Networking Foundations for Collaborative Computing at Internet Scope £

Abstract

Despite significant proliferation of Internet services in recent years, technology for computer-supported cooperative work and groupware have not progressed at the same rate. A wider distribution of the work force motivates the need for networked multimedia and groupware at Internet scope and for larger groups of end-users. In particular, synchronous telecollaboration enables people in different geographic locations to bridge time and space by sharing and jointly manipulating multimedia information in realtime and at various levels of granularity. This aspect stands in contrast to legacy client-server applications such as Internet radio broadcast or video-on-demand, and to asynchronous, document-centric collaboration tools like email, instant messaging, or chat rooms. In this paper, we provide a framework for network-supported synchronous multimedia groupwork at Internet scope and for large user groups. Contributions entail an novel classification for such systems concerning scale and scope of interaction, a formal framework for Internet sessions and mediation of access to concurrently shared resources, a taxonomy of crucial elements in cooperative applications, and a discussion of a generic network coordination protocol to sustain live interaction among concurrently active user groups. The core ideas put forward in this paper are useful for the characterization and rapid prototyping of a new generation of collaborative applications. Keywords: Group coordination, Web-centric collaboration, Internet-wide Computer Supported Cooperative Work