An experimental system for distributed classroom education

This paper describes an experimental system for classroom-based tele-educat ion based on IP multicast. It gives an overview of the system and describes how the system is designed to avoid a single central point of failure. The system supports locally controlled video mixing, provides simple floor arb itration without a central controller, and finally implements a new wavelet -based video compression scheme to achieve better video quality for large s creen projection. The new network protocols involved are briefly described. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.