IP videoconferencing service providers

In the wake of Sept. 11, there's been a surge of interest in videoconferencing as a way to avoid traveling for meetings. Because many companies lack the time, money and expertise to build out robust videocentric services, many vendors are offering hosted services.

We tested six such services: InView IP Videoconferencing Services, WireOne Technology's Glowpoint, Reality Fusion's SeeSaw Distance Meetings, First Virtual Corp.'s (FVC) CUseeMe World, Eyeball Networks' Communicator and FocusFocus' Meeting. InView and WireOne offer guaranteed quality of service (QoS) over VPN links, while the other four rely on the Internet for WAN transport. A seventh vendor, Sprint, accepted our invitation but because of a series of internal obstacles on its part, couldn't complete the evaluation. We did not score it.

Because the two types of services are different enough, we gave two awards for this review. WireOne's Glowpoint wins a World Class Award for QoS-guaranteed IP videoconferencing services. WireOne's service and support staff met and in some cases exceeded our expectations.

For the Internet-based services, where proprietary applications are common and QoS guarantees are virtually absent, Reality Fusion's SeeSaw Distance Meetings service wins a Blue Ribbon Award. It met our business users' feature expectations and had good quality video and audio. We also found that Reality Fusion's service management portal gives network executives significant control over enterprise network traffic and the use of resources.

What's best for you?

The two types of services vary, having fundamentally different architectural issues. The Internet-based services are best for end users familiar with chat programs, who will be conferencing from their cubicles or offices. Employees likely would use the guaranteed network services in a conference room.

Only the guaranteed network services needed to submit a proposal and an analysis because they require a commitment of one year or more, and so we could compare the cost of outsourcing with an in-house deployment. The Internet-based services tend to charge on a pay-as-you-go basis (except FVC's CUseeMe World, which was free).

WireOne, which built its own VPN, responded to the request for proposal (see the RFP) within the 14-day window with a thorough proposal that included application-specific language and details ranging from network diagrams to sample service-level agreements. Nearly 60 days later, InView, which uses third-party network service providers, submitted its proposal. The in-depth proposal described the services that Savvis Communications, InView's network services provider, would deliver. InView also said the single point of contact for the customer would be the InView account manager.

WireOne's financial model was more clearly presented, and additional services were more economical than InView for similar services. The big difference was in the breadth of options and video services, such as periodic software upgrades, direct dial gateway services and call-forwarding features, included with WireOne's base package. InView does not use a gatekeeper to manage the customer's endpoints. WireOne technicians manage the Glowpoint network services via an H.323 gatekeeper. Network operations personnel have visibility into every endpoint registered with the gatekeeper and can build supplemental services, such as conditional and unconditional call forwarding, call routing for the ISDN gateway services and future custom features.

Provisioning and setup

Results varied with the ordering and provisioning of our circuits between WireOne and InView. After each local exchange provider brought in a line, WireOne promptly shipped a preconfigured Netopia router (model R5300) to each office with a small page that included all the IP addresses, subnet masks and gateway addresses. We installed the router and set up the videoconferencing endpoints and PCs in minutes.

For InView, we had to complete an IP address justification form, and once the circuit was ready, we needed a separate phone line for the carrier's access to a 33.6K bit/sec modem. Using the modem, remote technicians configured the Lucent DSU/CSU once the components were delivered on-site. Once the IP addresses were assigned, it took nearly two days at one location to troubleshoot the deployment before it correctly mapped in the service provider's WAN.

With the Internet-based services, the customer bears the provisioning issues. Each end user must obtain the client application and perform routine installations. We installed all the client applications we tested on multiple operating systems, and found that with one exception (FocusFocus client doesn't support Windows XP), the vendors are prepared to support the range of desktop environments found in enterprise networks. We also were pleasantly surprised at how well each application used built-in Windows drivers to discover and configure the camera, speakers and microphone to maximize video quality and minimize echo.

