crussellp
04-24-2008, 12:23 PM
Hi all!
We are a Canadian University that has a videoconference load of 75 classes per week with up to 6 remote sites in each conference. We have an audio conference load of about 50 per week. Our endpoints are a mix of ISDN and IP connected units spanning from Windsor in southern Ontario to Montreal and all points in between. We also connect with other Universities around the world on a regular basis from Monash and Queensland in Australia to many European, African and Middle Eastern institutions. These many different endpoints vary greatly in their connectivity. Some are switch 56 other are able to do 2meg IP calls with little problem. We also have to connect to all those super secretive and exclusive Telehealth fiefdoms. You know those places... the ones where you need to connect to their super-duper high speed PRIVATE network through a bridging provider at 384 Kbps ISDN...
We have an MGC100+. It is not perfect. It has had some functionality issues, but our vendor/support service has worked very hard to solve them. Some of the problems were environmental, others were hardware. But they have been addressed and are quite solve-able.
We are migrating to HD based videoconferencing. We have renovated one class room at this point and have 3 HD CODECs (Two Polycom HDX9004 and a Tandberg 1700). One of the Polycoms will be used for a mobile conferencing unit (Auditoriums and the like) and one is in our rack of CODECs with our other 8 VSX8000s and 2 Tandberg 6000MXPs. The Tandberg 1700 is for the control room.
Our second bridge was installed at the beginning of the week, 40port RMX2000. This bridge is to run in parallel with our existing MGC100+.
I must admit that I am not very impressed with this bridge over all. Most of my complaints are about the operator's interface. It appears to be made for home consumers or something...
The RMX interface is web based and neutered. There is little in the way of control;
You can't drag and drop endpoints in and out of other conferences.
You can't see the connection speed in the main monitor window; you have to go into the properties of the endpoint.
You can't see all the participants in all the conferences at the same time.
You do not have any visual cues as to when there is a problem with a connection, only when a participant is disconnected.
Video quality goes south when you are in anything other than full screen single site view.
Scheduling is done in a separate interface (and actually resides on a separate machine).
The bridge does NOT play nice with our Tandberg 1700. (FECC errors coming out the ying-yang)
Apparently, this is the look of things to come from Polycom and IMHO, it is a HUGE step back from the MGC line. Even the WebCommander is better than this piece of crap.
<*sigh*>
Before you bet the farm on an RMX... try it. By try it I mean use the interface and see if that is all you need in conference monitoring and configuring... if it is; save your money and get a contract with a bridging service because you really do not need a bridge.
Perhaps I am being a little harsh in my judgment... perhaps it is not everyone that needs to connect to anyone anywhere at any time. But when you do have that mandate, you HAVE to monitor your connections. You have to frig around with the protocols and do a lot of trouble shooting. You need to know at a glance what the status of your bridge is. You need to be able to solve problems preemptively. You need to be able to throw your control rooms endpoint in and out of conferences on a regular basis.
For all those criteria, the RMX's interface does not answer the bell.
But, if you are in an antiseptic ivory towered and sterile environment with a private network where all the endpoints, connection types and bandwidth availabilities are the same and you do not do any real world connections, then perhaps this is for you.
But if you go off-roading with your bridge like we do on an hourly basis... forget it.
We are a Canadian University that has a videoconference load of 75 classes per week with up to 6 remote sites in each conference. We have an audio conference load of about 50 per week. Our endpoints are a mix of ISDN and IP connected units spanning from Windsor in southern Ontario to Montreal and all points in between. We also connect with other Universities around the world on a regular basis from Monash and Queensland in Australia to many European, African and Middle Eastern institutions. These many different endpoints vary greatly in their connectivity. Some are switch 56 other are able to do 2meg IP calls with little problem. We also have to connect to all those super secretive and exclusive Telehealth fiefdoms. You know those places... the ones where you need to connect to their super-duper high speed PRIVATE network through a bridging provider at 384 Kbps ISDN...
We have an MGC100+. It is not perfect. It has had some functionality issues, but our vendor/support service has worked very hard to solve them. Some of the problems were environmental, others were hardware. But they have been addressed and are quite solve-able.
We are migrating to HD based videoconferencing. We have renovated one class room at this point and have 3 HD CODECs (Two Polycom HDX9004 and a Tandberg 1700). One of the Polycoms will be used for a mobile conferencing unit (Auditoriums and the like) and one is in our rack of CODECs with our other 8 VSX8000s and 2 Tandberg 6000MXPs. The Tandberg 1700 is for the control room.
Our second bridge was installed at the beginning of the week, 40port RMX2000. This bridge is to run in parallel with our existing MGC100+.
I must admit that I am not very impressed with this bridge over all. Most of my complaints are about the operator's interface. It appears to be made for home consumers or something...
The RMX interface is web based and neutered. There is little in the way of control;
You can't drag and drop endpoints in and out of other conferences.
You can't see the connection speed in the main monitor window; you have to go into the properties of the endpoint.
You can't see all the participants in all the conferences at the same time.
You do not have any visual cues as to when there is a problem with a connection, only when a participant is disconnected.
Video quality goes south when you are in anything other than full screen single site view.
Scheduling is done in a separate interface (and actually resides on a separate machine).
The bridge does NOT play nice with our Tandberg 1700. (FECC errors coming out the ying-yang)
Apparently, this is the look of things to come from Polycom and IMHO, it is a HUGE step back from the MGC line. Even the WebCommander is better than this piece of crap.
<*sigh*>
Before you bet the farm on an RMX... try it. By try it I mean use the interface and see if that is all you need in conference monitoring and configuring... if it is; save your money and get a contract with a bridging service because you really do not need a bridge.
Perhaps I am being a little harsh in my judgment... perhaps it is not everyone that needs to connect to anyone anywhere at any time. But when you do have that mandate, you HAVE to monitor your connections. You have to frig around with the protocols and do a lot of trouble shooting. You need to know at a glance what the status of your bridge is. You need to be able to solve problems preemptively. You need to be able to throw your control rooms endpoint in and out of conferences on a regular basis.
For all those criteria, the RMX's interface does not answer the bell.
But, if you are in an antiseptic ivory towered and sterile environment with a private network where all the endpoints, connection types and bandwidth availabilities are the same and you do not do any real world connections, then perhaps this is for you.
But if you go off-roading with your bridge like we do on an hourly basis... forget it.