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If you have access to Internet2 and have the bandwidth, take a look at Access Grid http://www.accessgrid.org/

Actually, VIC and RAT are now part of AccessGrid, which is being actively developed and is cross-platform. The most recent stable release was on 21 Dec 2007.

look at http://www.accessgrid.org/

Last time i used this, about three years ago, this was a real pain to make work, but once you have it going, its great and will support 6 - 8 connections.

see http://www.accessgrid.org/software - this is "vic & rat" as mentioned above.

which is from the people who went on to do evo.

It can be non-trivial to make it work but it fits the rest of your requirements pretty well. It's gotten more user friendly in the last few years goo.

If your network supports multicast, AG will use it, which means you don't need a central server. This mostly means R&E networks, there is very little multicast availability on the commercial internet.

Accessgrid:

Works fine, even supports multipoint *HD* video conferencing, open source though the "hours to set up" depends on your tech competence. It doesn't *need* working multicast, but works a lot better with it.

Not really AG-specific: Also note that multipoint video conferencing requires either echo cancellation (and ALL software echo cancellation sucks, you need still need hardware DSP units even in 2008) or headsets for everyone - one bad node can ruin they meeting - if you think an echoey 2-way conversation is bad, you should experience a 15-way conference some time (though that might need academic/military bandwidth :-) )

http://accessgrid.org/

EVO? (Successor to VRVS).

Kind of new, but descendant of VRVS. Kind of a cut-down accessgrid. Easy to use, though is web-page based.

AFAIK, like VRVS, interoperates with AccessGrid, though participants in a conference tend to be "second class citizens".

http://evo.caltech.edu/evoGate/FAQ/index.jsp#Basics01

Having used the AG, I'd suggest giving it a look. Truthfully, though, iChat's a good place to look, too.

http://www.accessgrid.org/

It's a teleconferencing on caffeine solution from NCSA. It's used for large, distributed, meetings, and interactive collaboration. We had an access point at my last job, and it works, if you've got the hardware/bandwidth to throw at it. Nice for distributed learning and lectures, plus can be extended.

On a more personal level, i.e. if you can run a skunkworks for a while while you build the environment, would be for you and a couple of like-minded developers to start playing with OpenCroquet. This gives you a persistent virtual environment, with the ability to run programs from the remote participants as screens within the CroquetSpace. http://www.opencroquet.org/

Of course, these are academic solutions, for people with user communities used to space-cadet solutions. However, a Croquetspace with your architects/engineers meeting in a Cave, with people displaying and interactively working on everything from blueprints through solid-models would be majorly cool.

http://www.accessgrid.org/ This is pretty much as high tech as it gets. There are some technological hurdles such as access to a Multicast backbone and at least 12Mb bandwidth, high-quality a/v equipment, etc, etc., but this is the future for sure.

Why... it's almost like Xinerama. Big wow.

I do this all the time for AccessGrid work.

Access Grid

Pretty cool stuff.

Check out Access Grid for at least one reason that we may end up needing all of that pipline. Imagine for a second if you will everyone having a personal AG node...you can pump out 5-6MB/s without *doing* much of anything. Our campus bandwidth (which is Internet2 enabled) would be shot with less than 20 people. Imagine what we'd need if all 15,000 needed 5-6MB/s all the time?

Sounds far fetched, but then again a great many things sound "far fetched" when considered before their coming.

We'll need pipelines that big and bigger...just you wait!

Here's your answer:

Internet 2

If you are wondering, "hrm, am *i* on intarwebs 2?"...most likely, no, but they have a tool to check for you, just nab it and try.

We use it heavily on campus and are quite active in the Access Grid. Great stuff.

You could set up an access-grid node:

http://www.accessgrid.org/

It's got a pretty-good 'wow'-factor, and is one of those things that people instantly want at their own site. The coolest thing is that it scales; it runs on hardware ranging from a laptop with a webcam to a custom-build facility.

Now we have some funds to further the distribution. I will tell this guy it DOES pay to make Open Source Software.

Note that the AG uses multicast, which your router or ISP may not support well. Also, there is a bit of a learning curve to put everything together. There are AG vendors if you want to buy a fully supported solution.

-Andrew

The Access Grid is a project started at Argonne National Lab's Math and Computer Science Division to build a mostly open videoconferencing system over the Internet, using multicast audio and video streaming. You may want to take a look at their technology to see if they have ideas you can use.

Anyway, a "node" on the Access Grid consists of a room with at least three computers: a multihead box running Win2k for display to several video projectors, a computer running Linux for audio capture and playback, and another running Linux for video capture. The audio capture machine usually runs into a Gentner AP400, which does echo cancellation as well as phone bridging.

I don't know of anybody who has software that does this; sorry.

--Troy