The Eyeball Communicator client application is only 3M bytes in size, while CUseeMe Pro and SeeSaw Communicator clients are in the 5M to 6M byte range. The FocusFocus client application came in at a lean 300K bytes.

We encountered difficulty from our Cap Gemini network location getting a videoconference through a firewall and proxy server combination with Internet-based services. Despite carefully following each vendor's recommendations, we couldn't complete a call from this location to any of the Internet-based services or to any of the other test sites. We did not encounter the firewall problems from the Network World test location.

In the meeting

There were dramatic differences between vendors' training programs, with the QoS vendors boasting the most well-developed user orientation options. In both cases, we received demonstrations of scheduling portals and also discussed the user's ability to set up ad hoc calls with the Polycom ViewStation end-user application.

During point-to-point and multipoint calls we found varied quality from the Internet-based vendors. Regardless of the bandwidth available at the last mile, the sessions began with an active chat session in which we needed to adjust audio or reposition our Web camera to produce the best effects. We did not like the graphic design of the FocusFocus client application because it was too crowded and lacked graphic 'treatments.' CUseeMe Pro was more like a 'light' application, in contrast with previous software clients the company has published. Eyeball's client was intuitive and elegant in the way multiple windows could be detached from the communications application interface and then reattached. SeeSaw's user interface is a stylish black navigation window with controls on the right and status indicators and meeting participant list on the left of the screen. We liked the use of icons to show the moderator and speaker roles, and the audio and video quality. From within the application a user can select a window and record the speaker's video, although unfortunately, the resulting .avi file does not include audio.

Data collaboration, previously a common feature in videoconferencing client applications, was eliminated in CUseeMe, is not available in Eyeball or SeeSaw Communicator clients and is a plug-in for the FocusFocus application. Although the Glowpoint virtual private network has strict filtering of all traffic on the service, users are able to establish T.120 sessions in parallel with the H.323 session or in-band, such as is supported with Polycom’s iPower platform and Microsoft NetMeeting 3.01. On the InView service, there were no traffic restrictions, permitting not only establishment of a parallel NetMeeting or Web conferencing session but users can also surf the Web and receive and send e-mail.

With the exception of FocusFocus, which did not offer a satisfactory multipoint usage scenario, the service providers could support meetings of four to five users comfortably. As the sizes reached beyond that, service providers offer continuous presence (permits all users to see one another in a tiled screen) using a multipoint conferencing bridge. An alternative to continuous presence is voice activated switching, which is available in the InView and WireOne services. In the case of SeeSaw Distance Meetings, Reality Fusion says it can support up to 150 participants in a single meeting, although only six can be seen on the screen at once.

Reaching beyond the boundaries

A final difference between the guaranteed network and the Internet-based services is interoperability between products and networks. For the guaranteed network services, a gateway can be introduced when a participant uses ISDN. We liked that WireOne offered a clear gateway dialing manual. We could initiate calls from the IP network through the gateway at the data rate of our choice (using a dialing prefix) to ISDN videoconferencing systems in our respective locations. With the Internet-based services, you can't interconnect users of different networks or services. Instead, you have to agree on a single network, download the same client application and meet on common ground.

Conclusion

We were impressed with the state of the IP videoconferencing services industry. The maturity of WireOne's Glowpoint services was clear in this study; in the near future, at least, other companies will find it difficult to match the reliability, efficiency and feature set that WireOne has developed. In the Internet-based services category, Reality Fusion's SeeSaw's performance dramatically exceeded our expectations, in the quality of the video/audio and the portal functionality. If you decide to pilot videoconferencing to employee desktops, you can't go wrong with Reality Fusion.

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Perey is president of Perey Research & Consulting in Placerville, Calif. The company provides business development consulting services and conducts market research on the use of video in enterprise. She can be reached at cperey@perey.com

How we did it
Our testing methods explained.

Online interactive Buyer's Guide
Compare different features and services these IP videoconferencing service providers have to offer.

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