Web Conferencing up to 2500 People using VIA3
September 3, 2009 – 4:16 amIn the world of web conferencing, most meetings are held in small groups of 2-10 attendees. Recent research by the Web Conferencing Council showed that the average meeting size is an astounding 3.4 users per session, when factoring in all sizes and categories of meetings.
It is a rare case to have an entire company meeting held using web conferencing, mostly because of the fact that most web conferencing vendors do not adequately scale. Some vendors cap the amount of attendees at 20, 100, or 200. Occasionally you will find one that allows up to 1000 users. Last week the Web Conferencing Council turned some heads, when they successfully completed a 2,500 account test using VIA3, simulating a company meeting held on a fast corporate internet. Due to the unique bandwidth management, and the ability to invite VIA3 audience members only, it was able to continually scale as far as the bandwidth and numbers would allow.
The audience mode for VIA3 lets people view the meeting, complete with rich audio (VOIP), rich video, presentations, whiteboards, voting, group chat, and more. Because they are not projecting their own audio or video, their impact to the overall bandwidth is minimal. Audience members can interact with the speaker(s) by utilizing group chat, where they can comment or quiz using text input.