Additional NetMeeting Features

In addition to the features that are beneficial for a Help desk, NetMeeting offers other useful and practical functionality. You can find the following options in NetMeeting's Tools menu.

Audio Conferencing. This feature lets you make realtime one-to-one audio conferencing voice calls to associates around the world over the Internet or your corporate intranet. Audio conferencing uses H.323-based audio support. Enhancements to audio conferencing in NetMeeting 3.01 let you make calls using your corporate directory servers, the Address Book, or an address bar, in which you make a call by typing an email address, computer name, telephone number, IP address, or DNS address.

Video Conferencing. You can use the Video Conferencing feature to exchange realtime visual images with other conference participants. This feature supports multiple audio and video connections using H.323 conference servers and gateways. NetMeeting supports picture-in-picture viewing, automatic performance balancing for audio and video performance based on network connection speed, and the option to pause, stop, and start video during a conference.

NetMeeting 3.01 offers the intelligent control of streaming video and audio. Intelligent control automatically balances the network-bandwidth, memory, and CPU-usage load by ensuring that the software correctly prioritizes video, audio, and data to help maintain high-quality audio during the transmission and reception of data and video during a conference. This functionality is an important addition that is missing in earlier NetMeeting versions.

Security. Security functionality is new to NetMeeting 3.01. This feature employs user authentication, password protection, and data encryption to ensure your conference's security.

User authentication lets you verify participants' identities through the use of authentication certificates. To prevent unauthorized participation, you can schedule a secure conference that requires all participants to have a NetMeeting certificate.

Password protection lets you use the Remote Desktop Sharing function to control your office computer from home and vice versa. You can also set up a conference that requires each participant to enter the conference's password.

Data encryption uses the Whiteboard, Chat, Shared Programs, and Transferred Files features to encode the data exchanged. Encryption also lets you hold secure conferences in which the software encrypts all exchanged data. During a secure conference, NetMeeting disables audio and video because the software can't encrypt the exchange of this information.