The Internet2 Commons

Video Cloud Services
Communities
Subscribers

Virtual Meeting Rooms

Visual communication technologies allow us to have face-to-face meetings no matter how far apart we are. But when more than a one-to-one conversation is desired, infrastructure must be added to accommodate multiple participants. The Internet2 Commons offers virtual meeting rooms to enable high-quality multipoint video calls with up to 80 simultaneous participants. Read more...

Photo courtesy of Cisco Systems.

Desktop Collaboration

Visual communications are a powerful tool in the growing field of distance learning, and desktop/mobile collaboration is the most rapidly growing area of this space. While dedicated room systems can provide a higher level of immersion and overall experience, desktop and mobile clients promise to extend visual communications to the millions of users that do not have room systems but do have webcam-equipped computers and mobile devices. Though Skype and similar consumer-level desktop/mobile clients are acceptable for point-to-point calls, high-quality multipoint calling and interoperability with room systems requires a more robust infrastructure-based service. The Internet2 Commons fills this need for our members. Read more...

Cisco TelePresence Gateway

Cisco TelePresence provides a high-quality immersive collaboration experience, but is not natively compatible with standards-based H.323 and SIP telepresence and videoconferencing systems. The Internet2 Commons offers gateway services to bring Cisco TelePresence and H.323/SIP based systems together. Read more...

Dedicated Partner Capacity

Here at the Internet2 Commons, we are highly supportive of our members that offer visual communications services to their own constituencies. In order to encourage economies of scale through resource consolidation, we are pleased to offer large amounts of dedicated capacity for members with significant visual communications needs or service offerings of their own. Read more...

Dialing Infrastructure

Here at the Internet2 Commons, our goal is to facilitate high-quality communications technologies that leverage advanced networking. To this end, we operate a national hierarchy of gatekeepers to facilitate cohesive H.323 and SIP dialing, and we have partnered with National LambdaRail to offer Cisco TelePresence dialing and reachability. This combination of services provides a core infrastructure that the broader research and education community can leverage to achieve unified dialing and reachability across diverse protocols. Read more...

Learn More

Get Involved!

Performing Arts

Performing arts can be an ideal application of visual communications technologies. However, the technical needs to this community are unique, and can include very high quality, very low latency, arbitrary numbers of cameras, audio channels, displays, and speakers, echo avoidance, or a combination of the above. This community is dedicated to unique technologies or special applications of commodity technologies supporting performing arts applications.

Audio/Video Communications Infrastructure

The Audio Video Communication Infrastructure Special Interest Group is a forum for collaboration regarding audio/video communication infrastructure issues including dial plan, directory, scheduling, and related topics. Check out the Audio/Video Communications Infrastructure wiki for further details.

Medical

The medical community is currently experiencing rapid adoption of visual communications technologies to facilitate applications ranging from delivery of specialized services to remote areas, to enhancing collaboration in surgical environments, to bringing clinical education to a whole new level. This community has a number of unique needs, not limited to high quality audio and video, but also including HIPPA compliance, specialized instrumentation, high reliability, and mobility. This community is dedicated unique technologies or special applications of commodity technologies supporting medical applications.

Distance Education

Distance education is an ideal application for real-time collaboration technologies. However, these deployments can have unique requirements that differ from standard conferencing deployments, including accommodation of larger audiences, specialized content channels like smartboards, and recording and archiving. This community is dedicated unique technologies or special applications of commodity technologies supporting distance education applications.