Summary:
The GMD-FOKUS Broadband Video Conference (B-VC) application is a multimedia multiparty service providing real-time conferencing in which both audio and video can be exchanged among single individuals or groups of individuals at two or more locations via the B-ISDN. Users can be either multiple users, grouped in conference rooms with their equipment's (audio and video systems, PC, etc.), or single users with multimedia workstations. Following B-VC scenarios have been developed and provided: Conference creation, Conference establishing, Static conference management, Adding user to conference, Invite conferee, Join conferee, Leave conferee, Check invitation, Disconnect conferee and Close down. Additionally, a flexible permission mechanism has been introduced, allowing same rights to all conferees or at least one confree with higher permissions. The conference is defined by its conference state, conferees and all established/to be established connections beteen each pair of conferees: user connections for audio, video and data transmission and connections between the B-VC End System (CPE) and the Broadband Intelligent Peripheral (B-IP) used to run a conference management protocol. Audio and video mixing is done at the CPE. One additional function of the CPE is the provisioning of a graphical user interface and access to diferent kinds of signalling protocols.