Companies within the Avnu Alliance, the body tasked with certification and promotion of IEE AVB and TSN open standards, have launched a standards based network protocol called Milan.
Creators including AudioScience, Avid, Biamp, d&b audiotechnik, L-Acoustics, Luminex and Meyer Sound say the standards based network protocol – that carries audio, video and data - will provide technology installers and users with the guarantee that Milan certified devices will work together.
The protocol adds a layer on AVB standards to further define device requirements at both the network and the application layer for compatible media streams, formats, media-clocking, redundancy and controller software.
Henning Kaltheuner, head of business development and market Intelligence at d&b audiotechnik, said that current network standards often introduced an element of compromise into system reliability and functionality. “The future cannot be fulfilled with existing standards,” he argued.
He accepted a slow, and even decreasing, adoption of AVB standards. He said this was despite the fact there “isn’t really any doubt that AVB is a superior technology and many people see it as the technology of the future”.
The developers argue that Milan created agreements and specifications for media clocking structures, added (so far lacking) redundancy and harnessed the strong points of AVB networking technology, while simplifying network control and management.
Companies already in the Avnu Alliance that have been developing products based on AVB standards argued that the time was right for Milan. The protocol works with AVB switches and is launched at a point when their availability has increased and is growing. “We now want to refocus the whole network debate on true product value,” said Kaltheuner.
“We are achieving very simple and usable networking with excellent reliability,” he said. “Media traffic is not compromised by control traffic on the same network. And it’s plug and play. Users can concentrate on their systems, on the performance, on the art and not on setting up networks.”
Developers argued that a crucial benefit of Milan, when it came to their product roadmaps, was that it was based on an open standard, thereby offering them full ownership of what they created, while still maintaining interoperability with competitors.