The multipoint control units (MCU) enable communication with multiple participants in video conferences. This means that they are responsible for the distribution and decryption of different video conference and audio sources. MCUs are hardware or software solutions and generally support the industry standards H323 or SIP. At the gatekeepers, various video conferencing systems are registered. For that reason, it assumes the function of logically setting up a connection between the video conferencing systems and the MCU. A gateway is used to connect video conferencing systems with different protocols. Video conferencing systems can be interconnected both via ISDN and IP. Also, there are further specific complementary video conferencing infrastructure components, for example, for the video recording of video conferences.
Considering the needs of the respective customer’s environment, intelligent construction and meaningful planning of the video conferencing infrastructure should be pursued. Apart from IT know-how, this also involves a long-standing experience in large projects.
All major video conferencing manufacturers offer their own video conferencing infrastructure solutions to connect video conferences with several participants. The customer should utilize a video conferencing infrastructure only from a certain number of video conferencing systems or a certain demand for a video conferencing connection. An affordable and flexible alternative is provided by video conferencing managed services providers who offer video conferencing infrastructure on request and video conference management such as video conferencing bridging services. Generally, video conferencing infrastructures are used across all sectors: in companies as well as in education or in the health sector.