Web Meeting FAQ:
Frequently Asked Questions

No, you can hold web meetings and use the desktop sharing feature without limitations. As NTRmeeting is entirely web-based, downloading and running a software program is not required.

With NTRmeeting you can easily share your desktop or certain application windows with other participants in the meeting. The maximum number of participants for screen and desktop sharing is limited only by the size of your conference room.

NTRmeeting is a very secure system. User information, passwords and communication are encrypted using HTTPS and 256-bit AES encryption.

Conference invitations sent by email can be easily personalized using the NTRmeeting conference administration interface. Just log-in, create a meeting room, go to the participant list and click on the invitation editor to customize invitation emails.

NTRmeeting web meetings are entirely browser-based. The only requirements are a web browser with Adobe Flash Player installed (Flash version 7 or later).

NTRmeeting can be used with nearly all internet browsers. Internet Explorer (Version 5.5 and higher), Firefox (all versions), Mozilla (Version 1.0 and higher), Opera, Safari, Konqueror and other web browsers are supported. Please note that cookies and JavaScript must be enabled to properly use NTRmeeting.

NTRmeeting Live-Recording enables you to record Web Meetings. Your participants can later on play-back the meeting with presentations, files, desktop sharing, chat and all video/audio channels of your attendees. Access to recorded NTRmeeting meetings can be limited to the invited attendees or published for public access.
NTRmeeting Live-Recording is ideal for trainings and corporate meetings.

Using NTRmeeting Webmeetings does not require special firewall settings. In individual cases, restrictive firewall or HTTP proxy settings can intercept NTRmeeting audio and videotransmission. So-called "active" or "stateful" firewalls may interrupt the connection from your desktop to the NTRmeeting servers. Please contact your system administrator if you experiencing problems using NTRmeeting meetings.

Technical background:
NTRmeeting utilizes the encrypted Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTMP/E), for audio and video communication. NTRmeeting usually communicates through TCP port 1935 (outgoing only). In case of firewall restrictions, NTRmeeting communicates through HTTP tunneling on TCP port 80 (the default HTTP Port) and TCP port 443 (default HTTP/S port).

Most of the problems regarding connection drops and problems with audio are related to limited Internet bandwidth and/or slow firewalls or proxy servers. For instance if the NTRmeeting connection test measures 300kBit/s upstream bandwidth, the bandwidth may not be sufficient for desktop sharing of large screens especially when video transmission is switched on. Sending audio and video consumes approx. 120Kbit/s per channel. When using one audio/video channel only 200KBit/s (approx 20 KB per second) is left for desktop sharing.

Normally the amount of data transfer needed to share a whole desktop is between 200Kbs and 1Mbs depending on the resolution and color depth of your desktop. In rare cases, for example when you are showing full screen videos and close and open windows continuously, this could go up to 3Mbs.

Remember that running NTRmeeting web meetings with participants in-house will need much more Internet bandwidth because data is sent from all participants in your office to the NTRmeeting servers and from there back to the desktops (NTRmeeting data transfer is not peer-to-peer when using the NTRmeeting service in-house). In a situation like this, all you can do is to increase the Internet connection NTRmeeting or to reduce the network traffic by reducing the screen resolution and the window size of the shared application. In addition using desktop sharing a flat color background image instead of a background photo can greatly improve the desktop sharing performance. Switching off video while using desktop sharing (just click on the enlargement button on the right side) will help to increase the NTRmeeting of desktop sharing in situations where the Internet bandwidth is limited.

Using the NTRmeeting Web meeting service with multiple participants through a shared Internet connection.
With a NTRmeeting Channel-10, for instance, 10 simultaneous video/audio connections per participant can be used, i.e. a maximum of 100 audio/video channels all together. Please note that when running a Many-to-Many web meeting with 10 participants using a shared Internet connection for all participants (a typical in-house scenario) will result in 90-times (9 x 10) the Internet bandwidth requirements of a single audio/video channel. The same 10-to-10 scenario would require just 9-times the Internet bandwidth (approx. 1MBit/s with audio/video switched on for all participants) when the participants do not share a single Internet connection.

Invitation emails are sent out by NTRmeeting using a registered email server. In rare cases, these automatic generated emails are rejected from the recipients email server or spam filters. In this case please send out the email invitations manually from your email account.

An acoustic echo of you own voice may appear when your participant (the remote end) is not using a headset. The typical effect: the echo is loud and clear just like an audio message from the other speaker. When I'm alone in the conferencing room everything is ok but the moment the other speaker joins the meeting I get the echo. When it happens one can't do anything about it, it doesn't disappear. Usually the other speaker doesn't get the effect.

