Nefsis Advanced Video Conferencing Technology

HIGHLIGHTS

  • The most advanced multipoint video capabilities
  • Offered as online service (SaaS) or on-premise software
  • Easy set-up and install
  • Superior performance through technological innovation:
  • End-to-end parallel processing
  • Multi-core concurrency
  • MMX/SSE accelerates HD video
  • Cloud computing infrastructure
  • Enterprise-grade proxy traversal, connection success & security

Nefsis takes full advantage of multi-core desktops and state-of-the-art cloud computing to accelerate live desktop sharing and multipoint video conferencing. Nefsis multi-core concurrency brings far more processors to bear than traditional single-CPU codec boxes, Flash, scripted, and other emulated environments. This is the primary reason Nefsis outforms all other solutions in our customer competitive trials.

Reducing Latency

Web and multipoint video conferencing is uniquely dependent on high-
performance and low roundtrip latency times among all the components in a conference.

Nefsis addresses every component to ensure the best interactivity for all participants.


Related Pages:

•  Nefsis White Paper (PDF)
•  Nefsis Cloud Computing
•  Nefsis Feature List

IT FRIENDLY OPTIONS

Easy online services and on-premise software


Nefsis is offered in multiple editions that span the full-spectrum of IT security policies and desktop management controls:

Nefsis ONLINE — an easy, instant conferencing online service (SaaS), offering industry standard security for https and SSL/TLS connections. It traverses firewalls and proxies, and uses standard ports for web services. The Nefsis conferencing client operates with all desktop settings, including hard lock-down environments.

Nefsis DEDICATED — an on-premise software solution, providing access point and virtual conference servers on company-controlled networks. This option is ideal for customers that wish to control physical access to their servers and limit distribution of conference documents to on-premise facilities.

The installation wizard makes Nefsis Dedicated set-up a breeze. Nefsis Dedicated is also the best option for customers that require higher than standard levels of security, or operate under mandates that require use of their security certificate, certificate authority (CA), public key infrastructure (PKI), or FIPS 140-2 compliant security settings.

EASY SET-UP AND INSTALL

Live Device Detection, Point-and-Click Audio & Video Device Selection

Nefsis is highly optimized for ad hoc meetings, making it easy for any new participant to click on a link and join your meeting. Nefsis automatically detects all audio and video devices, provides warnings for devices that are still in use by other applications, and automatically tunes the audio input device. Nefsis acoustic echo cancellation (see AEC below) allows participants to use virtually any audio input device, even webcam microphones.

Animated Main Share Panel, with Online Meeting Prompts

For the new conference host just starting out, Nefsis provides an animated main sharing panel with prompts for the typical online meeting process: invite attendees, activate audio/video, and start sharing materials. The animated share panel and fully-illustrated tool ribbon make it easy to run your first online meeting.

Unicode & 10 Languages

Nefsis uses state-of-the-art software engineering practices, and is fully Unicode enabled. The current release supports 10 languages. Nefsis also uses open language files, for modifying or adding language components, along with a hotkey to dynamically reload them.

MULTIPOINT VIDEO

Fast, Multipoint Video Conferencing

Nefsis uses state-of-the-art image capture and compression technology to render the best, business-grade, high-quality video images at any video capture resolution (1/4 CIF or larger). Nefsis uses MPEG-4 image compression and multi-core, parallel processing (see below for details) for video encoding, processing and decoding. In addition to performance, quality and bandwidth improvements, this gives Nefsis complete independence with regard to video input hardware and displays. With Nefsis, you can mix-and-match nearly any input device in a multipoint conference; and Nefsis can display video in tiled, composite, floating, picture-in-picture and several floating video formats.

