Audio conferencing services facilitate voice-only communications between dispersed groups. Teleconferencing and webcast services differ in terms of capabilities and costs. Services often include: audio conferencing, web conferencing, video conferencing, and system integration. Web Conferencing is, very simply, a meeting, conference or seminar that is held over the World Wide Web. Web conferencing can refer to audio, video or text-based conversations and are conducted in real-time.

An efficient conference service facilitates the implementation and the run-time control of conference applications. Key features of a conference service are conference management, multicast communication support, application state synchronization, user data marshalling and scalability. The paper defines a conferencing service to fulfill these requirements of conferencing applications. An object model of the service is proposed together with the resulting architecture.

Help For All Participants

If audio is too basic for a company’s needs, web conferencing may be a more acceptable solution. The level of involvement in a web conference can range from viewing simple text via a central server, or even with the addition of audio provider real time voice as well. Web conferencing is a little more costly depending on how much interaction the software allows.

A video conference electronically links geographically dispersed participants so that they can see and hear each other in a live and interactive environment. Polycom is the standard conferencing equipment at K-State. The K-State Accord bridge allows for multipoint conferencing (multiple sites convening for one conference.) Noninteractive video experiences such as satellite programs, video streaming, web casting, etc.

Take It To The Bridge

Web conferencing with audio provides an appropriate medium for incorporating certain visual elements into the flow of verbal communication, enabling participants to view a PowerPoint presentation, take a guided Web tour or collaborate on documents with others. In many cases, Web conferencing can even enable remote control of a participant’s computer. Web conferencing differs from video or voice over Internet protocol in that it involves sharing data over a browser while the parties use a teleconference.

At the time a conference attendee calls into the conferencing bridge, he or she also provides the IP address either to a live person who enters this information manually, or through touch-tone into an email processor. Once all this information is entered, the processor in the audio conferencing bridge compiles a list of all conference attendees including their IP addresses.

The Bottom Line Results

Some Web conferencing technologies are simply not ready for widespread use. Sometimes Voice over IP-real-time voice delivered via the Web-is one such technology because when it’s used, the slides are often out of sync with the presenter’s voice.