Subject: how can you be in two places at once.. cc: Jeff.Hodges@stanford.edu, "Paul Collins" From: Jeff.Hodges@stanford.edu Reply-to: Jeff.Hodges@stanford.edu Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1999 10:07:12 -0700 ..but aren't really anywhere at all? For next to nothing cost-wise? well, I was somewhere -- my office at Stanford -- but I was also at the MacWorld conference in NYC where I co-gave a session on LDAP. Paul Collins of One-click Systems was physically at the other end. This occurred yesterdaymorning (Fri 23-Jul-1999). We used (dirt-cheap) Connectix (now Logitec) cams and CU-SEEME software at each end and simply connected over the Internet. Paul's end (in the session room in NYC) was software he actually paid some money for, my end was an old freeware release from Cornell. The computer in the session room was connected as usual to a large color projector, but was also patched into the room's PA system. Additionally, it had a cam that we pointed at the projected screen. On that screen we displayed locally-cached slides plus my live video image. At my end, I could see the screen in the session room and monitor my own image. We had live half-duplex audio between the two ends. I watched and listen as Paul gave his first half of the talk, and then we opened my mike, made my image visible on the projected screen in the session room, and I talked as Paul managed my slides. He reported that the audio at their end was entirely reasonable and that nobody had trouble understanding me. Afterwards, we kept the connection open for Q&A, and Paul rotated the cam at his end to point to the audience so I could see some of what was going on. He and I both answered questions, usually with him repeating the question to ensure I heard it (audience folks didn't use the supplied mikes except for one person). I answered some and he answered some and it worked out fine. After we declared the session over, the typical clot of folks formed up at the front of the room asking additional questions and I participated in that also. It worked fine. Certainly wasn't a nice as physically being there, but was way way better than not being there at all. I was receiving about 3..4 frames/sec from the session room. I think they were getting about 2 from me, but Paul will have to say. CU-seeme was reporting fairly steady 57 kbits/s from the session room to me and that I was sending about 20..30 to them. audio quality was fine in both directions. we wished it was full-duplex without feedback issues, but we managed. The inevitable gotcha's were kinda funny actually. I was using a scrounged powerbook 540c on my end and hadn't had time to refamiliarize myself with it's various controls or muck about with it in general. So while I was talking and doing my typical hand-waving and such, I neglected to touch the touchpad/keyboard often enough and the Mac went to sleep mid-rant a few times. It takes a while for it to wake up, so Paul & Audience experienced a few 15..20 sec drops from me. Luckily, the underlying connection didn't time out so we could take right up again with Paul just reminding me of what I was in the process of discussing and we just continued. Paul'd have to say what the nature of the show/conference's Internet connection was and what the network was like to the room there. On my end I had essentially a minimum of 10mbs bandwidth out to the Internet backbone. Which backbone our packets were going over I'm not sure, I neglected to check, so I don't know if we used commercial, vBNS, or Abilene. Jeff http://www.stanford.edu/~hodges/talks/