12. NetMeeting Project

These are our experiences using this new technology contending with the many networking and audio issues that make this technology succeed or fail.

1. The first test call placed from Poland to Patty at 8am 11/16/99 from Chicago—the connection to Chicago came through nice and clear, however, the connection from Chicago to Poland was choppy at times. The white board below served as the communication assistant.



2. The second test was from Poland to Germany during the morning (Polish time) 11/17/99—They had a good connection complete with video from Germany to Poland, only a short while before the failed attempts from Chicago to Poland. Below is the report from Dr. Zdziennicki:

It was a pity that our today's NetMeeting (referring to the third test) didn't

meet our expectations. Let's hope that next time it will be better for us. As

far as I know now NetMeeting isn't an easy matter about its quality. We may

forget that it will act like a phone.

I have learnt of NetMeeting more today and I'm glad for this reason.

Before our session I came across a guy from Germany (a Pole that is living

there). The talk with him was pretty good. He had a video camera so I was able

to see him. And it was a next experience for me.

3. The third test was from Chicago to Poland by Patty at 6am 11/17/99—This time several attempts were made at obtaining a good connection, but neither party could receive anything other than broken sounds most of the time.
4. The fourth test was from Itasca to West Chicago by Harris to Patty at 7:30 am 11/17/99—This time the connection started out very good for both parties, however over the 45 minutes of testing the connection became very garbled for both parties. The chat window was used for the main communication in the end. Other tested items were the whiteboard, and file transfer. We managed to transfer small files quite easily, but when we tried a large one, our speech was totally broken apart into garbled sounds. After we stopped the file transfer, the speech improved greatly

This as

The WhiteBoard used in this test.

5. The fifth test was from Itasca to West Chicago by Harris to Patty at 7:30 am 11/18/99— This time we tested the advanced audio compression to see if the sound transmission was better. The sound transmission seemed greatly improved and there was no trouble communicating. It was very close to a phone as long as the speaker hesitated to speak after the other person was finished speaking. Patty had a slight echo, but that is most likely is due to incorrect audio setting on her machine.

6. The sixth test was from West Chicago to Poland by Patty and Ziggy at 6:00am Chicago Time (1pm Poland Time). No sound could be heard at either end, but the chat box worked well. A new connection was established from Poland to West Chicago, this time speech was heard in Poland nice and clear, but nothing was heard in West Chicago. Desktop sharing in color was tried it worked fairly well. Below is an image of what was seen in West Chicago.

Below is the orginal picture in jpeg format.

What was noticed about our tests is that the shorter the distance, the better the connection. The connection was also affected by the volume of Net Traffic as in our attempt at file transfer and conversation at same time. The chat windows always worked great as did the whiteboard. Local chat window messages seemed to appear within 15-30 seconds. Chat messages to and from Poland appeared to take 2-3 minutes. (An email to Poland typically took 15-25 minutes). As to desktop sharing, the image came through quite well.

The calls are not quite asynchronous, but with hesitation it works well during reasonable Net Traffic times. It is good free product that deserves some serious investigation to learn how to set all the possible parameters.

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