CollabKit – A Multi-User Multicast Collaboration

Computer-supported real-time collaboration systems offer functionality to let two or more users work together at the same time, allowing them to jointly create, modify and exchange electronic documents, use applications, and share information location-independently and in real-time. For these reasons, such collaboration systems are often used in professional and academic contexts by teams of knowledge workers located in different places. But also when used as computer-supported learning environments – electronic classrooms – these systems prove useful by offering interactive multi-media teaching possibilities and allowing for location-independent collaborative learning. Commonly, computer-supported real-time collaboration systems are realised using remote desktop technology or are implemented as web applications. However, none of the examined existing commercial and academic solutions were found to support concurrent multi-user interaction in an application-independent manner. When used in low-throughput shared-medium computer networks such as WLANs or cellula