How Web Conferencing Works

Frequently seen as a technological breakthrough especially in the corporate world, web conferencing is an application used to hold group meetings or live presentations over the Internet. In its earlier days, web conferencing was limited to group discussions conducted within a message board via posted text messages.

However, more recent advances in technology and software developments have led to a change in how web conferencing is used. No longer does web conferencing used to refer to text messages, but encompasses a whole new world of messaging where the environment is live and synchronous.

How Web Conferencing Works: Basic Features
Web Conference Web conferencing is something like a regular meeting only it is conducted on a wholly online environment. So instead of you packing your bags, boarding a plane, and spending a week at a hotel conference room, web conferencing allows you to stay in the office but still attend the meeting virtually. It’s all about the web these days and what better way to enjoy the digital corporate lifestyle than through web conferencing?

During web conferencing, each participant of the meeting sits at his own computer that is connected to others’ computers via the Internet. The Internet therefore serves as the matrix by which the whole web conferencing network relies on.

The most basic feature of this particular type of system is screen sharing. With this particular feature, the web conferencing participants have the capability to see whatever is on the presenter’s screen. Presenter-participant interaction is usually facilitated via voice communication which may sometimes be accompanied by video. Voice is transmitted via the VoIP system (or Voice over Internet) or a typical phone conferencing system. Other applications may also integrate text chat to increase options for users to interact with each other.

Web conferencing makes use of multimedia in order to make the meeting as effective and as interactive as possible. Thus, your presentation can incorporate video and audio, plus graphics for a more lucid way of facilitating communication with the rest of the conference attendees. Other capabilities include whiteboard features, desktop sharing, VoIP (Voice over IP), video streaming, instant messaging, etc.

Other typical features of web conferencing applications include: slide presentations (often created through PowerPoint), application sharing (in which participants can cooperatively manipulate a spreadsheet or any other program on the presenter’s computer), web co-browsing, annotation whiteboard (allowing the presenter to highlight or mark items on the display), text messaging, and polls and surveys. File sharing allows you to swap important documents with clients or co-employees and even edit presentations on the fly. Additionally, some web conferencing packages allows conferences to be recorded for later playback on demand.

Web Conferencing and VoIP

With increasing frequency web conferencing incorporates as much communications media into a single system as possible in an effort to produce a full-featured package. One prime example is VoIP. Initially used to enable routing of voice conversations over the Internet or any other IP network, VoIP is fast becoming an important feature of a typical web conferencing package, replacing even the more traditional phone system. It is different from a regular phone in that it allows voice data to flow over a general-purpose packet-switched network instead of the traditional dedicated, circuit-switched voice transmission lines.

More about Web Conferencing

About Web Conferencing
It should be noted that web conferencing doesn’t just mean a real-time online discussion between individuals on the web. It has come to mean more than that as technology continues to expand.

Benefits of a Web Conferencing System
Advances in technology and the Internet have brought about the rapid increase in development of web conferencing systems. So much so that web conferencing systems are fast replacing email lists in disseminating information through the web.

Cheap Web Conferencing
Now, not only do you have the industry giants, such as Microsoft, Macromedia, and WebEx dominating the market, but you also have such companies as Hot Conference, offering their own two cents to the more affordable web conferencing solutions.

Free VoIP Online Conference Room
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