When implementing video conferencing capabilty many businesses are more focused on the make-up of the video suite itself.....and assume that DSL bandwidth is sufficient for their network backbone. Whether this be an existing network or intended new install.....assuming that DSL is sufficient to support your requirements may be shortsighted. Beware, there's more out there to consider.

Before "jumping to conclusions" it's important to consider all of your options....and how each may best (or not) support your video conferencing needs.

xDSL technologies are usually deployed as “over subscribed” packet switched networks. By oversubscribed I mean that during those brief periods when the two end points are not transmitting the bandwidth to carry data from other users. In these networks the bandwidth used by connections between two ends points has the characteristics of variable bandwidth and variable delay. The resulting jitter can be very problematic for video circuits. However, xDSL technologies are usually much less expensive than ISDN/T carriers.

The "A" in ADSL stands for "asymmetrical". SDSL, and usually VHSDL and HDSL, are symmetrical.

If your videoconferencing is two-way, you need symmetry, or the performance will be horrible on the low-speed side. A caveat: if your video codec gives sufficiently good compression that the low-speed side gives enough bandwidth, you may be all right.

You also have to check the service guarantee on DSL, Frame Relay, and even Metro Ethernet. Do they give you either constant bit rate (CBR) or near-real-time Variable Bit Rate (nr6VBR), which are generally considered necessary for full-motion video quality? Note that CBR and nrtVBR are possible through IP connections that guarantee quality of service, which usually will mean contracting for a VPN.

You really want symmetry with your video conferencing. The cheap consumer class aDSL products are great when the downstream bandwidth is significantly greater then upstream, but in video/teleconferencing, the needs are both up and downstream.

If video conferencing is something you would use regularly, and count on for your business, then go for a real SDSL line or a T1 (or a DS3 for larger businesses with frequent usage.....especially with large numbers of participants, participating locations, or excessive distant). There are vendors that can offer these at competitive costs and give business class service and support.

Many businesses are abandoning DSL in favor of Sprint's EVDO rev A implementation of CDMA. You'll find some carrier agnostic info at EVDOForum.com which cites rev A speeds as EVDO Rev A 450Kbps-800Kbps Download, bursts to 3.0Mbps, and 300Kbps-400Kbps Upload Speed, bursts to 1.8Mbps. Sprint is now confident that these are very conservative numbers. While your own mileage may vary.... some routinely get faster speeds than this. Sprint expects to have more than 190 Million EVDO Rev A POPs by the end of April (we'll see though).

If your business is small, the underlying technology for video should be IPTV with any of the web-conferencing agents. The video streams would be routed via DSL service. If you're served by cable TV, you may prefer cable internet to DSL-based internet, but cable carriers often do not serve industrial areas. Thus as a business cable may not be available to you.

If your business has a full Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system for your telephones, you probably already get ISDN service from your phone company. ISDN permits "dynamic allocation" of channels which dedicates throughput to video when it is needed and makes the same capacity available for other applications, such as voice or data, when it is needed there. There are lots of vendors who support/supply ISDN-based video conferencing equipment.

People are beginning to discover the benefits of being able to telecommute from home. This is a concept that is beginning to catch on in today’s fast and demanding world. Many people spend hours a day commuting to and from their places of work. This entails a lot of time lost in man hours and money. Telecommuting saves both. Being able to telecommute means having more time to work and earn a decent living, spend some more quality time with family and cut out the stress of having to travel such long hours daily.

People who telecommute are more relaxed and are able to concentrate on their work thus producing good quality work. They are more motivated than the people who find themselves having to be dragged out of bed with the thought of traveling by bus of commuter train to get to the place of work and having to face the boss who had probably been in the same frame of mind in the morning and is all the more ready to make life a misery for his staff. Now, telecommuting is not for everyone. It does demand a certain level of dedication and discipline. People who telecommute can be described as their own boss, however, they do have to keep to a fixed style of functioning and deliver results in order to keep their job. There are few jobs that cannot be done by telecommuting. But the list of jobs that can be done is endless. Telecommuting basically means that people need not travel to their place of work, they work from home through the telephone network or the Internet.

