Video Conferencing

[Thomas Charron]

> So the gatekeeper is what does all of the connection handling, so to
> speak. Is the MCU part of the gatekeeper? This is where the
> documentation is lacking. There seem to be quite a few componants, no
> real explaination for what they are and what they do. They assume that
> if you're reading the doc, then you already know what you're doing. Bad
> assumption in my case ;-)

  The MCU is the conferencing component.  The gatekeeper is kinda like an
LDAP server..  Kinda is VERY Kinda, it's simply a way to give you a
general idea.  It's for handling the translations of 'Kenny' to port xyz
at comp1.g2.b3.mycompany.com.  MCU is kinda like a, umm.  Multiplexer..

  And yea, I never really noticed it, but their docs are non existant..

> I thought that SIP was more used in the VoIP world. H.323 seems to be
> more standard in that most of the commercial equipment uses it, and most
> of the software packages (netmeeting, gnomemeeting, etc.) use it as
> well, allowing one to connect a small web cam up to a larger
> teleconferencing system.

  Yes, SIP has taken off more in the voice side of things.  But in the
end, they're the same thing, just using a different codec.