We used NetMeeting (basically, an H323 protocol client) point to point
between Bios Santa Fe and Bios Boston over the VPN and it worked OK. The
features
were nice vis-a-vis the more expensive (extremely not free)
videoconferencing
system we ended up using. But that's just two sites talking to each other,
not multicast.
Its important to have sufficient bandwidth. Dialup when traveling is
definitely not in that realm. ISPs will sometimes assign available
bandwidth
according to how much you've used recently (eg in the last minute), so
its harder to calibrate videoconferencing clients.
Routers may not come with multicast enabled out of the box, though
I think its not an all-or-nothing thing; an administrator may be able to
enable it per user or at particular times, depending on the router.
Now, if the world used IPV6 routers, the problem could go away, since
Multicast Support is required in IPV6. Apparently more efficient, too. I
seem to
remember that Mac OSX has ipv6 support built-in to the kernel (see the
man page for 'ip6config'; I haven't tried it).
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 3:31 PM
To:
[hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Media Conferencing
With many of us in different locations and traveling widely, it
occurs to me to wonder just how effective multi-media systems might
be for our communicating with each other.
This system was discussed in this month's MIT Tech Review:
http://www.vrvs.org/Has anyone tried any of the web based systems?
One problem is likely the poor deployment of multicast. I'm
not sure where that is now adays, but when I was last in the
networked media world, getting multicast deployed was pretty
tough. The router folks weren't enabling it, thus causing
proxy routing having to be used. Not great.
Owen
Owen Densmore 451 Camino Don Miguel Santa Fe, NM 87505
Italy: 339-477-2892 Cell: 505-570-0168 Home: 505-988-3787
[hidden email] http://complexityworkshop.com http://backspaces.net============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.friam.org
Locked
