Please refer to H.323 recommendation, clause 8.4.5, "There shall only be one master MC in a conference. A slave MC shall only be cascaded to a master MC. Slave MCs shall not be cascaded to other slave MCs. This allows only dumb-bell or star cascaded configurations.".

My query is: why the above restriction? If one can have a multi-level tree structure in a T.120 conference, why should the above restriction be applied to an H.323 conference? Also, using the above, a conference (using a single MC) can have only 256 participants (terminal label is 8-bits). Cascading would be required to increase the size of the conference - again limited to 65536 participants (that ofcourse is large-enough for a planned conference, if not adopt H.332) and that too in a "wierd" star configuration. Point is why have the Master MCU and its network subnet be overloaded with information from all slave MCs - why not permit a configuration in which an MC can act as a slave to one MC and a master to another. That way a tree configuration for the conference could be built.

Am I missing something?? I would be greatful if someone could give some direction on this account.

Thanks!

Regards,

Gaurav Makkar Senior Technical Leader, Hughes Software Systems