CEOs have seen the flashy television and airline magazine ads promising huge savings in time and money if employees videoconference more and fly less. Similar economies can be realized if educational material is delivered over the enterprise network to desktops instead of being presented in costly regional training centers. IS managers see another picture. You have a justifiable fear that providing the necessary bandwidth to achieve acceptable quality will swamp your facilities. Networks aren't just for data anymore.
Multimedia is the watchword for the millenium.
In addition to two-way videoconferencing, whiteboard collaboration, application sharing and file exchange, new demands exist for video streaming, interactive training and network telephony. In this chapter, we primarily examine two-way videoconferencing, interactive training, collaboration tools, and video streaming. We'll help you understand bandwidth requirements and bandwidth management for different levels of performance and conference quality. Before we jump into the primer, it's important to clarify our use of some relevant terms. Examples include high-end systems like VTEL Corp.'s 227 and PictureTel Corp.'s Concorde.