Videoconferencing and VoIP

1
Videoconferencingand VoIP
John Papandriopoulos

• Uniting geographically sparse student branches in
  R10

2
Motivation

• Cost of physically congregating
• Far too expensive to fly between cities and/or
  countries!
• Long distance telephony is also prohibitively
  expensive
• is this why the R10 congress meets only every
  second year?
• Voice over IP (VoIP) allows a virtual presence
• Relatively cheap! Only requires
• Personal computer
• USB webcam
• Microphone and headphones/speakers
• Internet network connection
• Not only voice, but real-time video is possible
• IEEE provides a virtual meeting facility
• It relies on using long distance telephony for
  audio communication
• In steady state, it requires a hefty setup fee
  for each meeting
• It is just far too expensive for student branch
  (regular) use!

3
Objectives

• Bring the spatially separated communitiestogether
  for interaction
• Social and cultural exchanges/meetings
• Collaborative discussions and joint
  eventplanning
• Even if these events are virtual such as ajoint
  programming competition held overthe web
• Seminars can be broadcast over IP
• Interactive discussions and ad-hoc
  presentations/lectures
• Do it at little or no cost
• Removes barriers to entry and maximises number of
  participants

4
Enablers and barriers

• There are some freely available software tools
• MSN Messenger
• AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), iChat
• Netmeeting, GnomeMeeting, other h323 clients
• Skype (audio only)
• Major obstacles
• Cost of network bandwidth
• Advanced compression of voice/video
  bandwidthrequirements not as stringent as one
  may think
• Use the local University Internet connection
• Appropriate network access
• Get agreement with the EE department to host the
  VoIP endpoint
• Firewall issues to consider
• Most tools are point-to-point only
• Difficult to have true multi-party discussions
  unless they congregate into two geographical
  locations
• Suited more towards interactions between pairs of
  branches

5
MSN Messenger

• Freely available for the MS-Windows platform
• Supports private networks (NAT) if it is
  Universal Plug-n-Play (uPnP) enabled
• HTTP and SOCKS proxy does not support audio/video
  chat
• Supports
• Audio and video conferencing
• Application sharing
• Whiteboard
• Adaptive rate transmission depending on network
  conditions
• Point-to-point communication only

6
AOL IM, iChat

• AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and iChat are
  compatible
• AIM runs on the Windows platform
• iChat runs on Apple Mac
• Both support
• Video and audio chat
• Private (NAT) networks through a uPnP capable
  gateway
• Point-to-point communication only

7
h323 Capable Clients

• h323 is an ITU industry standard for VoIP
• There are a number of free clients available,
  notably
• NetMeeting free Microsoft Windows client
• GnomeMeeting free Linux client
• Does not work well behind private networks and
  firewalls
• Need a GateKeeper to act as a proxy can become
  messy
• Generally supports
• Audio and video conferencing
• Whiteboard sharing
• Multipoint communication possible
• difficult in practice

8
Skype

• Freely available for Windows, Linux and even
  Pocket PC 2003!
• Audio only no video conferencing
• Very resilient to private networks and firewalls
• Uses a peer-to-peer network of relays
• All traffic is encrypted
• Good audio quality
• Point-to-point communication only

9
History

• VoIP technology is reaching mainstream now
• It is relatively untried for this kind of
  collaboration between academics within the R10
  region
• As a result of the R10 congress
• It became known that some kind of broadcast
  streaming has been attempted by one of the New
  Zealand student branches
• Wed like to see more interactive sessions rather
  than broadcast
• The Australian and New Zealand branches
  haveagreed to attempt a local VoIP trial
  sometime inthe near future
• We need a recipe that other branches caneasily
  replicate

10
Summary

• VoIP technology is cheap and becoming commodity
• Lets leverage this to connect our geographically
  sparse student communities for increased
  interaction within the region
• Video and audio conferencing has many
  applications
• Social interaction and cultural exchange
• Technical collaborations, joint events, seminars,
  etc.
• all without the huge price tag!
• The technology has not been used to its full
  potential in R10
• We need a trial run and a model for success that
  can be replicated across the region
• Ideally, it requires a central hub for
  coordination
• A repository of all branch events, contacts, etc.
• People can then use this to spawn inter-branch
  interactions using the technology and grow from
  there.
• Australia NZ plan on trialling VoIP
  communication in the near future