A P2P Framework for Decentralized Xconferencing and Its JXTA Implementation

IETF Xcon working group and ITU-T SG 16 specify a generic framework for centralized multipoint conferencing applications. The centralized architecture adopted by these specifications are not well adapted to today open and dynamic networks and have well-know drawbacks. In this paper, we present a P2P approach for supporting conference type services in a decentralized architecture. This approach provides new signaling mechanisms and components for coordinating, managing and controlling a conference system, in a dynamic network of peers. The implementation based on a JXTA middleware, shows that P2P model through its self-organizing characteristic can improve conferencing applications performance by providing a maximal autonomy for a minimal service configuration.