These medianet services could be used to either enhance quality of experience with the application or reduce the operating costs of managing and deploying the applications. However, in most enterprise networks today, the crucial linkage between the application and these services is often either missing or incomplete, meaning that enterprises are unable to take full advantage of the value of the network infrastructure and the total cost of ownership (TCO) for the rich-media applications increases.
The Media Services Interface was developed to address the challenge of tightly integrating applications and network infrastructure services to deliver an optimized high-quality rich-media experience while minimizing the TCO. The interface provides Cisco rich-media endpoints and applications with a series of application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable them to take advantage of the medianet services in the network infrastructure. Embedding the Media Services Interface into a wide range of rich-media endpoints enables the network to provide a standardized set of services, which can be accessed in a consistent and controlled manner. This scenario reduces interoperability problems, complexity, and costs of operations, enabling the network administrator to extract greater value from the network infrastructure deployed.
The Media Services Interface APIs are designed to provide these services in an abstract manner, enabling applications to take full advantage of the services without needing to integrate with – or be aware of – the network layer protocols needed to communicate with the network. This scenario simplifies and accelerates application adoption of medianet services, in turn enabling the applications to improve the user experience. The APIs also provide the means by which to exchange information from the network to the application, and conversely.
Enabling the flow of information between the two entities gives the application greater visibility into what level of service the network can provide, in turn allowing the application to adapt better to the prevailing network conditions. Likewise, the network benefits from a better understanding of the applications that are running over it and the network can intelligently apply services based on the specific needs of the applications.
The Media Services Interface provides the essential glue between the intelligent network services and the increasingly sophisticated rich-media applications. Bridging the gap between the network services and the applications exponentially increases the value to both.

Autoconfiguration capabilities help address some of the challenges involved in mass deployments of rich-media endpoints such as digital media players and physical security cameras. Before the availability of autoconfiguration features, switch ports that are used to connect media endpoints such as digital media players and physical security cameras need to be configured with the appropriate settings. These endpoints are often installed in distributed locations and mounted in hard-to-reach places such as walls, ceilings, or poles, and they are usually preconfigured before mounting and installation, requiring preparation and planning.
Personnel who install these endpoints do not typically possess IP networking skills or are not granted access to the network configuration consoles. When an endpoint is installed in the field, it can inadvertently be plugged into the wrong network port.If the port lacks the correct configuration, the device may not get assigned to the proper VLAN.If that happens, the device cannot connect to its management server, so it cannot become operational. The operator needs to physically go to the switch and troubleshoot.These situations increase operating cost and are inefficient.
If the device is connected to the wrong port, the location information may be incorrect. Because the location information is statically configured at the application manager such as Digital Media Manager or Video Surveillance Operations Manager, applications that rely on this information will receive incorrect data. For example, a streaming server could send incorrect content to a specific digital media player. Or a security officer may think he is watching streaming video from one IP surveillance camera location when he is actually viewing video from another location.

Autoconfiguration capabilities overcome those deployment challenges. With the autoconfiguration capability, when endpoint devices are connected to an access switch, the access switch can recognize the device and automatically configure the port for VLAN, quality of service (QoS) or AutoQoS, security features, and location information. This autoconfiguration reduces configuration costs and minimizes the effect of an incorrectly deployed device.
To recognize and configure a device, the access switch must have the Auto Smartports feature enabled.

Access switches with Auto Smartports can recognize endpoint devices based on the Cisco Discovery Protocol or the MAC address range of the endpoint device.

The article will provide a reader with information on Cisco’s Medianet technology.
Let’s have a look at medianet first. A medianet is an end-to-end IP architecture that helps to enable pervasive media experiences. The medianet architecture includes a smarter network, smarter endpoints, cloud services, and shared media services. As a result, a user can deliver a more visual, social, personal, and interactive experience to end users – cost-effectively.
Medianet can transform everyday business processes. Imagine a patient at home meeting with a physician in another city and sharing medical images, or a security employee in a parking lot viewing campus surveillance feeds on a smartphone. A medianet architecture helps IT organizations deliver the best possible user experience, with exceptional efficiency, across a range of use cases.

Comprehensive Video Strategy
Cisco Medianet technologies integrate together to deliver an end-to-end architecture that enables video applications to interact with the underlying infrastructure. This architecture encompasses solutions for businesses and all service provider industries.
A Cisco Medianet architecture includes a smarter network, smarter endpoints, shared media services, and cloud services. This architecture can empower a user to deliver a more visual, social, personal, and interactive experience to end users. How does a Cisco Medianet empower a user to deliver this experience? It provides a set of features and capabilities that tightly integrate all parts of the architecture into an ecosystem of technologies.

As a result, information can be shared between disparate system technologies more transparently. A userr network has the intelligence to distinguish different application types on a more granular level, such as a video conference application or a video streaming application. And it does so quickly and automatically.

Features and Capabilities
Autoconfiguration• Automates device configuration and registration
• Simplifies deployment of video endpoints
• Reduces ongoing operational costs of media applications and endpoints

Media Monitoring• Enhances visibility into traffic flows on the network
• Helps reduce operating costs with faster troubleshooting of video, voice, and data
• Enables precise assessment of the impact of video, voice, and data on the network
Media Awareness
• Differentiates business-critical applications and determines the importance of a session based on its business value
• Enables the network to support service assurance and an optimal user experience
• Extracts actionable application information from the network
Media Services Interface
• Helps reduce costs of deploying and managing video endpoints
• Allows a user to quickly troubleshoot issues and cut operational costs
• Can be used to detect network issues while they occur for immediate remediation

Why Cisco for Medianet
A Cisco Medianet architecture facilitates automation and delivers visibility for greater scale and policy management across the network to endpoints anywhere.
For businesses of all sizes, Cisco offers a variety of endpoints that work with our media transformation products and core networking technologies. These endpoints can be centrally managed, easily and quickly, for smooth administrative and end-user experiences. The benefits include greater efficiency with faster troubleshooting and cost savings.

For service providers, Cisco offers a single end-to-end architecture with exceptional scalability and efficiency. A user can deliver hosted enterprise video deployments — regardless of their complexity as a service, or quickly release superior services to set a userrself apart from the competition.

Cisco Services or a Cisco partner can help a user begin to build a medianet. Get started with a Cisco Medianet Readiness Assessment to better understand a userr current capabilities and what a user need to complete a userr architecture. A user might already have existing Cisco Medianet-enabled endpoints and network technologies.