Teleconferencing Support for Small Groups

Teleconferencing systems support distant collaboration among people situated in different places. The collaborating groups are usually small (twenty sites at most, but usually less than ten) all with good connectivity to Internet. While Mbone tools are a good choice, multicast is still usually unavailable, even though, generally speaking, Internet offers more bandwidth and these days is much more reliable. We've re-introduced the notion of UDP packet reflector to simulate the unavailable multicast. We have developed a web portal to administer the UDP reflector, added new features that improve security and manageability, and we have also added security support to the shared workplace tool. The resulting combination of tools, mirror and administrative layer, represents a safe and easy-to-use teleconferencing system.