Web conferencing
Web conferencing may be used as an umbrella term for various types of online collaborative services including web seminars ("webinars"), webcasts, and peer-level web meetings.
Description
Web conferencing may also be used in a more narrow sense to refer only to the peer-level web meeting context, in an attempt to disambiguate it from the other types of collaborative sessions.
Terminology related to these technologies is inexact, and no generally agreed upon source or standards organization exists to provide an established usage reference.
The distinction between webcast and webinar is becoming particularly difficult to define as functionality and usage becomes more similar and vendors substitute the terms freely.
Technologies
In general, web conferencing is made possible by Internet technologies, particularly on TCP/IP connections.
Services may allow real-time point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers.
It offers data streams of text-based messages, voice and video chat to be shared simultaneously, across geographically dispersed locations.
Applications
Applications for web conferencing include:
- Meetings
- Training events
- Lectures
- Presentations from a web-connected computer to other web-connected computers
See also
External links
- Web conferencing @ Wikipedia
