Zoom Products for Improved Bandwidth Utilization

In addition to native, adaptive technologies and administrative controls, Zoom offers products to monitor and adjust the performance of Zoom media on your network to maintain the best performance during Meetings, Webinars, and hybrid Events: Zoom Mesh and Zoom Meetings Hybrid.

Zoom Mesh

Zoom Mesh reduces network bandwidth usage by redistributing media in-network for Meetings, Webinars, and Events

With Zoom Mesh, supported Zoom Workplace apps can receive webinar and meeting video feeds from other in-network Workplace apps as redistribution sources for video content. This can save on external bandwidth consumption by redistributing media within the network instead of requiring each Workplace app to establish an independent connection with the Zoom Cloud.

This is most effective with large scale Zoom Meetings or Webinars, like company all-hands or town hall meetings, where thousands of users within the same LAN can virtually attend the same event. With media content redistribution between users across the LAN, bandwidth consumption is minimized.

Zoom Mesh redistributes media streams from parent clients to child clients using peer-to-peer connections

Zoom Mesh is designed to redistribute incoming video streams using a parent-child relationship. In this relationship, parent clients (i.e., identified “parent” Zoom Workplace apps) are the local source for video streams that are redistributed to child clients over a peer-to-peer connection.

Parent clients are devices that redistribute data streams to other users within the network

Parent clients are computationally robust devices that can redistribute data streams to other devices (i.e. child clients) within the same network without significantly impacting the device’s performance.

Child clients are devices that receive a redistributed stream from a parent client

A child device is any device that receives a redistributed video stream from a parent client. There are no additional features to this relationship apart from the device’s connection to the parent client.

Zoom Mesh support is built into desktop Zoom Workplace apps and does not require any additional hardware or software

Zoom Mesh is a Zoom Workplace desktop app-native feature and is ready to use after a supported Zoom app version has been installed on a device. Unlike most enterprise content delivery networks (eCDN), Zoom Mesh does not require any additional software, hardware, websites, or workflows to use.

Zoom Meetings Hybrid

The following sections describe the core ideas of Zoom Meetings Hybrid. To learn more about using Zoom Node and Zoom Meetings Hybrid within your account, speak with your Zoom account team.

Use Zoom Node with the Zoom Meeting Hybrid service modules to reduce bandwidth consumption on your network

Zoom Node is an all-in-one modular platform that allows companies to manage and deploy multiple hybrid services using one common framework. This approach provides significant improvements over existing solutions which only allow standalone deployments of unique workloads, resulting in disparate, inefficient admin deployment and management efforts.

Zoom Node achieves this goal by introducing an integrated turn-key image (OVA file) of the Zoom Node OS and core services. This system image is installed onto enterprise datacenter virtual machines (VMs), transforming them into Nodes. Once the Zoom Node software is installed, configured, and registered to the Zoom Node Platform in the cloud, a Node can install Service Modules to provide common Zoom workloads.

Zoom Meetings Hybrid, a Zoom Node workload, is an on-premises, hybrid solution that redistributes a meeting’s or webinar’s audio, video, and screen sharing streams within a corporate network, saving on bandwidth. Zoom Meetings Hybrid can do this in two distinct modes: hybrid mode and private mode.

Hybrid Mode Reduces Bandwidth Consumption By Consolidating and Redistributing Media Streams Within a Network

Hybrid Mode is a bandwidth-optimized use of the Meetings Hybrid service, where in-network users connect to an intermediary, on-premises appliance (i.e. the Zoom Node) that can independently receive, multiplex, and redistribute inbound and outbound media streams between users and the Zoom Cloud.

For example, in a standard cloud-based Zoom Meeting (i.e., a meeting without Meetings Hybrid or Zoom Node), each user must independently connect to the Zoom Cloud. This means that if 100 in-network users are attending the same meeting, each user must establish an independent audio, video, and/or screen sharing connection with the Zoom Cloud, requiring sizable bandwidth, and approximately 300 separate outbound connections.

