Muti-party, multi-way video-conferencing

iVisit uses peer-to-peer transport between each user. Your personal video stream, audio, public and private room chat goes directly to those people who are connected to you (via UDP Port 9940).

The connection between your iVisit software and the ivisit.net server is less than .6k/second and is only there to;

a) authenticate users and enable calls and connections
b) display the Community Directory of Neighborhoods and Subscriber homes
c) enable instant messaging and offline storage

It's the quality and speed of the Internet between the callers that determines iVisit video frame rate and audio quality. The iVisit Bandwidth Manager will adapt for conditions to deliver the best possible all-round performance.

Peer-to-peer connection examples;

2 people (requires 2 links), 4 people (requires 4x3=12 links)

24

In an 8-person conference each person requires 7 connections so there's a web of 56 links spanning the globe.

This is the maximum size at which iVisit can be sure of stability and performance
across the open Internet and why a home 'room' defaults to size 8

Increasing a room size by 2 is not 8+2=10, it's 56+34 = 90 connections required.
An increase of 64% in complexity and demand on systems / infrastructure.

810

12 people requires 132 connections (13=156, 14=182, 15=210)
and a 16 person conference requires 240 connections to operate successfully!

1216

Making a room 2 times bigger in fact makes it over 4 times as complex (56 to 240 links) and hence, much more liable to disturbance from packet loss, slow downs, router outages and so on. There's only so much the iVisit Bandwidth Manager can do to compensate for such conditions and any room >8 can experience users "poofing" (vanishing) from the Guest List as their connection looses synch with the others and/or drops its server connection. If any of the 16 are on a non-broadband connection then it will be problematic as Chat synchronization and other timing will be impacted.

Summary: An iVisit Plus Account has a home chat room for 8 people by default. The room size can be set by the server Admin at any value from 1 to 16 however, there are performance issues when increasing the size above 8 so this is only allowed where home owners understand and accept the issues and consequences. iVisit Plus subscribers click here to request a size change (give complete location/name details on the Form).

The Good News: Using your own in-house server, on a LAN, VPN, even the same ISP or cable provider, will be fine with larger sized rooms.