Multi - Point-to-Point

[Guest]

Will Microsoft ever offer videoconferencing software for multiple party
meetings?
They had Exchange Conferencing Server, which we used and liked, but then
Microsoft dropped it. I'm sure they did this to push people into using their
LIVE service.

Messenger is only one-on-one and Live Meeting is entirely too expensive.
We need to be able to host the conference on our servers, integrated with
Outlook, and at a reasonable price.

We have two branch campuses that are more than an hours drive.
Any suggestions??

TIA,
Darrin Burns
CIO

 

[Brian Sullivan]

Will Microsoft ever offer videoconferencing software for multiple party
meetings?
They had Exchange Conferencing Server, which we used and liked, but then
Microsoft dropped it. I'm sure they did this to push people into using their
LIVE service.

Messenger is only one-on-one and Live Meeting is entirely too expensive.
We need to be able to host the conference on our servers, integrated with
Outlook, and at a reasonable price.

We have two branch campuses that are more than an hours drive.
Any suggestions??

TIA,
Darrin Burns
CIO

I am not sure if this is encouraging or not but:

http://www.conferencexp.net/community/Default.aspx?tabindex=12&tabid=123

is (AFAIK) an active Microsoft Research project, so Microsoft has not
abandoned all efforts in this area. The resource requirements are bit hefty
though.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the link and information.

I am going to play around with this and see what I can come up with.

We have the resources and even a dedicated server with double the
requirements listed, so we should be fine.

thanks again,
Darrin Burns
CIO
PCCUA

 

[Brian Sullivan]

Thank you for the link and information.

I am going to play around with this and see what I can come up with.

We have the resources and even a dedicated server with double the
requirements listed, so we should be fine.

The key resource requirement that is problematic is the multicast ultra
high speed connections required I think -- which pretty well rules out
standard internet connections.

 

[Guest]

We have dual T1s (3M) to one campus and one T1 (1.5M) to the other.
We also have 10.7M to the internet, but our main concern was between campuses.

Hopefully that will be great. My main concern was one instructor wants a 12
person conference to save on travel cost.

 

[Brian Sullivan]

We have dual T1s (3M) to one campus and one T1 (1.5M) to the other.
We also have 10.7M to the internet, but our main concern was between campuses.

Unfortunately that doesn't come close to the requirements:

High-speed (100baseT or better) connection that supports multicast, such as
a local area network (LAN) or Internet2

 

[Guest]

It is on a LAN.

T1 is 1.5Megabytes and if it doesn't work with a 3 Megabyte connection, then
what is its' purpose?

 

[Brian Sullivan]

It is on a LAN.

T1 is 1.5Megabytes and if it doesn't work with a 3 Megabyte connection, then
what is its' purpose?

It is designed for use on 100BaseT or better LANs or Internet2
(http://www.internet2.org/) WANs.

 

[Guest]

I guess I will continue to look at 3rd party applications.
I don't need it for building to building.

I just can't believe they droped Exchange Conferencing Server. It was good
and it worked.

Thanks for all the information,
Darrin Burns

 

[Brian Sullivan]

I guess I will continue to look at 3rd party applications.
I don't need it for building to building.

I just can't believe they droped Exchange Conferencing Server. It was good
and it worked.

Yes -- I am not sure why either --- part of it was that it supported H.323
and NetMeeting I guess and they decided that was not a good strategic
direction, but it also supported the TAPI3 client for multicast based
conferencing which a number of organizations used.

Microsoft hasn't been the most consistent in this area(IP video
conferencing) though so maybe this is just a continuation of that
confusion.