Chapter 1 Functionality

About Cisco Unified Videoconferencing 3515 MCU Topologies

About Cisco Unified Videoconferencing 3515 MCUTopologies

The Cisco Unified Videoconferencing 3515 MCU can work in a centralized or cascaded topology. This section describes these two options.

Centralized Topology

In a centralized topology, the Cisco Unified Videoconferencing 3515 MCU performs media processing for all connected terminals. The Cisco Unified Videoconferencing 3515 MCU can handle multiple conferences simultaneously.

Figure 1-2 Centralized Topology

Headquarters

MCU

Site 1

MCU

MCU

Site 2

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Cascaded Conferences

The Cisco Unified Videoconferencing 3515 MCU allows you to combine two or more conferences resulting in a larger conference with many more participants. This is called cascading. Cascading creates a distributed environment that helps reduce the drain on network resources. In addition, the processing resources required by the Cisco Unified Videoconferencing 3515 MCU are distributed between participating MCUs. Costly telephone or ISDN line usage can be further reduced with the mediation of a gateway.

Cascading occurs when one conference with “x” number of participants invites another conference with “y” number of participants. The two conferences effectively become one large conference. The bandwidth required across a cascaded conference link is only that of one audio/video stream between the two conferences. This is significantly less than the accumulated bandwidth of all the participants. Each separate Cisco Unified Videoconferencing 3515 MCU unit participating in a conference retains control of its individual conference resources and participants.

Installation and Upgrade Guide for Cisco Unified Videoconferencing 3515 MCU Release 5.6

 

OL-17012-01

1-7

 

 

 

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Cisco Systems 3515 MCU24, 3515 MCU12 manual Centralized Topology, Cascaded Conferences