MULTIPOINT COMMUNICATIONS - THE KEY TO GROUPWORKING

With the increasing number of organisations located in multiple sites, effective groupworking requires communications facilities that can jo in together more than two locations. Multipoint communications provide s such a facility for both audiovisual and data communications, overco ming the current point-to-point network constraints. This paper descri bes the data communications protocols collectively known as 'MLP' or m ultilayer protocol, recently developed within the International Teleco mmunication Union - Telecommunications Standardisation Sector (ITU-TSS ) T.120 series, which addresses the needs of multipoint working within a conferencing environment, but which has a much wider application in the field of multimedia data communications.