AVB (Audio Video Bridging)
More info
- Owner
- IEEE 802.1
- Released
- 2009–2011
- Type
- Standards suite
A set of IEEE standards that makes ordinary Ethernet predictable enough to carry audio and video with guaranteed latency.
Ethernet promises nothing about when a packet arrives, which is fatal for audio that has to play out on exactly the right sample. AVB fixes this in the switches themselves: 802.1AS (gPTP) syncs every clock on the network to within a microsecond, 802.1Qat reserves bandwidth for a stream before it starts, and 802.1Qav shapes traffic so audio packets never get stuck behind a file transfer.
The catch is that every switch along the path must support it. Rival Dante ran over plain IP networks instead and won the studios, while AVB found a home in cars and on concert stages. The working group was renamed Time-Sensitive Networking in 2012, and the ideas live on there in industrial control.