High-Quality Video over Any Connection Type

Advanced, multipoint video technology is where Nefsis outperforms all other competition. Past generations of video codecs used fixed bitrate encoding. These room-based systems were installed with dedicated Internet access (or dedicated, point-to-point routes), and relied on fixed bitrate video encoding. If a conference required more than two end-points, the addition of multichannel units (MCUs) or video multiplexers (MUXs) was required. Nefsis was designed from the ground-up for ad hoc connections, using variable bitrate encoding. Nefsis is highly tolerant of real-time changes in latency that often occur over shared connections and the public Internet. In addition, Nefsis software-based technology manages all video mixing. There are no MCUs or MUXs required for multipoint conferences. Today, Nefsis can automatically mix-and-match desktops, laptops, and conference rooms; webcams, pan-tilt-zoom conference room cameras, and Telepresence-quality, HD video conferencing over any TCP/IP connection, dedicated, shared, public or private.

Automated, Real-Time Throttling Maximizes Video Quality, Without Monopolizing Your PC

The Nefsis technology described above enables video conferencing over a wide variety of connection types. But that's not enough. To deliver an in-person, lifelike quality to your video meetings, Nefsis balances every participant's video quality, processing power and bandwidth availability. Nefsis automated throttling governs all three variables, maximizing quality, yet making sure you have ample processing power for live sharing and other applications outside Nefsis.

No Limits on Video

Image quality is a function of the video capture hardware and bandwidth availability at each participants' location. Of course, there are license, user, and video-feature limits that may be set by a systems administrator. You can use Nefsis for telepresence-quality video with HD conference room cameras and sufficient bandwidth; or business-grade video conferencing with webcams and typical office Internet connections. You can also conference with any number of participants you desire, 5, 10, 20 or more; subject to system administrator limits, practical screen space, and bandwidth considerations.

MULTIPARTY VoIP

Multipoint, Full-Duplex VoIP

Most speaker phones and online meeting products use simplex audio, meaning only one speaker can talk at a time. Nefsis delivers multipoint, full-duplex VoIP. All participants that are not muted can speak at any time. Much like an in-person meeting, you can interrupt the speaker and participants can interrupt one another while hearing everyone else at the same time.

High-Quality, Wideband Audio Encoding

Nefsis defaults to wideband audio encoding, which renders audio at a higher quality than landline telephone conferencing. This improved audio quality further adds to the in-person-like meeting experience.

Multiparty VoIP Synchronization

Nefsis multiparty VoIP is synchronized with other time-dependent, rich media components such as live sharing and multipoint video. There are many online meeting products that send live sharing, audio and video over different connections and protocols without resynchronization, thus creating distracting lip-sync problems and other time-delays. You don't see these problems with Nefsis because all data — live sharing, VoIP and video — is sent over the same connection and synchronized before delivery.

Acoustic Echo Cancellation

Acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) is a well-known audio technology that allows the use of microphones instead of headsets, along with external speakers without causing a feedback loop. This is typical of conference room scenarios, and becoming more popular with desktop webcams that ship with built-in microphones. But the science behind many existing AEC products assumed low-latency, or fixed-latency, between all end-points. This is not the case with Internet conferencing, where latency times are different for each end-point, and often change during the course of a meeting. This explains why so many online meeting solutions revert to simplex audio (one active talker at a time) when there are more than two participants. Nefsis AEC, on the other hand, was designed with this challenge in mind. Nefsis dynamic AEC supports full-duplex, multiparty connections and highly variable latency times. It is also compatible with hardware-based AEC components, found in many existing conference room installations.

Automatic Audio Input Tuning

Nefsis customers report that for the majority of desktop users, Nefsis automatic tuning is all that is needed for successful VoIP participation in an online meeting. The visual device-select, auto-tuning, participant device display, as well as other built-in test utilities, are additional tools that make conference room installation and test activities much easier than using hardware products alone.

DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING

Cloud Computing

In September of 2009, Nefsis was recognized by Frost & Sullivan as the first company in the world to apply cloud computing and end-to-end parallel processing in a multipoint video conferencing application. Using cloud computing and widely available A/V peripherals is a new approach to video conferencing. It has several advantages over traditional, room-based systems; including dramatically simplifying installation and maintenance, reducing camera costs, and completely eliminating MCUs and MUXs. Other advantages include mixing and matching desktops, conference rooms, webcams and HD in the same conference, along with a full-suite of built-in web conferencing and live sharing tools. Moreover, Nefsis is a true cloud-computing implementation, and takes advantage of its distributed architecture to select the best nearby server to deliver the lowest roundtrip latency times of any online meeting product.

For additional details, please visit our Cloud Computing page.

End-to-End Parallel Processing

Nefsis uses multi-core, parallel processing end-to-end (also called multi-core concurrency), including all its virtual conference servers and all the cores on your desktop. In most corporate environments, the technology refresh cycle for desktops is faster than the refresh cycle for installed-site conferencing equipment. Nefsis brings more processing power to multipoint conferencing, and it future-proofs your video conferencing investment by welcoming technology refresh cycles. As processing power grows and your technology refresh cycle repeats (e.g., Core 2™ Duo, quad core, Windows 7, 64 bit), your video processing capacity is automatically upgraded too — unlike traditional solutions which just become obsolete.

MMX/SSE Processor Extensions

Nefsis does not stop at cloud computing and parallel processing. Nefsis takes advantage of Intel® MMX/SSE multimedia processor extensions too, off-loading central cores from media-related computation and further accelerating live sharing and the overall conferencing experience. It is the combination of cloud computing (best nearby server), multi-core processing, and processor extensions that ultimately delivers the fastest multipoint video possible over dynamic Internet connections.

ENTERPRISE COMMUNICATIONS

Firewall & Proxy Traversal

Nefsis engineering embodies over a decade's development of secure, multipoint TPC/IP communications in corporate, multi-office environments (History of Innovation). Nefsis observes web industry and IT security best practices for web services (http and https), firewall and proxy traversal. In addition to supporting the most common proxy standards, Nefsis incorporates many vendor-specific enhancements to meet real-world customer scenarios (Squid; Microsoft ISA Server; proxy server installed, but no proxy client, etc.).

TCP/IP Connection Optimizer

Among the most powerful communications technologies, the Nefsis connection optimizer represents a tremendous advantage over competing products. The connection optimizer's technology has evolved over time; selecting the best connection types or ports when more than two are available, often trying multiple methods simultaneously, and then selecting the method with the lowest latency times. This real-time, best-route-selection results in faster connections and a more responsive conferencing experience.

SECURITY

While many Nefsis technologies, such as cloud computing, parallel processing, and multipoint video, advance the science of online meetings, other areas benefit from emphasizing industry standards. The latter include PC-based audio/video peripherals to reduce cost, web services (ports, URLs, html, xml) for broad compatibility, and industry standard security to meet IT policy and regulatory compliance. What is notable is the extent to which Nefsis embraces the full-spectrum of enterprise security requirements.

All Nefsis software and online services use signed code and a third-party certificate provided by VeriSign. In addition, Nefsis offers a multi-layer security model. It authenticates meetings hosts, and provides conference host, presenter and participant-level passwords. Hosts can select SSL/TLS security and encrypt all conference transmissions, end-to-end. Nefsis transports all web conferencing, VoIP and video data over a single encrypted TCP/IP connection, closing many security gaps found in other products (secure data, but unsecure telephone or unencrypted VoIP).

In addition, for those customers that require it, Nefsis Dedicated Edition is available for installation on customer networks; providing the ultimate in physical security and integration points for using customer-specified certificates, certificate authority, and public key infrastructure. This includes FIPS 140-2 compliant settings for specific key lengths and algorithms for signing and encryption.

For more details on Nefsis security, please visit our secure conferencing page or contact us to schedule a technology Q&A session.

Free Trial or Schedule a Live Demo

You can can start your own free trial right now. You can also contact us to address any questions you may have, or schedule a live demo at any time most convenient for you.