Multimedia Tools and Applications

, Volume 2, Issue 2, pp 85–109 | Cite as

Design and implementation of a multimedia CSCW platform

  • Ing-Chau Chang
  • Jau-Hsiung Huang
  • Wei-Hsin Tseng
Article

Abstract

In this paper, a generic four-layer framework for computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) is proposed. With clear separation of functionalities in each layer of the framework, application developers could implement their specific CSCW applications easily. Based on the four-layer framework, the architecture of a general purpose CSCW platform is designed and implemented with the necessary functionalities to help the collaborations among group members. To provide the system with more features and user friendliness, multimedia processing and transmission capabilities for audio and video are incorporated into the platform. Features like application-sharing, group decision support, multimedia mail transmission, etc., are well implemented in the platform. Moreover, an efficient network transport protocol, called VXTP, is designed and implemented to avoid the transmission overhead of conventional TCP. The performance measurements using both VXTP and TCP are given in the paper for comparison. Lastly, compared with other CSCW systems, our design achieves greater flexibility and portability by adopting the generality philosophy in the framework.

Keywords

computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) multimedia virtual-X transport protocol (VXTP) 
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Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996

Authors and Affiliations

  • Ing-Chau Chang
    • 1
  • Jau-Hsiung Huang
    • 1
  • Wei-Hsin Tseng
    • 1
  1. 1.Communications and Multimedia Lab., Department of Computer Science and Information EngineeringNational Taiwan UniversityTaipeiTaiwan

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