STAC Video Conferencing State Technology Assessment Center Experimental Personal Computer Video Conferencing Network One of the newer technological innovations on the Internet is the presence of low-cost video conferencing technologies. Video conferencing has been around for some time now, but has traditionally involved the purchasing of expensive dedicated video and networking equipment. In recent years, however, relatively inexpensive personal computer video and audio peripherals have become available at a fraction of the old cost.
Sound cards are even cheaper, and microphones and speakers can be had for even less.
Indeed, most modern personal computers come with sound capabilities built right in. What this means is that people dialed into the Internet can transmit video and audio signals back and forth to each other over their telephone lines. The quality of such products is certainly not as clear or as rapid as that of the expensive dedicated video networking solutions, and the actual video screens tend to run in fairly small-sized windows on the desktop. Our experimental video conferencing server here in the STAC is connected via our agency's 10Mbps LAN to the state FDDI ring in the Capitol Complex. Anyone who can connect to the Internet with a 14.4 or faster connection should not have any trouble participating in our experiment.