A Comparison of Multimedia Conferencing Frameworks

Multimedia conferencing has been an important topic in recent years, because of the urgent requirement of high quality multi-party communications. There are various conferencing frameworks using different methods: H.323-based conferencing has already applied in use; SIP-based conferencing is emerging in market gradually. While centralized conferencing is becoming mature, distributed conferencing is coming forth. What are their respective characteristics? Which product should we choose? In this paper, we review two typical structures of centralized conferencing, and propose several frameworks of distributed conferencing. Then we carry out a comparison of these architectures under study. The evaluation criteria are scalability of the conference size, robustness, extension and transmission delay. Our findings show that these systems with respective advantages are fit for different circumstances.