Videoconferencing

An advanced Videoconferencing unit is available for use in various locations. Teaching room 7 has been re-equipped for up to 25 people, the room has special curtains for good sound reproduction and an interactive Whiteboard, next to this is a specialized small room suitable for 3-4 people again curtained. The unit can be set-up in the Michael Heron lecture theatre, G1 lecture theatre, A + B lecture theatres and F lecture theatre. We also have Edward Wilson Room wired so the system can be used for meetings and functions up to 100 people.

This is not just a talking face machine it allows collaboration of software and 'M/S Office' is installed so Word, Excel or PowerPoint can be used.

It's easy to plug in a laptop and present from your own machine or we can have one available complete with CD and Zip drive.

A second camera can be attached so 3 dimensional objects can be shown perfectly. A Video player allows tapes to be viewed within the, although some detail maybe lost using this technology due to increased frame movement.

The system uses up to 3 ISDN lines which equals 6 telephone data lines and therefore the charging is for 6 telephone calls at the same time, this is required to provide the bandwidth for good communication. It is possible to use two lines and have one available for a normal telephone link to the conference. It will also communicate with desktop systems using only 1 ISDN line. The protocol for use with ISDN is H.320.

With the increase in faster IP (Internet or Intranet) connection the system allows direct connection via an IP address, instead of dialing a telephone you dial a series of numbers and relate directly with the computer the other end, typically there look like this, '182.34.234.01' The quality achieved is better than ISDN because a higher bandwidth is obtained.

When using an IP connection all communication is free from telephone charges and tests have proved successful conferencing to USA and we about to test connections to Australia. The only limiting factors are issues relating to Firewall settings. The Medical School IT department has cleared our system and also JANET has given 'Quality Approved' status to our system. 'Janet' runs tests every six months to ensure systems which are registered are kept to a high standard.

JANET offers a free national booking service with which we are signed up to and more importantly offer a 'Bridging service' this allows multi point conferencing. The possibility exists where we can connect to 'JANET' via IP and other users joining the conference can either use IP or ISDN and they don't have to members of Higher Education establishments. The protocol for use with IP is H.323.