In order to be able to telecommute one needs to have basic computer skills and access to the internet. Broadband Internet facilities will be an advantage as the scope of telecommuting jobs increases. With the added peripherals such as a web cam and microphone people can setup a home office to serve a wide range of industries. Many people are known to have set up customer care centers for companies and offer online consultancy and customer support in their line of expertise. This line could be computer assistance, or just taking down customer enquiries or replying to customer mails. Many online marketing companies offer telecommuting jobs to people, which requires them to make international phone calls though the voice over Internet Protocol. This is a very inexpensive way of telecalling and many people have taken up such telecommuting contracts.

The fact is that people are beginning to see the light of telecommuting. IT saves them a lot of cash on commuting, there is a lot more time to spend with family and friends or just doing what you like to do. There is no need to stay in one place if you can work from a laptop, this meant that if your laptop has access to the internet you can travel and do your work at the same time. This is a very advantageous proposition for software freelance engineers and web designers. Telecommuting is made just to suit their industry. These professionals can telecommute and enjoy a good vacation at the same time. In fact, people who telecommute will be in a more healthy state of mind than those who travel miles to get to work every day.

Live video conferencing is a technique that is fast replacing the need to commute miles every time the need for a conference arises. Businesses, organizations and even government and military heads need to travel days in a year to meet up with their counterparts and partners in order to have crucial meetings to discuss matters of prime worldly importance. This traveling takes up a lot of their time and costs the exchequer a large sum in travel related expenditure. Live video conferencing does away with a lot of this expenditure. Live video conferencing requires a one time investment that is just a fraction of the cost of traveling between countries. The connection link is established via the Internet and the running cost is negligible.

Companies such as Tandberg and Cisco have the very latest state-of-the-art technology incorporated into their wide range of live video conferencing equipment. The equipment from Tandberg range from a simple desktop live video conferencing unit to large LCD screens that link up the participants of the live video conference to any part of the globe provided of course, that that part of the globe has access to the internet. Broadband internet connectivity is a necessity for live video conferencing because the video compression technology is not as yet that advanced that slower internet connection can transmit and receive the video signal without pausing between frames. The technique of streaming video has made live video conferencing a large success though there is still a lot of development in order. Live video conferencing saves on time and travel expenses and pays of the system in just a few sessions of live video conferencing when compared to the cost that would have been incurred if the participants had to travel to convene at a particular location.

Live video conferencing adds up to a lot more saving when it is used for government heads to confer with their counterparts in other countries. It is a boon when the security of these government heads is paramount. By cutting out the travel and hotel stay for the representatives of the conference a lot of security risks are covered. Because with live video conferencing none of the participants need to leave their offices to take part in the conference, they just need to have their own live video conferencing hardware, which is available from vendors such as Tandberg. This is a simple video cameras, microphone and video screen connected to the Internet through broadband connectivity. There are no restrictions on the number of people that can take part in a video conference.

Technology is changing fast and with it the live video conferencing equipment. Tandberg has a number of live video conferencing equipment to choose from. They have the permanent studio setup that is advanced live video conferencing equipment setup in a conference room. This takes care of wide camera fittings and lighting that is appropriate for live video conferencing. The large LCD screens make the other participants look as if they are in the same room even though they are thousands of miles away. Live video conferencing is definitely the best way for groups of people to meet at the most economical of cost.

Telecommuting is the term used for people who work from home. Telecommuting means not having to commute or ‘work from a distance’. -commuting, e-work, telework, or working from home are other names this form of employment is known by. The term ‘telecommuting’ was coined when people who work from home realized the advantage of not having to commute to and from a place of work. This form of work saved a lot on time and money because the daily commute to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links. Job telecommuting is fast catching on with many people establishing job telecommuting from home rather than having to travel a few hours a day to and from home.

