The Importance of Quality VoIP for Web Conferencing and Collaboration

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The Importance of Quality VoIP for Web
Conferencing and Collaboration

• Jan Linden, Vice president of Engineering
• Global IP Sound, Inc.

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Web Conferencing Market Overview

• Conferencing and Collaboration Primarily an
  Enterprise Play
• According to a recent survey by Interactive Media
  Strategies, more than 80 of survey respondents
  reported the deployment of Web conferencing
  technology within their organizations (December,
  2005)
• Consumer Market could see substantial growth
• Increasing popularity of IM puts conferencing
  capabilities on the desktop and at an estimated
  quarter of a billion users fingertips
• The continued adoption of VoIP in consumer
  applications will accelerate conferencing
  capabilities Skype claims over 225 million
  downloads, 54 million members, Google, AOL, and
  Yahoo many million users too
• Quality will be the main driver of mainstream
  acceptance

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The Benefits of Collaboration

• Office
• Increased Productivity
• Increased Team Cohesion and Interaction
• Home
• Stay in touch with friends and family members
• Brings the office to you
• Lowering of Cultural Barriers
• Europeans and North Americans are more
  comfortable doing business via teleconference
• In the Asia/Pacific region, face to face
  meetings are preferred
• High quality video conferencing could be a way to
  bridge the gap between cultures

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VoIP as an Enabler

• VoIP is no longer a niche market that only
  delivers a voice conversation
• VoIP can exceed PSTN voice quality
• Now voice can be combined with video and data
  traffic to provide feature rich applications
• VoIP will be the centerpiece that enables new,
  high quality conferencing and collaboration
  applications
• Voice is essential to communication
• Video conferencing without high quality voice is
  useless
• Explaining complex, real time collaboration via
  IM is difficult and slow

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The Importance of Quality

• "Videoconferencing is breaking the shackles of
  its earlier image as a unreliable and expensive
  technology, thanks to advancements in video and
  audio quality and IP-based videoconferencing,"
  S.V. Purushothaman, Frost Sullivan
• However, there is still room for improvement as
  IP networks present unique obstacles to quality
• Packet loss and network jitter can severely
  affect call quality
• Long delays unacceptable in conferencing
• Poor audio codecs can result in unclear
  conversations
• Poor video codecs will give fuzzy and jerky
  pictures
• Bandwidth restrictions and poor video and audio
  synchronization can also result in a poor user
  experience
• The traditional problems of echo and background
  noise are magnified in conferencing situations

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Quality Aspects

• Attention to detail
• A chain is only as strong as its weakest link
• Choice of codec(s)
• Robustness against network degradation
• Sampling rate (narrowband 8 kHz vs. wideband 16
  kHz)
• Implementation issues
• PCs are NOT designed for real-time communications
• Auxiliary components (e.g. AGC, VAD, AEC)
• Firewall and NAT traversal has to be efficient
  and not introduce extra delay
• Low latency
• One of the most important and complex aspects

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Handling of Network Degradation

• Typical problematic scenarios
• Internet applications
• Wireless
• VPN
• Packet loss concealment
• Smooth concealment necessary
• Network jitter
• Jitter buffer necessary to ensure continuous
  playout
• Trade-off between delay and quality

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Device Related Issues

• PCs tough environments for real-time
  communications
• Operating system
• Non-real-time OS
• Support for multitasking?
• Delay and jitter
• Audio hardware and drivers
• Delay
• Quality (frequency response and noise levels)
• Sampling frequency support
• Hands free support
• Clock drift
• Hard to detect and compensate for

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Overcoming Quality Issues

• A quickly adapting jitter buffer is essential in
  order to handle delay and jitter
• High quality packet loss concealment necessary
• High quality audio codecs provide a clear
  conversation, that can be better than PSTN
  quality
• Wideband codecs (16 kHz sampling frequency)
  allows for richer sound presentation
• This is especially important when trying to
  understand and distinguish between multiple
  people speaking in a conferencing situation
• High quality video codecs enable clear,
  consistent pictures that enhance the user
  experience
• Audio and video synchronization further add to
  the real to life feel
• Highly adaptive echo cancellation technology is
  vital in environments which include usage of
  hands free devices

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Solutions to the Quality Problem

• Voice and video (when applicable) processing
  needs to include the following key features to
  provide high quality voice and video
  collaboration
• Highly efficient jitter buffer and error
  concealment module
• High quality and robust audio codecs
• Close integration of high quality video codecs
• Support for standard audio and video codecs
• Acoustic echo cancellation technology
• Accurate lip synchronization
• Efficient bandwidth control (trade-off between
  audio and video quality)
• Video codec adaptation to network conditions
• Freedom in video quality setting (codecs/frame
  rate/image size)
• Voice and video recording

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Conclusion

• Web conferencing and collaboration have the
  ability to improve life both at home and at the
  office
• VoIP adds a crucial element that is necessary for
  fully integrated and functional applications
• Quality is the main determinant for adoption and
  acceptance of this emerging technology
• By overcoming the obstacles that IP networks
  present to web-based conferencing, there is no
  limit to the innovation and development of new
  and exciting applications