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WebEx Alternative:
Nefsis Web, VoIP, & Multiparty Video Conferencing is Faster


Nefsis Commentary — The following commentary describes the high-level architecture of Nefsis versus WebEx; and with that as a basis, explains how and why Nefsis provides a noticeably faster web conferencing, desktop sharing, and multipoint VoIP & video conferencing experience.

The context of this material is fully interactive, online meetings, where all participants send and receive audio and video, not just the presenter. Some basic knowledge of Internet routing is assumed.

Nefsis is better for online meetings

Webinars Yesterday, Online Meetings Today

The primary emphasis of early web conferencing products was 1-to-many presentations such as webinars and other marketing events. As customers became more adept with these applications and the the client-side components became more capable, the actual use of web conferencing products started to shift to online meetings.

Webinars remain a major part of the scene, but online meetings drive the cost savings, travel alternative, green computing, and the prevalent financial benefits of this technology to line employees. The shift to online meetings, with fully-interactive participants, also wiped out many early WebEx competitors whose receive-only technology could not adapt to the multipoint, full-duplex demands of online meetings.

The Next Generation

Nefsis is better and faster than WebEx

Nefsis, a WebEx alternative, was founded on a multipoint, real-time routing architecture, designed specifically for proxy and firewall traversal, and high connection success rates in corporate environments. The next generation distributed the servers across a true, cloud computing for video conferencing implmentation, achieving improvements in latency times not available to fixed-site data centers.

The term "Cloud Computing" has generated a great deal of attention recently. Since companies such as Microsoft announced their Cloud Computing strategies, the use of the term has become commonplace in IT vocabulary. As with many buzzwords, the definition of the term is often misunderstood or worse, the underpinnings are lost as variations creep into promotional materials.

Don't Confuse SaaS with Cloud Computing

A common misperception is that all SaaS (Software as a Service) providers utilize a Cloud Computing architecture. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Simply making the server component (of a client/server application) accessible via the public Internet, does not qualify as Cloud Computing.

Implementing a true Cloud Computing solution requires development from the ground up, distributing the server load and access points across the Internet, and some would argue, load balancing, fail-over, and real-time response to changing user demands and Internet conditions. These are the main reasons why Nefsis outperforms all other web conferencing SaaS providers in the most compute-intensive and latency-bound applications, such as multipoint video conferencing and desktop sharing.

For Example, WebEx Media Tone...

As an example, Webex provides basic PowerPoint® and document sharing. Audio is provided through VoIP or standard phone service. WebEx video is supported in a limited manner. As with any SaaS company, Webex learned that user experience is heavily dependent on the quality of the network. In an effort to overcome the inherent weakness of the public Internet, Webex created the MediaTone Network™. Simply put, MediaTone provides virtual private network connectivity to the centralized Webex data center. In effect, the user is "back-hauled" through various access points to a data center. The benefit of MediaTone is that it bypasses the public Internet for a most of the network route.

This was of great benefit a decade ago, but today, may in fact add to the number of network hops (in order to reach the access point). Nor does it address the 'single bad hop spoils the whole network route' problem, that afflicts the remaining portion of the route. Moreover, back-hauling and/or otherwise providing a virtual private network connection to a centralized data center is not Cloud Computing.

Versus Cloud Computing & End-to-End Parallel Processing

Nefsis addresses both compute-intensive tasks and network routing via Cloud Computing that, among other things, assigns virtual servers in response to round-trip latency times for the user.

A system based on a Cloud Computing architecture, such as Nefsis, provides a better round-trip latency time benefit than back-hauling to private networks, plus much more. Processing power is distributed across a large number of computers spread throughout the Cloud. Distributing the experience across the Cloud — and closer to the user — minimizes round-trip latency which is critical in video and VoIP conferencing. In addition, performance and reliability are enhanced through automatic load balancing and failover.

WebEx was built using traditional programming practices that fail to leverage the full capabilities of your computer. Today's computers have multiple processor cores, but most conferencing applications, such as WebEx, were designed to use only a single core. Nefsis is the first multipoint video conferencing application to fully leverage all the cores of your computer, no matter how many. Nefsis was designed from the bottom up as a parallel processing application. Each major functional component is an independent software module working in tandem to deliver a fluid conferencing experience. The computation is distributed evenly across all available cores.

Better Multiparty Video

Nefsis is the ONLY web and video conferencing solution that utilizes a true Cloud Computing architecture. This is why our multipoint video and VoIP is far superior to that provided by Webex. In addition, desktop sharing, application sharing, whiteboarding and annotation are greatly enhanced.


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Nefsis is a registered trademark of Nefsis Corporation. WebEx and MediaTone are trademarks or registered trademarks of WebEx Communications, Incorporated. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.