1

I am attempting to implement the capability to provide real-time web-conference style training to a group of 10-15 students located on another continent. We're in Canada, they're in Australia. Here are the basic requirements:

  1. I need to share my desktop with all the students simultaneously. I will be alternating between slides and computer demonstrations.
  2. I need to be able to share my voice with all students simultaneously. We can use an already existing Asterisk conference bridge to accomplish this, but it will still impact upstream bandwidth.
  3. The upstream bandwidth of my connection is nominally 1 Mbps.

Historically we have done this with an Asterisk conference bridge + VNC for screen sharing, but we've never had this many students and never this far away. Both upstream bandwidth and latency are serious considerations.

I'm not sure if commericial solutions like WebEx could solve this problem by, for example, allowing me to broadcast audio and my desktop to a central server located closer to the students and then re-broadcast to all students at the same time, greatly reducing my upstream needs.

Or, if there is sufficient headroom in the VNC protocol with compression enabled etc. to make this feasible.

Or even if I could set up my own re-broadcast capability using an EC2 or similar instance located in Asia or Australia, if such a thing exists.

All thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.

HopelessN00b
  • 53,385
  • 32
  • 133
  • 208
Gene Goykhman
  • 113
  • 4

1 Answers1

2

You don't need to send the data to all the users at once. The best you can do is to send the data to one server and that server will send the video and audio data to all users in real time, with ~10 seconds latency.

You can find some free webs that do this, but the most used are Youtube.com (Yes Youtube offers live broadcasting) and Twitch.tv

The good thing is that using this system you can have from 1 user to millions of users connected regardless of your bandwith, and also your users don't have to install any aditional software.

EDIT: Also, those webs have chats so your users can comment and ask questions while you explain.

Jorge Fuentes González
  • 191
  • 11
  • I looked into a few free web services and am running with MeetingBurner.com for now. It's free for up to 10 students at a time and am very pleased with the ease of use and performance. It has the chat feature you mentioned, but doesn't offer the ability for a participant to share their screen to the instructor... this is just a nice-to-have for me at the moment. – Gene Goykhman Apr 11 '13 at 00:28
  • Yes, if you want your students to share their screen, sure they have to install aditional software. Maybe, they can have their own account in MeetingBurner, Twitch or somewhere else and share the streaming link to you (And, if need be, to any other student). Thanx for accepting the answer. – Jorge Fuentes González Apr 11 '13 at 13:18