Intel Corp has enhanced its ProShare personal conferencing family, with support for videoconferencing over local area networks, in addition to Integrated Services Digital Network communications. Simultaneously, the company announced an extension to its LANDesk Manager product designed to manage its videoconferencing systems over corporate networks. The company announced two options for local area network videoconferencing: the existing Video System 200 has been enhanced to support local network videoconferencing alongside Integrated Services Digital Network-based videoconferencing, while the company has also added the Video System 150, a full-size AT board-based offering for local area networks, without wide area capabilities, although it is upgradeable to Integrated Services Digital Network wide area network communications. The company says the 150 supports Internet Packet Exchange, TCP/IP, and NetBIOS protocols across Ethernet, Token Ring and Fibre Distributed Data Interface networks. Additionally, across both versions of ProShare, Intel says it has increased the quality of video transmission through enhancements to its Indeo video compression technology. According to Intel, the new LANDesk Manager capabilities – in the form of a new product called LANDesk Personal Conferencing Manager – are said to enable network administrators to control the number of simultaneous video conferences and monitor conferencing activity to ensure that videoconferencing does not take up too much local area network bandwidth. LANDesk Personal Conferencing Manager is said to support the same local area network protocols as ProShare, as well as the wide area network connections supported by ProShare 200. These connections include T1, T3 and Frame Relay. ProShare 150 is available now for $2,000 per user, with the wide area network upgrade kit expected to start shipping in January for $500. LANDesk Personal Conferencing Manager is shipping now for $500, and existing ProShare 200 users qualify for a free upgrade to local area network capabilities, the Santa Clara company says.
