The AVnu Alliance, an organisation founded by Broadcom, Cisco, Harman, Intel, Samsung, and Xilinx, has been launched to advance streaming for audio/video networking in consumer electronics, automotive and professional a-v.

Big names form streaming alliance

Paul Milligan, 26 August 2009

The AVnu Alliance, an organisation founded by Broadcom, Cisco, Harman, Intel, Samsung, and Xilinx, has been launched to advance streaming for audio/video networking in consumer electronics, automotive and professional a-v. In addition to the founders, Avid, Marvell and Meyer have joined the AVnu Alliance as the first promoters.

AVnu Alliance aims to establish a professional quality a-v experience in networked environments. The Alliance is promoting the IEEE standards, currently in development, for 802.1 AVB (Audio Video Bridging) and also the related IEEE 1722 and 1733 (which extends RTP for use with AVB).

The draft AVB standards are designed to work over widely-used IEEE 802 layer 2 networks. These standards provide networking features for tightly controlled media stream synchronisation, buffering and reservation. Use of AVB enables higher layer protocols and applications to realise professional-quality a-v even if there are various lower-layer network links in the path between endpoint devices. AVnu expects to see initial deployment of AVB on Ethernet networks and anticipates other home networking standards will follow.