Live teaching with an advanced multimedia distributed system

The Distance Learning Project (DLP) group at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova has developed a real-time interactive platform for teleteaching, using the most modern multimedia technologies, over a wired WAN intranet. The core aspect of the system is the full integration of several communication channels (audio, video and data) into a digital flow, granting high quality communications among a number of remote classrooms, with a 2 Mbps bandwidth limit for each lesson being delivered. The second main feature is the high quality streaming performance for real-time multimedia presentation and the possibility of live interaction between the teacher and the students in remote classrooms. Finally the fully open-source solution allows any equipped classroom to be used either for teaching or for attending lessons, with no need to plan the connections in advance.