Best-effort Support for a Virtual Seminar Room

This paper describes the RTMM Virtual Seminar Room, an interactive distributed multimedia application based on a platform with a simple middleware architecture, using best effort scheduling and a best effort network service. Emphasis has been placed on achieving low latency in all parts of the software system, so that as large a margin as possible is available for the transfer of data through the network.

This approach gives good user acceptability for the transfer of audio and video over distances of several hundred kilometers within the high-bandwidth Danish Research Network. The design of central parts of the system is presented, and the performance offered by this approach is discussed.