Vantage Point is not just about Bandwidth

Vantage Point from Refined Data works with Connect and provides remote control of Cameras, Microphones, Telephones, Volumes, Tech Support, Motion Detection, Mouse Detection, Continuous attendance tracking and reporting and much more so it’s not just about bandwidth reduction.

On the bandwidth front, Vantage Point publishes streams to Refined Data servers at 100Kbps for each participant in the room; this is less than Connect in most cases, but the Host only consumes as many streams as they can view at one time. The host can see as few as 5 or 6 students at one time or as many as 50 or more depending on their screen resolution, window size, Vantage Point settings, connectivity and bandwidth availability.

This means that even with 100 Participants in a Connect room and one Host the bandwidth consumption looks like this:

• Participant Load: 100kbps Up (to publish their own camera to Vantage Point), 100kbps down (to view the Host in Connect). This is a small signature on the network.
• Host Load: 100kbps Up (to publish their own camera in Connect), 2.5mbps down (assuming they view 25 participant cameras in Vantage Point at one time). The Host is the only one who needs a really good connection.
• Total Load on Adobe Connect: 1 publish stream + 99 subscribers

The host can always reduce their own load simply by viewing fewer simultaneous Video pods in Vantage Point. The bandwidth load for students or participants is not affected at all by class size. Bandwidth load for Hosts rises linearly with class size but can be limited by the host at any time based on the maximum number of cameras they view at one time.

In Connect, the bandwidth load rises with the number of cameras being shared:

• 4 Cameras: 16 Connections on the Server, each user publishes 100kbps and consumes 300kbps
• 10 Cameras: 100 Connections on the Server, each user publishes 100kbps and consumes 900kbps
• 20 Cameras: 400 Connections on the Server, each user publishes 100kbps and consumes 1.9mbps

Even if Connect could technically support 50 or 100 simultaneous web cams in a single meeting (2,500 streams risks significant latency), consider the requirement that participants would need 5-10mbps of bandwidth to support the load, before accounting for VoIP, screen-sharing and basic overhead. Anything above 10 simultaneous web cameras may be difficult for a host to manage and apart from any other considerations, there may not be enough real-estate for content if you are showing 10 or more web cams in the meeting room.

Vantage Point only publishes at 100kbps, most of the time; DSL and Standard quality is already more than twice this load in Connect and can easily rise higher if the room is set to use the Highest video quality at 16:9. With Vantage Point, Adobe Connect saves the server load, participants are not affected by class size, Hosts can see all of their students, all of the time and enjoy unparalleled control of the classroom environment.

Check it out at Refined Data: http://vantagepoint.refineddata.com/