[AG-USERS] Truly small sites

[Frank Sweetser]

On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 12:02:34PM -0600, Orion Poplawski wrote:
> Is there any way for truly small sites to partially tap into AccessGrid 
> presentations?  The minimal requirements listed in the docs (specifying 
> about $50K of equip, fat pipes, etc) are pretty steep for a small 
> research company like ours.  However, there are plenty of presentations 
> we'd like to participate in some minimal way.  Any thoughts, suggestions?

It's quite possible.  I've participated in AG meetings with nothing more than
my P3 600Mhz laptop, a USB video camera, and headset to prevent echo.  That is,
of course, for a single person at a time.  You can use pretty much any
recentish hardware, and it should work, at some sacrifice to quality.  Multi
person rooms will inevitably have a higher price tag, mostly due to neeting
projectors (or some comparably large display) and real room echo cancellation.

The only thing it's not really practical to skimp on is bandwidth, and (of
course) multicast capability.  

-- 
Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu
WPI Network Engineer