An Online Meeting Tool for Low Bandwidth Environments

Online meetings allow for remote conferencing and collaborative work among geographically dispersed participants and can save time and expenses that an ordinary face-to-face meeting would require. However, carrying real-time communication within the packet-switched Internet is a challenging task, especially in an African context, which is characterized by low bandwidth and unstable Internet connections. This paper presents and evaluates a tool that was designed to enhance the user experience for Web-based conferencing, given the constraints of Internet conditions typical of Africa. Approaches used to achieve this goal included: reprioritisation of multimedia streams, image differentiation, half duplex communication mode and stream compression. It was found that less than 56 kbps of bandwidth was required in order to: transmit audio; use video to convey presence; share slides and screen; and support text-based chat and floor control. Furthermore, users were largely satisfied with the tool and felt that it created a good user experience

Analysis of Real Time Video Communication Systems

The most of the existing real time video communication systems mainly focus their work on providing better video quality throughout session. In quest of maintaining video quality they succeed in doing so at the cost of broken sessions, blocky video or sound disturbances when network bandwidth drops below required rate. The system described in this paper mainly concentrates on analysis of input parameters to audio and video encoder which affects the quality of communication. The input parameters to video encoder are altered such that a balance is maintained between video quality and continuity in communication. The input parameters to video encoderused for analysis are video frame size, and frames per second and target encode bitrate used for encoding video frame. The input parameters for audio encoder used for analysis are sampling frequency, bits per sample and no of audio channels used for recording sound. The input parameters to video encoderare changed frequently depending upon various factors such as bandwidth variations, and encodetime required on hardware used. In extreme low bandwidth situation the video is stopped. The communication should always keep alive throughout the session by keeping audio session connected always, so that users should not feel disconnected. The other important factors required for real time video communication to work smoothly are transport protocols used to carry media data and control data across peers. The protocols discussed in this paper are Real Time Protocol (RTP) and Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP). The media data generated at peers is transported using RTP and the control data describing the media data is transported using RTCP. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15083

An online meeting tool for low bandwidth environments

International audienceNote sous cour administrative d'appel de Nantes, Plénière, 26 juin 1996, District de l'agglomération nantais

An Online Meeting Tool for Low Bandwidth Environments

Online meetings allow for remote conferencing and collaborative work among geographically dispersed participants and can save time and expenses that an ordinary face-toface meeting would require. However, carrying real-time communication within the packet-switched Internet is a challenging task, especially in an African context, which is characterized by low bandwidth and unstable Internet connections. This paper presents and evaluates a tool that was designed to enhance the user experience for Webbased conferencing, given the constraints of Internet conditions typical of Africa. Approaches used to achieve this goal included: reprioritisation of multimedia streams, image differentiation, half duplex communication mode and stream compression. It was found that less than 56 kbps of bandwidth was required in order to: transmit audio; use video to convey presence; share slides and screen; and support text-based chat and floor control. Furthermore, users were largely satisfied with the tool and felt that it created a good user experience