Successful multiparty audio communication over the Internet

Commercial interest in Internet audio has focused primarily on point-to-point applications such as Internet telephony, which provides roughly the same functionality as Public Switched Telephone Networks over a computer network. The second focus of Internet audio developers has been downloading audio files-typically from a World-Wide-Web server for playout on a remote user's workstation. Multicast conferencing, on the other hand, allows real-time multiway audio and video communication over the Internet and is now moving from the pilot stage to a usable service in countries like Great Britain and the U.S. Multicast audio allows groups of users to participate in real-time, simultaneous audio conferences, supporting communication that goes beyond the possibilities of telephony or broadcast technology. Since the multicast backbone can also support video and shared workspace, collaboration environments can be tailored to support the requirements of many distributed user groups. Another important benefit, particularly for applications such as distance education, is that multicast conferencing costs a fraction of the cost of other solutions. While video and shared data are essential to many distributed tasks, audio of sufficient quality is a necessary condition for almost any successful real-time interaction.