Known issues when Live Meeting uses voice messages or Internet audio across switched networks (873256)

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When you participate in a Live Meeting Web Conference, the speed and the quality of voice message transmission and of Internet audio transmission may vary across switched networks, depending on the following factors:

• Network bandwidth connection speed
• Computer peripherals
• Corporate firewalls

Network bandwidth connection speed

When you use Live Meeting, your connection speed should not be slower than 33.6 kilobits per second (kbps). If your connection speed is slower than 33.6 kbps, the audio transmission process will not work successfully. This issue occurs because, during the time that the audio is broken up into packets, the packets will collide with each other when Live Meeting tries to arrange them for delivery in a logical order.

Computer peripherals

Computer peripherals typically include speakers, sound cards, RAM, and microphones. When you use Live Meeting and other programs, the configuration of your peripherals affect your audio quality. The following factors may affect your audio quality:

• The amount of available RAM that you have in your computer.
• The variations in your company's computer configuration and equipment standards with those of another organization's computer configuration and equipment standards.
• The implementation of peripherals by peripheral vendors who set up these peripherals in different ways. For example, some devices offer full-duplex capability, and other devices do not. Full-duplex capability means that participants can hear each other in real time.

Corporate firewalls

Firewalls also present significant challenges to how fast the speed is of the audio transmission and to the delivery of packet sequences. Because not all firewalls are not equal, some may allow the transmission of Internet audio, and others may block the packets. When you use the Live Meeting Conference Center, understand the capabilities of both your corporate firewall and the other organization's corporate firewall before your conference. When the speeds of the audio transmissions are slowed or when the packet sequences are modified, the quality of the audio transmission is directly affected.

Note Live Meeting is compatible with the RealAudio format and other audio formats.