You can access most common tasks from the navigation menu on the left. To see all sessions scheduled for today, click on Today's Sessions. To search for sessions based on criteria such as date, conference ID, or location, select Search Sessions. To view more information about a conference, just click on its ID.

Logged in users have more options. They can also schedule video sessions or conference calls, and administrators can confirm or reject sessions scheduled for their rooms. They can also edit their conference times, dates, and settings by searching for them as above, clicking on their ID, and then clicking on "Edit Conference." There is also an option to copy a conference, creating a new conference with the same participants and profile preferences as the original.

Selecting "My Conferences" will list all conferences that belong to you. (Generally, your conferences are conferences you create, or that the system administrators create and designate as yours.) This is the best place to start if you are looking for a conference that no longer appears on the schedule (ie, all of its previously scheduled sessions are in the past, or no sessions were scheduled when you created it.)

If you do not see the options you expect on the IVN navagation menu on the left, chances are you are not logged in; see the login panel on the upper left.

IVN, the MDREN Interactive Video Network, provides infrastructure for voice and video conferencing for MDREN members. IVN sessions use H.323 over IP, enabling live interactive distance education as well as teleconferencing for meetings and other academic and administrative events.

---

Terminology

Here are some terms used on the IVN pages that may not be familiar to all users. In addition, some terms may have a specific meaning to IVN.

Bridge

A device that accepts video and voice calls from different places and connects them all together. For video conferences, the bridge also determines which other site(s) each site can see and how they are arranged on the screen.

Conference

On IVN, a conference refers to a specifc class or meeting. A conference may only happen once, for a single session or it may have many sessions over time.

Gatekeeper

A device that acts as a mediator in conferencing. The gatekeeper directs calls and determines who is allowed to call who, thus acting like a combination phone operator/security guard.

Profile

A group of settings for a bridge that determine how the bridge should run a conference.

Session

A single gathering or instance of a class or meeting. A conference may have many sessions, and those sessions may happen in a predictable pattern or at arbitrary, ad-hoc times.

Site

When discussing video conferencing, a site refers to a single device in some location that can dial into and participate in a conference session. Sometimes, for administrative purposes, we refer to a single entity that may want to participate in conferences as a "site," such as "Chesapeake College," even thouch Chesapeake College actually has more than one device capable of calling into a session; when we need to specify a particular device in a particular classroom or meeting room, we refer to that as a room.

---

The IVN system currently has 5 bridges supporting 5820 conferences scheduled in 157 IVN rooms at 36 different sites, not counting numerous temporarily connected systems and off-network users.