By Scott Tiner

Years ago I attended a conference where the founder of this publication, Gary Kayye, spoke. During the talk he suggested that while technology offers conveniences, it also runs the risk of getting less reliable. He gave the overhead projector as an example: It was probably one of the most reliable forms of technology that existed. Yet, it was not quite as useful as the slide projector, but the slide projector was a little less reliable. Slides got stuck, lamps burnt out quicker, etc. Then the LCD projector, then the computer… you see where this is going: Each generation is a little more likely to malfunction than the previous. The perfect example was the cell phone. Dropped calls and “I can’t hear you, you are breaking up” are expected with cell phones. But they are too convenient for us to stop using them.

I believe that this is what has happened with video conferencing over the past several years. Skype, FaceTime, Google Video Chat and so many others have become absolutely commonplace in the consumer market. You use it; your kids use it — even your parents use it! My wife’s grandparents use it!!!

When my parents are wintering up in Florida, they call my children on Skype every week.  It is great because it is free and they can see each other. If my kids earned a trophy, or fell and got a bruise, they can show their adoring grandparents. Sure, sometimes half the call is spent saying “I can’t hear you” or “your video is frozen,” but heck, it is so darn convenient.

About three years ago my department was asked to support our first video conference using Skype. We have professional VC systems, but these were interviews with people at their homes for which equipment was not available and we did not want to pay for them to rent a site. We explained to our customer that Skype was over the Internet, it was free and sometimes you got what you paid for. We also explained that the Webcam was not intended for a room full of people, rather just a single person. We were assured that all of that was understood.

Our first several conferences went reasonably well. Requests for this type of support slowly grew. Any hiccups in the connection were brief and our customers understood that was out of our control. What we did hear were concerns about the Webcam and the microphone. The users did not like the narrow view of the lens and having to manually move the Webcam to pick up the other participants. We were asked to do something about the camera and audio.

So we did. We purchased a Sony Vaddio system and installed it in a room. The cameras are controlled via a touchpanel at the head of the table. We installed hanging microphones from the ceiling and brought them into a ClearOne Interact unit. This provided us with echo cancellation as well as teleconferencing capabilities. The teleconference is important because we make sure all of our customers have a back up phone number for the people they are trying to conference with. We brought the cameras and an output from the ClearOne into a StarTech SVID2USB2. This allows the computer to see both of these devices as USB devices and Skype then uses them as a Webcam and microphone. It has drastically improved the quality of the audio and video. The touchpanel allows a user to hit the camera presets, and zoom and pan as they see fit from there.

The next challenge was more out of our control. Some users began to be frustrated when the call would have latency issues. They pointed out that in a 15-minute video call, five minutes spent messing with the technology or not being able to hear the other side was frustrating.

The easy answer to this is that Skype is subject to forces beyond our control. That answer would be partly true, but there are some forces you can do something about. The only problem is you need to go down the yellow brick road and speak with the Great Oz in order to manage those forces. Your network administrator has tools at his/her disposal to help you manage Skype traffic. For example, at Bates we throttle our Web traffic. In a nutshell, that means if a single computer is asking for more and more bandwidth, it will not get all the bandwidth it is asking for, even if that bandwidth is available. The obvious thing we are trying to prevent is students devouring bandwidth by downloading movies, music, etc. This “throttling” can have a negative impact on the Skype experience though, by doing the same thing — denying necessary bandwidth. In working with our network administrators we have been able to identify certain computers that are not throttled, which means they ask for as much bandwidth as they need.

This does not solve all the problems, of course. The obvious other issue is that even if a machine is not throttled, it is still subject to the total amount of bandwidth coming into a network. So, again, we have tried to address this issue. Our network admins have configured our incoming bandwidth in such a way that a certain percentage is set aside for a certain class of machine. Therefore, no matter how much other traffic is on the network, these machines always have available bandwidth.

The effect is that our configuration is comparable to what you would see with a traditional VC system. While Skype can not understand QoS on a network, we have made adjustments to the network that allow it to leave our campus with all the bandwidth it needs.

Our final challenge, and perhaps the biggest challenge, is educating our clients and setting their expectations. We are very clear with our clients that this new camera and microphones and these network configurations do not guarantee a great connection. The largest force outside of our control is what the other end is using. We have tried connecting with people on cell phones, people outside of coffee shops in foreign countries and people in their offices at places of business. Results have varied and not always in ways that we expect. Often, the businesses are the places with the worst connections, because they are enforcing network restrictions on their users.

We are working with our faculty and staff to better understand their experiences.  Typically, we assume that if we did not hear complaints then things must be going well.  We are now thinking that perhaps the users know what to expect with online video conferencing and simply deal with it, so we don’t hear about problems. Our staff have developed a quick online survey (30 seconds) that we are using to solicit information from users about their experiences. We believe that creating a narrative based on these responses will help us talk to future customers about what to expect. In the end though, I suspect that we will realize that the convenience factor will override any quality issues (just like the cell phone).

Whether we are technology managers, integrators or designers, we are all being forced to deal with the convenience factor over the reliability and quality factor. I believe it is our job to tackle these challenges head on. Long gone are the days where we can tell people that if they don’t use the VC systems they are on their own. It simply does not make sense. In fact, with a little extra work, as described above, your network can be configured to function as though Skype is using QoS. Integrators should be designing computer based video conferencing rooms and should have network certified staff, who can work with the local network staff to make suggestions on configurations.

What are your solutions and experiences with free video conferencing? This is a topic in which people have a lot of thoughts and opinions. Share them with us. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Scott is very active in the field, having presented at both regional and national conferences. In 2011, he was appointed as chair of the Technology Managers Council of InfoComm. Scott can be contacted via LinkedIn, on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stiner or via email atstiner08@gmail.com