A Comparison of Application Sharing Mechanisms in Real-Time Desktop Conferencing Systems.

Desktop conferencing is a term used to describe real-time, computer-based conferences in which users may share data through their personal computers. In these conferences, the participants may access user-level programs, called application programs, which produce common displays (screens or windows) on their computers. Because each participant may give input to the application program and sees its resulting output as though the program were executing on his or her local computer, these applications retain their own look and feel as they form a shared environment for the conference. We compare some methods of sharing application programs during real-time, computer- based conferencing. In particular, we have explored different methods in three versions of Rapport, a multimedia conferencing system.