Adaptive streaming of conference media and data

#Web conferencing is used to conduct live meetings or presentations via the Internet. In such a web conference, multiple participant computers are connected to each other via the Internet. Each participant computer may have one or more conferencing individuals associated therewith. One, some or all of the participant computers may be capable of consuming conferencing information. One some or all of the participant computers may be capable of providing conference information. Furthermore, one, some or all of the participant computers may be capable of both consuming and providing conferencing information. A conferencing service gathers the conference information provided by the participant computers, and redistributes the conference information to the participant computers as appropriate.

#Conferencing information might include, for example, video and audio information. However, conferencing information might also include other types of data. For instance, slide decks, images, white board data, simulations, and other types of data may also be communicated as part of the conference. As the web conference is conducted, participant computers thus upload conferencing information to a conferencing clearing house, which then redistributes the conferencing information to other participant computers as appropriate. Sometimes, it is necessary to flow conferencing information security.

#Current conference/event solutions needing to connect and flow conferencing information securely between participant computers do so via unicasting. In other words, there is a dedicated connection for flowing conferencing information from the conference service to each participant computer that consumes conference information. Unicasting is advantageous in some respects as it allows the conference service to deal uniquely with the varied bandwidth and reliability of each participant computer.

#In order to describe the manner in which the above-recited and other advantages and features can be obtained, a more particular description of various embodiments will be rendered by reference to the appended drawings. Understanding that these drawings depict only sample embodiments and are not therefore to be considered to be limiting of the scope of the invention, the embodiments will be described and explained with additional specificity and detail through the use of the accompanying drawings in which:

#FIG. 1 illustrates a physical conferencing data distributed system that includes a single conference data dispatch system that dispatches conference data to multiple conference participant computing systems;

#FIG. 2A illustrates one example hierarchy of conference data caching computing systems interpositioned between a conference data dispatch system and conference participant computing systems;

#The principles described herein may be used in any distributed conferencing system that flows conference data from at least one conference data dispatch system to multiple conference participant computing systems. Conferencing participant computing systems in any given conference may be as few as one, but as many as potentially thousands, or even perhaps millions in the future. The principles described herein are not limited to the particular number of conferencing participants. As the number of participating conference participant computing systems increases, however, the principles described herein can become increasingly beneficial in conserving bandwidth, processing, and other important computing resources. Nevertheless, FIG. 1 is provided as an example physical conference data distributed system 100 in which the principles described herein may be employed.

#FIG. 1 illustrates a physical conferencing data distributed system 100 that includes a single conference data dispatch system 101 and multiple conference participant computing systems 102. Each conference participant computing system 102 is capable of rendering at least some of the conference data. However, there might be a wide disparity in capabilities from one computing system to another. For instance, there might be one participant whose associated conference participant computing system is a cell-phone with limited viewing area and connected to the Internet only via a relatively slow Internet connection, and perhaps even has a weak cellular signal. On the other hand, other conference participant computing systems might have panoramic view capability, have many audio zones, with full application sharing capability, and might have dedicated fiber-optic connection directly to the Internet backbone. Thus, the various capabilities of the conference participant computing systems may vary widely. Nevertheless, each is able to render conference data to a certain degree.

#Stated differently, each conference participant computing system may be capable of rendering the audio of a conference, but perhaps at different sampling rates. Some might render audio in stereo, or perhaps in some form of surround sound or other multiple-zone audio. Alternatively or in addition, each conference participant might render video to varying abilities. For instance, some conference participant computing systems might not be able to render video at all. Others may have lower or higher resolution levels. The computing systems might have different aspect ratios. Some computing systems might even be able to render panoramic views. Each conference participant computing system might also be able to engage in application sharing activities to varying degrees. For instance, some might be able to render slide decks, while others might not. Some might be able to render whiteboard sharing, and others might not, and so forth. Some might even be able to render conferencing information unconventionally such as, for example, using brail machines to render text information to the visually impaired. In this description, the “rendering” of video data means displaying video data, the “rendering” of audio data means the sounding of audio data, and the “rendering” of application sharing or other conference data means the communication of such data so as to communicate information to the conference participant.