Chapter 4-Additional Conferencing Information
Polycom, Inc. 4-35
Packet Loss Compensation (LPR and DBA)
Lost Packet Recovery (LPR) and Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) help minimize media
quality degradation that can result from packet loss in the network.

Packet Loss

Packet Loss refers to the failure of data packets, transmitted over an IP network, to arrive at
their destination. Packet Loss is described as a percentage of the total packets transmitted.

Causes of Packet Loss

Network congestion within a LAN or WAN, faulty or incorrectly configured network
equipment or faulty cabling are among the many causes of Packet Loss.

Effects of Packet Loss on Conferences

Packet Loss affects the quality of:
Video – frozen images, decreased frame rate, flickering, tiling, distortion, smearing,
loss of lip sync
Audio – drop-outs, chirping, audio distortion
Content – frozen images, blurring, distortion, slow screen refresh rate

Lost Packet Recovery

The Lost Packet Recovery (LPR) algorithm uses Forward Error Correction (FEC) to create
additional packets that contain recovery information. These additional packets are used to
reconstruct packets that are lost, for whatever reason, during transmission. Dynamic
Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) is used to allocate the bandwidth needed to transmit the
additional packets.

Lost Packet Recovery Guidelines

If packet loss is detected in the packet transmissions of either the video or Content
streams:
LPR is applied to both the video and Content streams.
DBA allocates bandwidth from the video stream for the insertion of additional
packets containing recovery information.
LPR is supported in H.323 and SIP networking environments only.
•In LPR-enabled Continuous Presence conferences:
Both LPR-enabled and non-LPR-enabled endpoints are supported.
The LPR process is not applied to packet transmissions from non-LPR-enabled
H.323 and SIP endpoints.
Non-LPR-enabled endpoints can be moved to LPR-enabled conferences.
LPR-enabled endpoints cannot be moved to non-LPR-enabled conferences.
When connecting via an Entry Queue:
A participant using an LPR-enabled endpoint can be moved to a non-LPR-enabled
conference. The participant is connected with LPR enabled.