Audio services can make very good use of a real time
multicast facility. On a LAN or WAN (e.g. ATM) where
multidestination packet delivery is efficient (e.g. order 1
for n destinations), each conferee simply joins the
multicast group for a particular conference.
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Conference Service
The service required is to register and lookup a
conference id to Multicast group mapping.
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Floor Control
Floor control is achieved through normal vocal human
interaction. Humans are used to this, and interaction
with the workstation seems unnatural. However, a
;SPM_quot;microphone off;SPM_quot; button and status display is useful
for long term information.
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Traffic suppression
Silence suppression suffices to get efficient traffic
limitation.
Even in a WAN without optimal multicast, the normal audio
interactions involve only a single speaker, and therefore
only a shingle multicast distribution tree of traffic at any
one time (mostly). There is no need for floor control and
traffic distribution to interact.