VIRTUALTALKER - AN ONLINE MULTIMEDIA SYSTEM ON TOKEN PASSING NETWORKS

Although video phone/conference applications on ISDN networks have been a popular product, a similar service on packet switched networks still faces many technical problems. In this paper, the implementation of a multimedia system on a token ring network connecting personal computers using commercially available consumer electronic devices is presented. This system allows people to interactively communicate with each other at different locations through video phone and shared white board services. Since the system transmits real-time traffic such as video and voice over the network, many design and technical issues such as the network protocol, encoding technique, delay jitter, packet size, synchronization of video and voice, and priority assignment are considered and presented in this paper.