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Conference Multiplexing and Management Centre (CMMC)

The current trend in the internet community is to provide multimedia services by applications that multicast directly to all sites in the conference, with no centralised conference control or multiplexing centre. Whilst we agree that an entirely distributed system is desirable, there are many reasons why we believe that many multi-point conferences will require a centralised Conference Management and Multiplexing Centre (CMMC). These reasons include:

• the mechanism for allowing communities to come in from different networks (e.g. EUROPANET, UK-US Pipe, EBONE and ISDN);

• a way to relay between different protocol and coding standards;

• the incorporation of stations with reduced facilities (e.g. Basic Rate ISDN), video workstations without hardware Codecs;

• a centre for multiplexing video and voice;

• a centre for conference reservation, resource control and management;

• a centre for ensuring multicast of the shared workspace data, and possibly the voice, to all conferees;

• a centre of expertise - remote users only need to know how to connect to the CMMC, and not how to interwork with (possibly incompatible) remote sites - the CMMC hides this extra functionality.

A schematic of the CMMC, as developed by UCL, is shown in Fig. 4.

• Video
• Audio
• Shared Workspace
• Conference Control
• Booking and Resource Allocation