Job telecommuting, in a broader term refers to substituting telecommunications for any form of work-related travel, as such doing away with the distance restrictions of telecommuting. All job telecommuting workers can be called teleworkers but not all teleworkers are telecommuters. It is said that "work is something you do, not something you travel to". A good telecommuting program requires a management style based on results rather than on close scrutiny of individual employees. This managing by objective brings forth better productivity as opposed to managing by observation.

The advent and advancement of virtual private networks is what has spurned the job telecommuting scenario the world over. Technologies such as video conferencing, voice over internet protocol and online software development are all contributing to more and more people opting for job telecommuting rather than taking up regular 9 – 5 jobs. Job telecommuting is ideal for house wives who want to put in a few hours of work and earn a little extra for those unexpected bills and maybe a few frills they would like to enjoy. For job telecommuting all one needs to have is the basic computer skills, a PC and an Internet connection at home. Broadband Internet is ideal as job telecommuting sometimes requires video conferencing as well as voice chatting. A slow Internet connection will not facilitate this kind of work.

Technology advancements in the early 1970’s set the foundation for job telecommuting. This technology used telephone lines as a network bridge to link satellite offices through downtown mainframes and dumb terminals. A lot has changed since then. Discarding the old technology, the Internet has taken over in a very big way. In fact, almost every form of international communications has something or the other to do with the Internet. One of the benefits of the Internet in Job telecommuting is the decrease in the cost of operations. This massive decrease in the cost and increase in the efficiency of the personal computer has forged the road to decentralize the office work and has helped move the office to the home. Technological advancements enabled job telecommuting a household word by the early 1980’s and that was just the start. As technology advanced local area networks were just about ideal for sharing of resources over long distances. These networks gave birth to client server networks which led to greater decentralization of work. Today the PC has been replaced by a Laptop, which makes job telecommuting an even greater attraction as tele-workers can now work from just about anywhere through their laptops and wireless networks.

One of the best and the latest technologies in the area of video conferencing is PC video conferencing. This is the most cost effective method of video conferencing as all one needs is a web cam and a microphone along with an internet connection. Unlike other systems where an entire unit has to be set up such as video output devices and cameras the PC video conferencing, also known as desktop video conferencing, brings video conferencing right into your homes. IT experts have been working round the clock to develop the best PC video conferencing software all over the globe. Everyone seems to claim that they have the most advanced PC video conferencing software ever developed. However, you can be the best judge of their claims.

PC video conferencing software was Lunched a few years ago and is better known as P2P video-conferencing technology that integrates text chat, screen and document sharing and full session recording while remaining extremely easy and simple to use even for the people who are first timers to PC video conferencing. This Windows based software can be adapted to other operating systems such as Linux and Macs. Though PC video conferencing software is developed for few large and very prestigious corporations it is available for the large consumer market as well.

It is falsely believed by the man in the street that if PC video conferencing software doesn't strike home fast and get a footing in the domestic market or gets new some funding from the government you won't be able to buy PC video conferencing software for your own private use. But here is where they are all wrong. PC video conferencing software is available free for download on many sites on the Internet. PC video conferencing software is becoming so common that even the students in school are using it every day from out of cyber cafés and even their own personal PC’s at home.

PC video conferencing software is a browser-based video conferencing application that requires a simple installation via an Internet Explorer active-X plug-in or a FireFox extension. If you don't have the PC video conferencing software installed on your PC you can do so by going to the more popular sites such as Yahoo and Google or Skype and download their free versions of the PC video conferencing software. The downloading and installation is fully automated and you just have to sit back and watch the computer do it’s work. Once you have installed the software and are connected to the Internet you can take part in any PC video conferencing program on the Internet, of course you have to have access to the conference with a username or password.

Once launched the PC video conferencing software is very compact and simple to use. The few and simple controls PC video conferencing requires you to know are all easily accessible from the screen of the video window and they allow the user to freeze the video, mute the microphone or to access a simple menu containing access to the other key features of PC video conferencing.

