Video Conferencing Bandwidth Requirements

Many organizations that look to deploy video conferencing might be worried about the bandwidth requirements, and this is a perfectly reasonable concern. In Lync 2013, the introduction of up to five active video streams can have a major impact on the network. Additionally, the support for 1080p video in conferences must carefully be planned for. When planning for conferences without Gallery View, organizations should reference Table 19.3, which is valid for conferencing scenarios without Gallery View. Table 19.6 outlines the bandwidth requirements for Lync 2013 video conferencing with Gallery View.

Table 19.6. Lync Server 2013 Bandwidth Requirements

Although five Gallery View video streams can require a large amount of bandwidth, it is probably not as much as many people would originally estimate. The reason for this is that it is not possible for a single endpoint to receive multiple high-resolution video streams. Screen real estate will always be limited, and therefore it is not possible for a single endpoint to receive five 1280×720 video streams (which would require 7500Kbps of bandwidth). If you consider a modern PC display that could handle a 1920×1280 resolution, it would be possible to fit only a single full 1280×720 video stream and then one-half of a second video stream at that same resolution.

Instead of attempting to send five full-resolution video streams to conferencing participants, Lync Server 2013 sends smaller, square versions of the original video stream. It is because of this functionality that Gallery View in Lync Server 2013 does not exponentially increase bandwidth utilization as video streams are added.