Getting Started in Video Conferencing
Ken
on video conferencing as a means of reducing managers travel time. They
currently have DSL support in each office for internet access.(#1) Is this
fast enough , and (#2) what would be the best equipment to give them
reasonable access from a conference room type environment? I do not want
to use the typical "PC camera" and would prefer to go with something like
Polycom's Viewstation SP equipment. Is this adequate and will it function
well enough over a DSL line?
Can anyone give me some parameters that I'd need to know going into this
RFQ? My expertise lies more in the network end and not at all in
videoconferencing, so any help that is offered would be greatly
appreciated.
- Ken -
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Jonas Eriksson
Hi Ken
I have looked around for similar solutions myself and have some comments that
may prove helpful.
The Viewstation seems to be a very nice box indeed and I plan to get my hands
on a few of them to test over our corporate WAN.
The bandwitdh demand depends a bit on the picture quality you are looking for.
Basically these boxes will survive on 128k ISDN so they should be ok over DSL.
Be aware that DSL may have a lousy downlink speed, it depends on region and
what you have ordered I guess.
Another thing is latency, realtime communications like vidconferencing and
packet voice is very sensitive when it comes to this. It is almost impossible
to establish any kind of Quality of Service over the internet. A leased line
or high speed dial up connection like T1 or multilink ISDN is much easier
since you control all information going over them.
But I can talk myself sore over this, the best way is to just test if it
works. If you can borrow two Viewstations and try them out between two of your
offices and it works then you are home free! Assuming you can get up to 384Kbs
between the boxes with reasonably low latency then you will have stunning
picture quality.
Good luck!
Jonas Eriksson