Patent ID: 8448073

Claim:
A group collaboration system comprising: (a) a first computing device, said first computing device capable of accepting network connections from a plurality of client systems, each client system having one or more associated video cameras, said first computing device capable of generating a user interface on each client system, said user interface including a first display section that includes a list of available other-client system video cameras and a second display section that includes a video display from each other-client system video camera; and (b) a second computing device in network communication with said first computing device, said second computing device capable of receiving a video stream from each of said plurality of client system video cameras and further capable of streaming said received video streams to said connected client system user interface second display sections; wherein said second computing device is capable of allocating bandwidth between multiple cameras associated with a single client system, said single client system capable of designating each associated cameras under manual or automatic bandwidth control, said manual bandwidth control requiring user specification of bandwidth allocation for cameras under manual control, said bandwidth allocation processing steps comprising: (1) detecting the bandwidth of the client connection with said second computing device; (2) allocating a first portion of the available bandwidth as a bandwidth reserve and a second portion of said available bandwidth for video streaming; (3) if multiple cameras are attached to said client system, allocating, from said second portion of said available bandwidth, the desired bandwidth to all manual controlled cameras such that the desired bandwidth is shared among said cameras, and the remaining bandwidth to the automatic controlled cameras such that the remaining bandwidth is shared among said cameras; and (4) if a single camera is attached to said client system, allocating the second portion of said available bandwidth to said single camera.