The Impact of Scaling on a Multimedia Connection Architecture

Abstract

As the last two meetings of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have shown, the demand for Internet teleconferencing has arrived. Packet audio and video have now been multicast to approximately 170 different hosts in 10 countries, and for upcoming meetings the number of remote participants is Likely to be substantially larger. Yet the network infrastructure to support wide scale packet teleconferencing is not in place. These experiments represent a departure from the two- to ten-site telemeetings that are the norm today. They represent an increase in scale of multiple orders of magnitude in several interrelated dimensions. This paper discusses the impact of scaling on our efforts to define a multimedia teleconferencing architecture. Three scaling dimensions of particular interest include: (1) very large numbers of participants per conference, (2) many simultaneous teleconferences, and (3) a widely dispersed user population. Here we present a strawman architecture and describe how conference-specific information is captured, then conveyed among end systems. We provide a comparison of connection models and outline the trade- offs and requirements that change as we travel along each dimension of scale. In conclusion, we identify five critical needs for a scalable teleconferencing architecture.... Packet videoconferencing, Connection architecture, Scalability, Multimedia.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1992
Accession Number
ADA268694

Entities

People

  • Eve M. Schooler

Organizations

  • University of Southern California

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Application Software
  • Coding
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Computing System Architectures
  • Digital Communications
  • Digital Media
  • Directories
  • Graphical User Interface
  • Heterogeneity
  • Internet
  • Language
  • Media
  • Operating Systems
  • Specifications
  • User Interface
  • Web Browsers

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Academic Conference Management
  • Computer Networking
  • Theoretical Analysis.