A New MeetingPoint for Videoconferencing

Open-standards-based multipoint videoconferencing over IP is a reality with White Pine's MeetingPoint.

Steve Gillmor

White Pine's MeetingPoint Conference Server marks a major advance in the convergence of computers, video, and telephones. This companion product to the pioneering CU-SeeMe videoconferencing client extends a welcoming hand to all H.323 standards-based clients and allows multipoint conferencing over the Internet. MeetingPoint arrives just in time to leverage an always-on and always-connected world that's becoming even more so with Microsoft's H.323-compliant client NetMeeting (bundled with Internet Explorer) and Netscape's promised H.323 client for Communicator.

Building on White Pine's Reflector server, MeetingPoint merges multiple streams of video, audio, chat, whiteboard, and other data using open standards. MeetingPoint automatically detects bandwidth congestion and balances low-speed modem, ISDN/frame-relay wide-area, and high-speed LAN connections, so conferences are not dragged down by th e lowest common denominator. You control the number of conferences, participants per conference, and data types per conference, setting upper limits on data rates for transmissions.

MeetingPoint installs three default conferences covering a range of bandwidth situations from direct LAN users to dial-up modem users. The Monitoring screen lets administrators or conference chairs grant or revoke user access and the ability to send data streams.

Installing MeetingPoint on a Windows NT 4.0 server with 64 MB of R AM and a 200-MHz multimedia extensions (MMX) processor, I configured the server with a browser GUI enhanced with Java applets. I tested the Winnov Videum capture board/camera combo and Connectix's QuickCam 2 parallel-port solution on local- and wide-area connections, hosting a MeetingPoint conference with a mix of CU-SeeMe and NetMeeting participants.

MeetingPoint scales well, supporting IP multicast in the corporate LAN; multicast support will also reduce bandwidth demands for Internet connections once multicast is more widely supported. I successfully connected two MeetingPoint servers on separate LANs via 128-Kbps Internet ISDN links, maximizing local bandwidth and sending the combined traffic over the smaller wide-area pipe.

Before I got my hands on MeetingPoint, IP videoconferencing seemed to me an interesting toy. After using it, I'm convinced it's a powerful tool. MeetingPoint enables truly open conferencing, linking different H.323 clients in group conferences on a single screen, something never before possible. B

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Where to Find

MeetingPoint Conference Server.........$1995 for 10-user license

White Pine Software, Inc.
Nashua, NH
Phone:    800-241-7463
Phone:    603-886-9050
Fax:      603-886-9051
Internet: 
http://www.wpine.com/mp

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Meetings Come to the Point

screen_link (48 Kbytes)

You can monitor and administer live conferences using MeetingPoint's Web-browser interface.

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You can contact Steve Gillmor, who is a consultant for Southern Digital, Inc., at sgillmor@southerndigital.com .