Small conferencing system and shared whiteboard as a testbed for distributed multimedia applications using OSI protocols

The architecture and implementation of a small distributed conferencing system and shared multimedia application is described. The conferencing system, which is based on OSI upper layer services and TCP/IP as the transport/network layer, is used to study various aspects of service distribution through process placement strategies in a networked environment. The system also serves as a testbed for the implementation of additional application services, in order to study the suitability of upper layer OSI protocols for interactive multimedia applications. We describe the design and implementation of one such distributed multimedia application, namely a shared office whiteboard under X-Windows.