Technology on social issues of videoconferencing on the Internet: a survey

Constant advances in audio/video compression, the development of the multicast protocol as well as fast improvement in computing devices (e.g. higher speed, larger memory) have set forth the opportunity to have resource demanding videoconferencing (VC) sessions on the Internet. Multicast is supported by the multicast backbone (Mbone), which is a special portion of the Internet where this protocol is being deployed. Mbone VC tools are steadily emerging and the user population is growing fast. VC is a fascinating application that has the potential to greatly impact the way we remotely communicate and work. That has many people forecast a significantly widespread adoption. Yet, the adoption of VC is not as fast as one could have predicted. Hence, it is important to examine the factors that affect a widespread adoption of VC. This paper examines the enabling technology and the social issues. It discusses the achievements and identifies the future challenges. It suggests an integration of many emerging multimedia tools into VC in order to enhance its versatility for more effectiveness.