[JDEV] Videoconferencing with jabber / Re:[speex-dev]Videoconferencing with speex and jabber

[Richard Dobson]

> No, one server will assume the role as "server". The client will ask
> permission to participate with the conference on the server, sending an IQ
> request etc. Then after permission SI will be used to create a two way
> stream for the audio between the server and client. Ofcourse the server
> will only stream it's own audio input to the client (no need to send the
> client it's own input back) as long as there are only two people talking.
> More isn't required, though I can imagine it'd be nice to have when you
> have the power and bandwith for it.

I still dont see the point of this, you dont need to require a server to
design a signaling protocol that will work for server based and purely peer
to peer mode conferences.

> This allows 2 people to have a conversation through a direct connection.
> One is clearly the server, and the other the client. Wether this still
> matches your definiton of peer to peer I don't know, but it allows to do
> what you want doesn't it?

No not really, it is still placing an unnecessary requirement on one of the
clients, its far better to have two separate modes fully p2p when
appropriate (when there is bandwidth available), and server based (when a
server is available, which IMO will only normally be available in corporate
environments, or as a paid for service due to the bandwidth issues with
hosting one of these servers). Now just because we have two separate modes
it doesnt mean we cant design a protocol which supports both modes of
operation, I dont know why you seem to think to have a common protocol we
need it to only work in a client/server mode (wether there is an actual
server or a client is acting as a server). The main benefit I see if fully
p2p mode will be that if someone gets disconnected from the net the rest of
the people in the conference will still be able to communicate without
interuption, but with your method of the client acting as the server for the
conference if that goes offline no one will be able to chat. The Xbox live
voice chat seems to work p2p with silence detection and works fine with as
many as 20 people in the conference. Also the method of going direct p2p
will help to reduce latency which could also become a problem in server
hosted chats, SIP seems to work by establishing a p2p connection between the
two endpoints too and the reason apparently for this is to minimize latency
which in voice chats can be very noticable.

> The benifit of it is, even if you can't host conferences yourself (for
> example cause of bandwith etc.) even with the minimum implementation you
> could still participate in them. Additionally the protocol could define
> (perhaps just as an extention) a way to manage conferences (for example on
> a jabber component) remotely. Then, even if I just have a pocket PC, I can
> still set up a conference, decide wich people to let in / invite / reject,
> password protect it ect. I can imagine x:data would be used for this (so
> maybe just field standardization would do it).

Remote management will I expect be a requirement for server based
conferences, otherwise there is no way to manage it.

Richard