CS631 Paper Response Form
Paper Title: MBone Provides Audio and Video Across the Internet
Author(s): M.R. Macedonie and D.P. Brutzman
Main Point(s):
Since 1992, there exists a multimedia multicast network called Multicast Backbone (MBone).
MBone is a virtual network that uses regular internet links by 'tunneling' multicast messages, i.e. by encapsulating the multicast packages inside regular IP packets. Besides the sd tool that displays active multicast groups, there are tools for 128kbps video (nv), audio (vat) and drawing whiteboards (wb).
The software for the network technology and the tools are publicly available on several ftp-servers,
but the configuration of a mbone-server for a local network is quite complicated. Topology changes for new nodes are decided by consensus of the MBone community, as is event scheduling.
Possible Use(s):
MBone provides access to satellite and deep-sea video data, as well as allowing researchers
to attend video conferences and to broadcast courses and talks without reliance on commercial
providers.
Extensions:
In order to reduce bandwidth requirements for video conferences and talks,
one could write a tool specifically for that purpose, using techniques like
face model parameter transmission for intermediate frames, or techniques that
only transmit data for eye and mouth movements ect. It also would be cool to
have tools like the 'Intelligent Room' and the tele-lab-sharing projects
of the MIT Media Lab available for MBone.
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