Tandberg video conferencing is easy to set up. There is certain hardware as well as software that is required for video conferencing and Tandberg video conferencing are just the people to provide you with all your video conferencing requirements. This equipment includes video input and output equipment such as web cameras and video displaying equipment such as monitors. LC Displays or general television sets equipped to be connected to the network in order to display the conferencing mages being transmitted. Audio devices, such as a microphone, are required for inputting the sound into the conferencing system and audio output devices such as speakers are needed to reproducing the audio. And finally, there needs to be a way of transmitting the data from one location to the other. This can be accomplished by the state-of-the-art Tandberg video conferencing system over the Internet, or even a LAN (Local Area Network). The more bandwidth one has on the network the better the transmission and reproduction.

Even the general population has ways to take advantage of Tandberg video conferencing facility. There are quality services available in the form of downloadable programs similar to Googletalk, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, among others. This software is usually free of charge, and if you have a webcam, a microphone, and broadband Internet access, you can be connected with friends and family through the Internet without having to worry about the huge telephone bills. Tandberg video conferencing is an ideal way for grandparents to witness the activities of their grandchildren as well as for long distance friends to keep in touch over this much awaited technology.

Tandberg video conferencing has put this wonderful technology to another good use. They have successfully set up the Tandberg video conferencing system in universities and colleges for educational purposes. Alumni can use the Tandberg video conferencing facility to participate in distance learning programs from across the world without having to leave the comfort of their homes. Tandberg video conferencing offers no limits to the possibilities of expanding your educational and cultural assets, no matter where you live. And yet another positive use for Tandberg video conferencing software is in the field of medicine. Doctors and nurses consult patients and colleagues in real time and send and receive medical documents and images in the bat of an eyelid across the globe. Tandberg video conferencing systems allow experts to diagnose ailments from anywhere in the world right from their offices.

Tandberg video conferencing software is not only used for business meetings anymore. The advancements of the Internet has provided a means of allowing the average person to take advantage of this technology. Uses of Tandberg video conferencing systems continue to develop day and night in the domains of business, medicine, education, and personal computing, Tandberg video conferencing software is a highly convenient and an easy means of virtual communication. Communication all over the world has never been the same since Tandberg video conferencing systems made their presence known in the field of video conferencing.

Video conferencing is the technique of meeting in a group over a network employing video and audio transmission technology and equipment. Armed with information about video conferencing businessmen, technologists, scientists and government heads started to explore ways to bring the world closer together and enable meetings of many people located in different parts of the globe. Video conferencing is the process of being able to see and interact with a group of people located at any point of the world at the same time.

Increased information about video conferencing has enabled even small businesses and organizations to communicate virtually face to face and not being in the same room at the same time. Businesses find this the most convenient way to interact with partners across the globe. Medical service providers such as surgeons have been known to use their information about video conferencing to provide invaluable advise to doctors treating patients half way across the globe. Doctors can view the patients and advise their colleagues about the treatment that must be administered to the patient. Surgeons have been known to conduct operations in distant countries through video conferencing; they observe the operation being conducted by a surgeon and advise him through the conferencing. This would not have been possible in the early 1990’s as the video quality was very low and the connectivity of the video conferencing was not too good either.

Today the general man-in-the-street can use video conferencing software like any professional. Desktop video conferencing has brought the world closer and bridged the divide of the oceans for many a family. Information about video conferencing has given expansion opportunities for education and communication like no one ever expected. Someone somewhere has availed of the benefits that information about video conferencing has provided to the world. This is a technology that has achieved a lot in a few years and still has a very long way to go. Video conferencing enables scientists on the earth to communicate with astronauts in space, Generals to observe the activities on the frontlines, Doctors to monitor the progress of patients from distant lands, scientists to take part in crucial experiments from different countries at the same time and the old grand parents to have a look at the newborn grandchild just a few minutes after birth.

The information about video conferencing that you need is available all over the Internet. You need to know what video conferencing is, what you can use it for, what is the technology available to you and what is the equipment you need to set up video conferencing. In the past there was just the ISDN line linking the Internet across the world. Then there was the limited video compressing technology that could enable video transmission across the Internet. Businesses and organizations were unable to put video conferencing to its greatest use as they were bound to the limited technology at the time. The more their information about video conferencing technology advanced the better equipped they became to put it to wider use.

