First, a small disclaimer: No matter how you slice up conferencing solutions, the categories you use to group them are mutable and subject to instant revision. Combinations of various elements make some applications basically impossible to categorize. Depending on how you look at it mail lists are even a form of conferencing and so is email. Real-time versus asynchronous is even becoming blurred as text, audio and video merge in varying combinations.

Web Conferencing is, very simply, a meeting, conference or seminar that is held over the World Wide Web. Web conferencing can refer to audio, video or text-based conversations and are conducted in real-time.
Web conferencing is an incredibly useful resource for anyone who trades within a global market place. It literally allows you to be in two places at once - sitting at home or in your office whilst conducting a meeting with someone one the other side of the world.

You may think you understand video conferencing pretty well until someone who isn't at all familiar with it approaches you for a simple definition. When they ask, "What exactly is video conferencing?" you could suddenly realize you're at a loss for words.

The Need To Communicate
The need for businesses to communicate both internally and with each other has always been great. Successful transactions cannot be completed without communication - so much relies upon it; decent customer service; placing orders; winning new business.

The decision to pay the extra fees and move from dial-up to broadband usually involves meeting three wants: faster downloads, faster uploads and live streaming video.
The transmission of live streaming video is dependent on bandwidth, video codecs and the ability to transmit as many frames per second as possible. Let's review how these variables effect video on dial-up and broadband.

No new technology develops smoothly, and video conferencing had more than its share of bumps along the way before becoming the widely used communications staple it is today. The history of video conferencing in its earliest form goes back to the 1960's, when AT&T introduced the Picturephone at the World's Fair in New York. While viewed as a fascinating curiosity, it never became popular and was too expensive to be practical for most consumers when it was offered for $160 a month in 1970.