Issues in Platform-Independent Support for Multimedia Desktop Conferencing and Application Sharing (original) (raw)

1997, High Performance Networking VII

Although Multimedia desktop conferencing and application sharing among geographically dispersed users are increasingly popular modalities, their spread is inhibited by platform-dependency problems. In this paper, an approach which exploits the use of the Java programming language to accommodate different hardware and window systems is investigated and a prototype is implemented. Our approach is based on replicated tool architecture in which each participant runs a copy of the application and the activity of each user is multicast to all the participants in the conference. The problems associated with this approach such as view synchronization and replicated object management are among the issues addressed in our research. In addition, we are developing standard functions and mechanisms that allow conference participants to seamlessly use the audio and video features available on most PC's and workstations. Our research on multimedia stream synchronization and adaptation, the incorporation of reliable multicasting and the development of distributed control algorithms are expected to result in increased conference quality, performance and robustness.