A medianet is an end-to-end architecture for a network comprising advanced, intelligent technologies and devices in a platform optimized for the delivery of rich-media experiences. A medianet has the following characteristics:
- Media-aware: Can detect and optimize different media and application types (telepresence, video surveillance, desktop collaboration, and streaming media) to deliver the best experience;
- Endpoint-aware: Automatically detects and configures media endpoints;
- Network-aware: Can detect and respond to changes in device, connection, and service availability.
With the increasing adoption of new video and rich-media applications, medianet technologies become critically important to address challenges associated with the transmission of video and rich media over the network, including ensuring predictability, performance, quality, and security.

By accelerating deployment of applications, minimizing complexity and ongoing operational costs, and helping to scale the infrastructure for the best quality of experience (QoE), medianet technologies help address these challenges.

Capabilities and Benefits
Cisco Networking Capabilities for Medianet extend the boundary of networks to the endpoints, creating tight integration between intelligent network services and the rich-media applications delivered over a variety of endpoints. Cisco endpoints are equipped with the Media Services Interface (MSI), a software component that enables endpoints to consistently take advantage of intelligent network services. MSI helps the network to be mediaaware and media applications and endpoints to be network-aware.