First of all this a great book on tele/presence.  I like the / (slash) between tele and presence just like I preferred it in the term tele/conferencing.  This is a multi-part book review and interview with one of the author(s) Tim Szigeti who is a member of the Enterprise Solutions Engineering Design Team at Cisco Systems.

To be brief, I will address three issues - technical, design, and human factors in each review and even if I did that for a year it would only cover a fraction of the very useful information in the book.  You can read snippets that I will include in the TPF-Tele/Presence Forum newsletter or just go buy it from Amazon or Cisco Press Book Price: $49.50 and eBook Price: $15.40 - a great value at ten or even 100 times the price.  How can I say that - because TP-Tele/Presence design is like the web ever-finished, final or friendly.  That is, TP systems are very complex and the network design can be daunting, then there are the human factors which have, IMHO, held this concept back for more than thirty years. 

Meanwhile not to waste any more of your time.

TECH-Tip - The authors recommend the implements of IEEE 802.1p/Q within TP networks.  The IEEE specification defines a standards-based system for providing VLAN-Virtual Local Area Network tagging and COS-Class of Service (why the o is in lower case in CoS and in upper case in QOS is a mystery) across Ethernet networks.  This is accomplished through an additional 4-byte tag (called a label in MPLS-Multi-Protocol Label Switching), which carries VLAN and frame prioritization information.  The 802.1Q tag has a specific formation of four fixed-length fields.  Two of the four fields carry the frame prioritization and VLAN information.  If you want to see "visually" what this looks like click here or go to www.techtionary.com where you can the details in an animated tutorial.  To conclude, the PCP-Priority Code Point bits provide eight levels of priority traffic priorities for Ethernet or Layer 2 frame level.  For example, different classes of traffic are assigned to different CoS values such as VoIP/SIP/OCS might used CoS 5 value, tele/presence CoS 4 value and data traffic sent with a default of CoS 0 (zero).  Bottom-line is if you are going to do voice, video or other multi-media communications you need to implement 802.1p/Q on the LAN.  That is, QOS is important on the "last foot" as much as the "last mile."

DESIGN-Tip - It's the economy stupid, is common joke about what politicians should be really doing.  In TP its audio, stupid.  Why I say this is because we talk everyday often all day on cell phones where the audio skips and gaps occur all too often.  In TP, it is really doubtful that that the video will ever be done correctly because it would simply take too much money to have sound stages used in network broadcast news along with makeup, news gathering and just good presentations skills.  These issues are not forgotten and will be addressed in upcoming TPF Newsletter issues.  However, the authors do an excellent job in room design and audio issues.  They give specific valuable recommendations addressing the problems with audio.  Paraphrased, the authors indicate, "Background noise and reverberation in the room can degrade acoustic qualities and even disrupt the audio switching behavior in multipoint (multi-location) meetings.  Therefore, careful engineering of the environment must be done to ensure that ambient noise and reverberation levels with the room are kept in check.  The goal is to re-create the experience of an in-person meeting.  Cisco has defined precise targets and thresholds for ambient noise and reverberation . . . . providing a comprehensive test methodology for measuring levels and recommendations for remediating typical sources interference.  The key point is to have a test and measurement methodology for all aspects of TP and a means for providing periodic auditing and improvement.

HUMAN-Tip - The book excels in many areas but it is the human factor that has kept TP or tele/conferencing from really being a part of mainstream business communications.  Certainly businesses use it but there were video tele/conferencing systems thirty years ago (that's right 30) that were more advanced than what is commonly found available today.  In the spirit of not wanting to wait another thirty years, here are a few human factors or as Mr. Hal Josephson, the keynote speaker of the TPF Expo calls it "tele-skills."  In my book, Teleconferencing - Linking People Together Electronically focused on a wide range of human factors.  For example, evaluation of the tele/presence experience should be an ongoing effort from the onset.  Ultimate success depends upon a good starting point or base.  When there is a basepoint or baseline is known, change, good or bad, can be measured.  Here are a few examples of what to measure.  Of course, you can come up with your own questions. How do people perceive and adjust to tele/conferencing?  How is the speed, type and nature of inter-personal communication affected?  How does tele/conferencing affect the duration and organization of the meeting?  To keep this brief, please think of all the different communications patterns that existing in typical face-to-face meetings as shown by the very funny graphic shown here. 

Then consider how communication changes in a tele/presence meeting.