Answer: A strong echo appears when the remote end (your participant) is using a loudspeaker and microphone without echo cancellation, e.g. the build in microphone and loudspeaker of a laptop. It is recommended to use a headset for audio or a webcam with an echo cancelling audio driver such as a Logitech webcam. When using Windows with NTRmeeting, please make sure that the microphone input is not selected in the volume control (i.e. output). This is often a default setting with windows. Enable the microphone input as output may result in an acoustic feedback. See the attached screen shots for Windows audio settings. For conference rooms a professional conference microphone and loudspeaker such as the ClearOne Chat 150 is mandatory.

Conference microphones for NTRmeeting are equipped with an USB interface for PC and/or Mac. We can recommend the following audio and video equipment with NTRmeeting:

Webcams:

• Logitech QuickCam® Pro for Notebooks
• Logitech QuickCam® Pro 9000
• QuickCam® for Notebooks

For improved stability under Windows with Logitech webcams please consider installing the webcam driers only and not the optional webcam utility software.

Microphones and headsets:
For headsets we can highly recommend Plantronics Headsets:

• Plantronics Audio 340
• Plantronics DSP-400 (USB)
• Conference systems (microphones and loudspeakers)

For (non web-based) meetings with multiple participants participating a meeting in the same room, a conference system/microphone with built-in loudspeaker is required. Yamaha Project Phones are the conference microphone speakers of choice for NTRmeeting Web meetings. We can highly recommend using Yamaha conference systems with NTRmeeting.

Yamaha PJP-25: Small and portable conference microphone speaker with 12 built-in array microphones for exeptional audio quality.
Yamaha PJP-100: Stationary and extendable conference microphone speaker. Supports dasy-chaining of multiple devices.
Yamaha CAM-1: Web conference camera with tracking feature and 180/360 degree fisheye lens.

It is important to have a proper Internet bandwidth for NTRmeeting meetings since the upstream (to the Internet) bandwidth requirements for video and desktop sharing can be high when using video and desktop sharing. If you are using an ADSL (Asymmetric Direct Subscriber Line) Internet connection, an asymmetric satellite link or a mobile Internet connection (e.g. 3G), we recommend using the Internet connection with one meeting participant only when using video and/or desktop sharing. With an asymmetric Internet connection your upstream bandwidth, i.e. the NTRmeeting from your desktop to the Internet, restricts the maximum number of participants which can participate a meeting within your network when using video and/or desktop sharing. With asymmetric links the downstream (download) bandwidth is typically much faster (5 to 16 times) than the upstream bandwidth (upload). The upload speed is limiting how fast you can upload your video data and send it to the other meeting participants. When using an ADSL connection testing NTRmeeting web meetings with multiple desktops at the same time with the same Internet access line will fail in most cases because of the insufficient upstream bandwidth.

The upstream bandwidth requirements PER PARTICIPANT for NTRmeeting are:

• 25kbps when using audio only
• 120kbps when using audio and video
• > 200kbps when using desktop sharing.

To verify where potential problems are located, please check your Internet environment by using the Online Connection Check when logged-in under “My NTRmeeting”. In case the connection check reports problems with the Internet connection please contact your system administrator or send the report of the NTRmeeting Connection Check to our technical support for assistance. As NTRmeeting fully complies with corporate security rules it does not attempt to overcome IT security firewalls rules or proxy servers. Therefore, depending on the IT environment, this may cause NTRmeeting video and audio to be delayed.

The required Internet bandwidth depends on the number of participants within the meeting. For audio communication (VoIP) a minimum bandwidth of approx. 20kBit/s (0.02Mbit/s) times the number of speakers will be required. For video and audio an upstream bandwidth between of approx. 0.16MBit/s (depending on video quality) and 0.16MBit/s times the [number of conference participants – 1) downstream bandwidth is required.

Example: for a NTRmeeting conference with 5 participants where each participant transmits both audio and video, each participant requires 0.16MBit/s connection speed to the server (upstream) and 0,6MBit/s downstream bandwidth.

Desktop sharing
Normally the amount of data transfer needed to share a whole desktop is between 200Kbs and 1Mbs depending on the resolution and color depth of your desktop. In rare cases, for example when you are showing full screen videos and close and open windows continuously, this could go up to 3Mbs.

Please log-in on NTRmeeting.com, click on "My account" and enter your license key.