Introduction

I think that it s fair to say that throughout the 1990 s, Cisco Systems has made a huge impact on how many companies and individuals do business. From the release of their initial Cisco router product through the design and development of their entire Catalyst switch product line, Cisco has developed a system to transfer TCP/IP traffic the most commonly known TCP/IP highway being the World-Wide Web. In the late 1990 s and now, in the beginning of the 21 ^st century, Cisco has taken their TCP/IP equipment to the next level the transmission of time-sensitive voice over TCP/IP. This new initiative is what is known to the consumer market as AVVID. AVVID is an acronym that you will hear quite often; in fact, it is an acronym that is changing the way the world does business!

AVVID An Architecture of Voice, Video, and Integrated Data

AVVID is, quite simply, a Cisco Systems, Inc. acronym that stands for Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data. In practical terms, it is a network architecture made up of hardware and software to transmit your company s computer data such as e-mail, World Wide Web traffic, and file transfers; voice traffic, such as a telephone call, say, from your Detroit office to the Dallas office; and your company s video traffic for example, a video conferencing call or a video training session, over the same physical (and logical) computer network.

Over the past several years, the recommended and requested design by many was to implement three separate networks.