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Desktop video conferencing (DVC) is a more up-close and personal technology when compared to room-based video conferencing. DVC is a few-to-few or one-to-one technology. It requires two very capable desktop computers with special add-ons. However, many corporations, such as AT&T, Intel, Creative Labs, etc., have their own techniques to implement this technology. Not all of the products follow the same standards (T.120, H.320, H.324, H.325, H.323). H.320 technology is the most popular. Additionally, there is CU-SeeMe technology that is software developed at Cornell University.
In the olden days video conferencing required a lot of costly equipment to provide "room" based video conferencing. The paradigm for room based video conferencing is that participants at a site all gather together in a specially equipped conference room around a conference table and look at monitors displaying similar rooms at remote sites. Desktop video conferencing is a new paradigm for video conferencing. It is "desktop" based. The paradigm for desktop video conferencing is that participants sit at their own desks, in their own offices and call up other participants using their personal computer in a manner much like a telephone.
Desktop video conferencing is a form of communication and as such it utilizes one of the communication field's favorite words: bandwidth. There is a very precise and very technical definition for bandwidth, but largely when the term is used in non-technical articles it can safely be interpreted as the speed with which information flows. Communication itself is the transfer of information from one place to another. The connection between the two remote sites through which the information flows is called a communications channel. A common analogy is that communications channels are like water pipes and information is like water. A given communications channel, like a water pipe, is only so wide and can only allow so much water to flow through it. In communications bandwidth is how much information can flow through the channel.
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