Mechanisms for integrated voice and data conferencing

摘要

A distributed control mechanism for managing a multi-party, packet switched voice conference connection has been previously presented [Weis88, Weis90, Zieg89]. The principal concept introduced was to view a conference connection as a logical ring of participants. Alternate methods for implementing voice conferencing on both multicast-capable and non-multicast-capable networks were discussed and analyzed. The mechanisms were shown applicable to both intranet and internet conferences. This paper extends those results to allow for multi-party, integrated voice and data conferences. The paper introduces the technique developed and then presents experimental benchmark performance measures with respect to station and gateway workloads.