TABLE OF CONTENTS A basic understanding of the principles of Internet Protocol (IP) networking will make our discussions of video transport much easier to understand and to put into context. Video can be tricky to send over an IP network, and it is not at all unusual for an IP network to require special grooming or reconfiguration in order to handle video traffic. In this chapter, along with an overview of IP, we will discuss some technologies that can make the job of setting up a video network more complicated. In addition, we will look at Ethernet technology, which is the most commonly used network technology for IP transport.
Readers with significant networking experience may choose to skip reading this chapter, but please understand that we will cover terminology used in the remainder of this book. By the end of this chapter, readers should understand how both IP and Ethernet fit into the bewildering array of networking technologies and be familiar with some of the terminology that is associated with IP networking.
IP (Internet Protocol) provides a very useful mechanism to enable communications between computers. IP provides a uniform addressing scheme so that computers on one network can communicate with computers on a distant network. IP also provides a set of functions that make it easy for different types of applications (such as e-mail, web browsing, or video streaming) to work in parallel on a single computer. Plus, IP allows different types of computers (mainframes, PCs, Macs, Linux...
