Akamai Technologies, Inc.

Abhijit C Mehta

Charles E Gero

Thomas Houman

Vladimir Shtokman

Greg Burd

Brandon O Williams

Martin K Lohner

A system for enterprise collaboration is associated with an overlay network, such as a content delivery network (CDN). The overlay network comprises machines capable of ingress, forwarding and broadcasting traffic, together with a mapping infrastructure. The system comprises a front-end application, a back-end application, and set of one or more APIs through which the front-end application interacts with the back-end application. The front-end application is a web or mobile application component that provides one or more collaboration functions. The back-end application comprises a signaling component that maintains state information about each participant in a collaboration, a connectivity component that manages connections routed through the overlay network, and a multiplexing component that manages a multi-peer collaboration session to enable an end user peer to access other peers' media streams through the overlay network rather than directly from another peer. Peers preferably communicate with the platform using WebRTC. A collaboration manager component enables users to configure, manage and control their collaboration sessions.

Unified, browser-based enterprise collaboration platform

A method of multicasting real-time video is described. The method begins by establishing a multicast network of machines capable of ingress, forwarding and broadcasting traffic, together with a mapping infrastructure. The multicast network preferably comprises a portion of an overlay network, such as a content delivery network (CDN). A video stream is published to the multicast network by (a) using the mapping infrastructure to find an ingress node in the multicast network, and then receiving the video stream from a publisher at the ingress node. One or more subscribers then subscribe to the video stream. In particular, and for subscriber, this subscription is carried out by (a) using the mapping infrastructure to find an egress node for the requesting client, and then delivering the video stream to the subscriber from the egress node. Preferably, the publisher and each subscriber use WebRTC to publish or consume the video stream, and video stream is consumed in a videoconference.

Multicast overlay network for delivery of real-time video

An overlay network platform facilitates a multi-party conference. End users participate in the conference using client-based web browser software. According to this disclosure, an enhanced 'audio' experience for a user participating in the conference is provided by rendering different participants' audio in the conference at different positions in a three-dimensional (3D) space. In operation, and given a set of audio streams that comprise the conference and that are being received, a three-dimensional (3D) position for each audio stream in a 3D soundscape is computed. In one embodiment, the 3D position for each audio stream is computed by identifying a target area region of space, and then determining the 3D position for each stream in the target area region of space. The relative 3D positions may be determined based on contextual information related to the content of an audio stream, as well as a computed 'relevance' of one stream versus another. The streams are then rendered to the listener based on the computed 3D positions.

Representation of contextual information by projecting different participants' audio from different positions in a 3D soundscape

An overlay network platform facilitates a multi-party videoconference. End users participate using client-based browser or mobile application rendering software, such as a web browser, and using a protocol such as WebRTC. Dynamic speaker selection among the participants is facilitated by continuously determining the 'relevance' of a participant's stream with respect to other participants in the conference. Thus, for example, a particular participant stream might be deemed to have a higher relevance if it is the stream corresponding to a person that is currently speaking, that has spoken recently, or that is about to speak. Streams with higher relevance are then selectively delivered at higher quality relative to less relevant streams. Preferably, individual client machines determine which streams are requested and at which quality based in part on their local resource capabilities.

Dynamic speaker selection and live stream delivery for multi-party conferencing

An overlay network platform facilitates a multi-party conference. End users participate in the conference using client-based web browser software, and using a protocol such as WebRTC. According to this disclosure, an enhanced 'audio' experience for the conference is providing by collecting and correlating microphone data from multiple co-located clients, and then constructing (at the platform) a three-dimensional (3D) sound profile of the room in which the clients are co-located. By processing in the platform (as opposed to locally at each client), the approach enables platform-side creation of an ad-hoc, high quality microphone array that identifies the relative positions and orientations of the microphones that are being used by the clients. Individual audio streams received from the microphones are combined, and the relative position information (of the individual microphones) is used to render a single audio stream that represents a high quality recording of the audio in the common physical space. Other clients in the conference request, receive and play back this high quality stream to obtain a high-fidelity 3D representation of the audio as if they are physically present in the room.

Growing community of inventors

Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Abhijit C Mehta