Standards Web conferencing technologies are not standardized, which has reduced interoperability and transparency and increased platform dependence, security issues, cost and market segmentation. In 2003, the IETF established a working group to establish a standard for web conferencing, called "Centralized Conferencing (xcon)". The planned deliverables of xcon include: A binary floor control protocol. Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP) published as RFC 4582 A mechanism for membership and authorization control A mechanism to manipulate and describe media "mixing" or "topology" for multiple media types (audio, video, text) A mechanism for notification of conference related events/changes (for example a floor change) Devolopment models Web conferencing is available with three models: hosting service, software and appliance. An appliance, unlike the online hosted solution, is offered as hardware. It is also kn...