IP Videoconferencing using a Quality of Service Public Network

Videoconferencing in the medical world has been successfully used for quite a few years. Nevertheless it has not spread significantly in daily use. Some of the problems rely on the infrastructure needed to set up a video session: one or more ISDN lines or a fast Internet connection. The first is not easily available everywhere in a building; the latter is rarely so fast to allow for a smooth operation with no quality drops. The use of Videonet, the first European commercial public Internet link with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS), has the potential to be a breakthrough in videoconferencing. We describe this new system and its applications, with the first tests in a hospital environment. Our results show that there are still problems to be solved in order to achieve a quality comparable to ISDN.