[JDEV] Videoconferencing with jabber: summary?

[Bart van Bragt]

> Actually the discussion was about what models of audio conferencing to 
> use. Noone claimed to have the answer for what solution to use, since 
> that subject is hardly even touched. This is still about what model for 
> initiating conversations, not what solution to use.
I know :D

For the people that didn't want to read those 20 (or so) mails;

Tijl proposes a solution with a client/server model where you have 
dedicated servers, clients that can also acts as a server (the majority 
of entities on the network) or lightweight clients that are only a 
client (for example PDAs). Main advantage is that you don't need to have 
access to a dedicated server, your own PC can host a conference if you 
have the CPU power and the bandwidth. Problem with dedicated servers is 
that those probably won't be publicly available because of the required 
bandwidth/processing power.

Richard is advocating a peer to peer model where all clients establish a 
direct connection with all other clients in the conference. This way you 
don't need a server which eliminates potential 'single point of failure' 
problems.

> Also if you've followed the discussion, you can see neither me nor 
> Richard is trying to convince the other is wrong (quite to the opposite 
> in fact). Rather we are are both trying to explain the strong and weak 
> points of the different models that could be used.
:D You're both taking your time in doing that ;) IMO the two of you just 
have different needs/requirements. In those situations it's no use 
explaining strong/weak points. IMO those points are fairly obvious. It's 
just what we value more.. Do we want a low(er) bandwidth solution 
(client/server) or do we want something that can cope with dropped 
participants in a simple way (p2p), etc. IMO the two of you will never 
agree on that ;)

Bart