End system communication in a conference is characterized by
requiring <#1179#> one to many<#1179#> or <#1180#> many to many<#1180#> communications
channels. Some commercial conferencing systems make use of the underlying
broadcast nature of the communications medium (e.g. analogue video
conferencing systems over Satellite channels).
Our (high level) model of the conference is that there is a unidirectional
channel from each user to every other user. We picture a user as a
possible speaker or a possible listener. If a user is speaking to
more than one listener, then the conference
<#1181#> may<#1181#> make use of underlying multicast or broadcast mechanisms as
an optimisation. That is outside the scope of this design.