Video Conferencing

[Kevin D. Clark]

"Kenneth E. Lussier" <ken.lussier at zuken.com> writes:

> On Fri, 2003-08-01 at 14:43, Thomas Charron wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2003-08-01 at 10:25, Kevin D. Clark wrote:

> So the gatekeeper is what does all of the connection handling, so to
> speak.

It keeps track of who is where, I guess you'd say.

>  Is the MCU part of the gatekeeper? 

Logically it is seperate, but in practice it might be integrated.

> This is where the
> documentation is lacking.

Unfortunately, this is a fair assessment.  Other places to look:

        http://opengatekeeper.sourceforge.net/ .
        http://www.vovida.org/


> >   Note that H.323 isnt the only game out there.  SIP provides virtually
> > the same.  H.323 is much better in a smaller environment, while SIP is
> > more, hrm..  'Large User Base' driven.  However, the differences between
> > H.323 and SIP are more in how they figure out who to call, request
> > calls, setup things, etc..  In the end, call quality and the such is
> > much more dependant on the codec and protocol used to carry the call..

All hail call quality.

> 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.

H.323 (and family) had stable implementions before SIP really got
going.  But because of the more open nature of SIP, SIP has really
taken off as of late.

Both protocols are important.  Arguing over which one is better can
quickly degrade into a religious argument.

(at this point, I'm not too familiar with too much high-end
videoconferencing equipment that primarily uses SIP though)

Regards,

--kevin
-- 
Kevin D. Clark / Cetacean Networks / Portsmouth, N.H. (USA)
cetaceannetworks.com!kclark (GnuPG ID: B280F24E)
alumni.unh.edu!kdc