With Zoom Meetings Hybrid in Hybrid Mode, the module acts as an intermediary connection point between in-network users and the Zoom Cloud. For each active meeting, the Meetings Hybrid module sends and receives a single media stream to and from the Zoom Cloud for each channel—audio, video, and screen sharing. With this design, outbound data is multiplexed and consolidated from all connected users within the network, while inbound data is redistributed locally within the network to all connected users. This means that if 100 in-network users are attending the same meeting, each user will connect to the in-network Meetings Hybrid module, which redistributes inbound media to connected users, hypothetically reducing the number of external media connections from 300 to 3.

The following image provides an overview of this function, where users in the HQ and Branch locations connect to the Zoom Meetings Hybrid module, which interfaces with the cloud-based multimedia router (MMR) hosting the meeting on behalf of all participants. This setup minimizes external cloud-media connections, resulting in reduced external bandwidth consumption and enhanced security for the organization.

Private Mode Offers Customers Off-Cloud, On-Premises Privacy

Private Mode is a privacy and compliance-focused use of the Meetings Hybrid service. Unlike Hybrid Mode, which allows users to connect to meetings in the Zoom Cloud, Private Mode allows users to host meetings locally and on-premises, without sending any media to the Zoom Cloud.

When Private Mode is selected for a meeting during the scheduling process, users will not connect to the Zoom Cloud for the meeting. Instead, internal users will connect to a Meetings Hybrid module through the local network, connecting to its private and internal IP, while external users connect to the module through its public IP.

This can allow customers to host private, confidential meetings on-premises with the Meetings Hybrid service, providing enhanced security for sensitive discussions and meeting compliance or privacy requirements.

The following image provides an overview of this function, where all users, internal, branch, and external connect directly to the Meetings Hybrid module, bypassing media traversal to the Zoom Cloud.

Zoom Meetings Hybrid includes Local Survivability

Zoom Meeting Survivability (ZMS) is an integrated feature included with the Meetings Hybrid Service that provides businesses with limited, on-premises Zoom Meetings functionality in the event of an internet or service disruption and Zoom’s data centers are unreachable. With ZMS, users can continue to join Zoom Meetings using familiar workflows, with support for offline survivability up to 30 days at a time.

During a survivability event, the ZMS component can sustain meetings within the local network in multiple capacities.

1. If the Zoom Cloud is inaccessible from your network, in-network users can host local (i.e., non-cloud) meetings using the Meetings Hybrid infrastructure. If users in different locations have access to the Zoom Node machine across a wide or campus area network, they can also join the locally hosted meeting, enabling continual communication. The following image provides an example of this scenario.

   
2. If a users within a common network are temporarily disconnected from a cloud-based meeting, the ZMS module will create a local version of the meeting, and all in-network users will automatically failover to the local version of the meeting. If connectivity is restored while the cloud-based meeting is ongoing, the users will automatically rejoin the users in the cloud. The following image provides an example of this scenario.

1. Accounts can maintain and designate specific meeting IDs for survivability events. For example, a dedicated meeting ID company leaders can join during an emergency.

2. Users can create ad-hoc offline meetings, allowing collaboration even if the cloud is not available.

3. Meetings can be designated for survivability, ensuring they will be available regardless of network conditions, so long as users are within a common network and can communicate with necessary devices.

Additional Zoom Meetings Hybrid Features

Additional features of Zoom Meetings Hybrid include:

• Cloud Features Stay In Play: Hybrid meetings continue to have access to Zoom Cloud features, like Whiteboard, cloud recording, AI tools.

• Support for up to 400 users at once: Zoom Meetings Hybrid modules can support up to 400 users on a single Node device at a time.

• Cascading Hybrid Meetings: Multiple Zoom Meetings Hybrid modules can interconnect across a network to support additional users for larger meetings. With multiple modules, 400 users is no longer the limit.

• Guest Join: If hosting a private meeting, hosts can specify external guests (i.e., members of a different Zoom account) that can join the meeting.

• Bulletin Board for Survivability Mode: If survivability mode is engaged, account admins can send messages to users within the Zoom Workplace app, providing updates and instructions until the situation is resolved.

For more information on survivability meeting scenarios, speak with your Zoom account team.