There are times that in the session one participants would like to share a video or audio file. This would apply in both scenarios where there is only two machines or more then two machines running the shared application; also when the sharing is done at the operating system level where the machines are totally identical in all hardware and software. The participant may also be the instructor in case of a live virtual classroom.
In the event that the video or audio file is on both or all the machines that participate in the session, it is quite straight forward as each application would open the file on their respective host. In the event that the file is only on one machine, having to copy the file to the participating machine(s) would be way to costly on bandwidth and time, Already the purpose of using the replication architecture is to solve the issue of low bandwidth.
A solution may be to stream the audio or video, perhaps at a lower quality or so as the bandwidth allows. Added to that, an option could be build in the interface for the stream to be buffered and the participants continue with the shared application d and come back when the audio or video is at a reasonable buffered level to playback.
In the event of buffering the stream, it has to be done in the background. The rate has also to be controlled carefully as not to hamper the response of the applications being shared, it may need to be reduced to a lower level then what the bandwidth would allow. The status of the buffering and status of shared application synchronizing should be always visible.