Desktop video conferencing is the cheapest and the fastest way to stay in touch. In today’s day and age where everyone is spread across the globe it is not possible to get together every year for the great family gatherings at Christmas or Easter. The elderly and aged people in the family do want to keep in touch at east at celebration times. Though the physical presence cannot be compensated by anything, it will be nice to have a family gathering even over desktop video conferencing. With desktop video conferencing the whole family can decide on a date and time and log onto the Internet through one of the many online chat programs such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail or Skype and have a desktop video conferencing program for the benefit of all the family members.

Desktop video conferencing is the most convenient way to have a family meeting of all the members of the family. The distance or the location is not a criterion for them to take part in the desktop video conferencing program and there is no need to hire the services of a video conferencing service provider either. There are many free video conferencing services available on the Internet. The only qualifying criterion is that each member who wants to take part in the desktop video conferencing program must possess a computer with the required video input as well as audio input and output hardware and of course access to the Internet through a broad band connection.

Broad band Internet connection is a must for desktop video conferencing because the technology for video compressing, though very advanced, is not good enough to compress video signals to transmit effectively over slow Internet connections. The slower connections will transmit voice and video signals in phases giving the effect of a slow motion picture movement and the voice will break up as well. The apparatus must be of reasonably good quality as well. A good 2 mega pixel web camera used as a video input device and a microphone for the audio input device coupled to a headphone or speakers to enable what everyone partaking in the desktop video conferencing program is saying.

The Internet and desktop video conferencing has definitely brought people and countries closer together. It is cheaper to partake in an international group discussion through desktop video conferencing rather than having to fly across the world and spend that much time and money. With today’s high definition desktop video conferencing, desktop video conferencing is a pleasure. The Internet has brought whole communities together and it is not only families and students who are making the most use of this technology. There are more important meetings taking place with government heads and military Generals using Desktop video conferencing to monitor training sessions and remote activities right from their desktops. So next time you are up to something you must ensure that some group of people, probably half way across the planet are not watching.

Video conferencing is also known as ‘videoteleconferencing’ and is a technique of setting up an interactive telecommunication system comprising of video input and out put devices such as video cameras and screens, audio input and out put devices such as microphones and speakers and transmission and receiving apparatus at two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. This system is also been called visual collaboration and is a type of groupware. It differs from videophone in that it serves a conferencing (group of people) rather than individuals.

Video conferencing started with the invention of television, which was nothing but a one way communication channel. This technology transmitted video and sound signals to a wide audience but was just a one way communication channel. Video conferencing was the technique of transmitting as well as receiving video and audio signals between a group of people. Each individual in a video conferencing was able to interact with the other members of the conferencing through the hardware which consisted of the above mentioned video, audio and transmitting and receiving equipment. In the beginning of the 1960 there was just closed circuit video conferencing. This soon advanced to wireless communication between people on a video conferencing. The low definition video conferencing reproduction was soon to be replaced by high definition video conferencing technology in the nineties.

Technological advancements in the 1980’s made digital telephony transmission possible. These brought technologies such as ISDN that assured a basic minimum bit rate of 128 kilo bytes per second available over a leased line. This technology assured a fair quality of audio as well as video signals to be transmitted over a vast area. The history of video conferencing had begun with the early experiments of NASA trying to simultaneously communicate with all its base stations and it’s astronauts in space. This video conferencing enabled scientists to communicate and instruct the astronauts with the experiments underway. It was the contribution of companies such as AT&T Picture Tel and the like that has made video conferencing what it is today. From the early history of video conferencing the technology has come a long way. Video conferencing equipment expanded through out the 90’s and evolved into the internet video conferencing we have today. In fact, video conferencing cannot be possible in most parts of the world with out the Internet as this is the main tool of communications in vogue today.

