Glance Networks' StreamShaping Technology

Glance Networks, Inc., creators of the "one-button-simple" Glance.net desktop sharing service for PCs and Macs, has released its new StreamShaping technology, which continuously optimizes each person’s view in multi-guest conference sessions to the speed of his or her network connection. The idea is that each guest sees updates as quickly as possible and no one falls behind. According to Glance, many web conferencing services perform poorly when participants connect at different network speeds. People with slow connections will often find their views eventually fall many seconds or even minutes behind those on faster networks. To avoid this problem, Glance used to send screen updates only as fast as the slowest-connected guest could download them, so everyone’s view stayed in sync. That worked well when everyone had a good connection. But if one guest was on a slow connection, everyone else’s view would slow to that guest’s speed. Glance’s new StreamShaping technology sends participants as many updates as their particular connections permit, without letting anyone fall behind. Guests with fast download speeds see as many screen updates as their network connections allow. Those with slower connections may take slightly more time to receive updates, but they don’t fall behind. StreamShaping continuously adjusts what is sent to each person, based on his or her network speed. If a guest’s network is initially congested and then opens up, that person’s view speeds up as well. StreamShaping also automatically reconnects a guest whose Internet connection momentarily drops. This can be important for participants on wireless or other networks subject to fades or brief outages. StreamShaping works to quickly re-establish the dropped connection and catch up to the most current view.