AV/IT NETWORK INTEGRATION
Bringing it together How to create strategic opportunities by integrating AV/IT network, by Richard Jonker, VP Marketing & Business Development, NETGEAR Enterprise.
The convergence of AV and IT networking has moved from industry aspiration to operational reality. For the channel, this represents more than a technical milestone. It creates new avenues for differentiation, recurring revenue and strategic influence with customers who expect seamless, enterprise-grade media experiences as part of their core digital infrastructure. AV/IT convergence is often misunderstood as simply ‘running AV over the IT network.’ In practice, it demands the unification of two historically separate engineering cultures, one rooted in real-time media performance and predictable behaviour, the other optimised for scalability, interoperability and user-driven flexibility. For channel partners, enabling this positions them as trusted advisors guiding customers through a complex transition. Traditional enterprise IT networking evolved through decades of standardisation, moving from token ring to Ethernet and IP-based connectivity. The priority was ensuring systems were resilient, worked seamlessly together and offered consistent performance. AV spent most of its life in a protected analogue or point-to-point digital domain. HDMI, SDI and other direct-connect formats produced high-quality content but lacked scalability, manageability and integration with enterprise systems. Deployments were heavily room-centric, hands-on and difficult to replicate across sites. The rise of AV over IP changed that. By adopting IP as its transport foundation, AV now offers features that IT teams and channel partners rely on such as remote management, centralised monitoring,
software-driven updates and enterprise- grade security integration. For channel partners, this shift transforms AV from project-based engagements into lifecycle-driven service models, making AV part of broader managed network, collaboration or digital workspace offerings. While AV’s migration to IP is now well understood, its network behaviour still differs from typical IT workloads. Bandwidth is the most visible difference. A single uncompressed 4K video stream can consume nearly 10Gbps, whereas an hour-long Teams call uses about 2.25GB. Multiply that by cameras, displays, presentation sources and multi-room routing, and high-bandwidth flows can quickly saturate uplinks, especially in stacked switch architectures. But bandwidth is only half the story. Real-time AV traffic is acutely sensitive to: ⏰ Latency: variations of just 2-3 milliseconds can introduce jitter, audio dropouts or lip-sync mismatches ⏰ Clock synchronisation: Many AV-over-
Richard Jonker
netgear.com
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By adopting IP as its transport foundation,
AV now offers features that IT teams and channel
partners rely on such as remote management, centralised monitoring, software-driven updates and enterprise- grade security integration.
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IP systems rely on IEEE 1588 (PTP). Even small timing inconsistencies degrade playback quality
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