Video conferencing can be traced back to the invention of television, which is nothing but a one way video conferencing so to speak. Tele-video conferencing is the process of a group of people located in different parts of the globe of country (distance really does not matter) and being able to simultaneously take parting a two way discussion by observing all the other members of the conferencing on a video screen live and talk to them as if they were all sitting in the same room. In earlier times such video conferencing consisted of closed circuit television systems, which was the technology where by the video and audio signals were transmitted through a cable system and not transmitted through the air. This resulted in the video quality being very poor in quality as well as being very expensive to transmit. This type of communication was very attractive and the demand for better transmission techniques resulted in companies investing in high definition video conferencing techniques.

The first high definition video conferencing was inadvertently tried out by NASA who required to conferencing with astronauts in space. The distance required very high definition video conferencing capabilities and NASA achieved this by using high frequencies to link up and down between the space stations and the earth stations. This kind of high definition video conferencing has been put to wider use by television news channels using this high definition video conferencing between the studios and the mobile news trucks. High definition video conferencing has since become very common with the technology advancing and transforming from analog to digital format the world over.

High Definition Video conferencing was first demonstrated in the early nineties. Though this technique was still very expensive, it could not be put to use for more mundane applications, such as telemedicine, distance education, business meetings, and so on. The use of normal telephone networks to transmit video failed due to the poor picture quality and the lack of efficient video compression techniques that were available at the time. The greater bandwidth and 6 MBPS transmission rate of the popular though short lived Picturephone in the 1970s did not prosper. These were but stepping stones to the digital high definition video conferencing that the world knows today. The Internet had enabled high definition video conferencing to be put to wider use with more and more people from different walks of life being able to take advantage of this great technology.

High definition video conferencing started out as an important means of communications between scientific, defense and government organizations. The usefulness of this communications technology was realized and so the demand grew by leaps and bounds. So as a result from the early closed circuit low definition video conferencing to the present day high definition video conferencing techniques employed today, high definition video conferencing is being used not only by the high and mighty but by students who are able to use the technology to further their studies by taking part in high definition video conferencing set up by their universities in distant places. House wives are also able to use the technology from the comforts of their homes. The retired and aged people can see and speak to their entire families settled all over the world at the flick of a switch. Yet High definition video conferencing has a long way to go.

When NASA started experimenting with video conferencing they did not think that the system they were using to confer with groups of people in different parts of the world at the same time would one day be a household service, much like the electricity and telephone service that was so common back then. Desktop conferencing refers to being able to transmit and receive video and sound signals at the same time from a computer on your desktop. Conferencing means a group of people in different places, with distance between them not withstanding, being able to partake in a discussion simultaneously with all of the participants being able to hear and see any of the other participants at the same time. Desk top conferencing is like being in the same room at the same time. When NASA used the technology for the first time the costs were prohibitive, besides the distance of tele-video conferencing was severely limited as transmission technology was not as developed as it is today.

Companies have pooled their resources together to setup the infrastructure that is needed to vide conferencing all over the world. These technologies have been networked so that all countries can use the system economically. The Internet has enabled desktop conferencing to be used by all people all over the world. The Internet is the cheapest mode of communication. The technology is growing by leaps and bounds and the cost of using it is reducing every day. The problem with desktop conferencing is that one needs a fairly fast Internet broadband connection for effective transmission of video and sound signals. This is because unlike sound signals, video signals form fairly large packets of data and the time taken to transmit this data over a slow connection can take a month of Sundays. Therefore the connection speed must be at least 256 kilo bytes per second to enable proper video desktop conferencing.

In the past video teleconferencing was achieved by closed circuit television technology. This was a very expensive method and required a sound proof studio and a whole lot of paraphernalia. This also required a trained staff at both or all stations of the video conferencing. That made this technology available only to the very large business in the private sector as well as government agencies. The cost implications were prohibitive for small industries and companies who found flying across the globe to meet their business partners a more economical way of communication. The Internet has changed all that. Desktop conferencing has become a reality with the advancement of the Internet. Business executives, government heads and even house wives can turn on a video conferencing at the flick of a button through the computers on their desktops. The technology is easy to use with even fifth graders being able to use it. Through desktop conferencing people can connect to a group of people and discuss subjects ranging from the afternoon lunch recipe to North Koreas nuclear program.