Glossary of Pexip Infinity terms
Here is a list and description of many of the terms used in this documentation.
An intelligent conference layout with real-time automatic face detection and framing.
An alert that is raised when there is an issue on your Pexip Infinity deployment that requires attention. For more information, see Viewing alarms.
An alias is the string that is typically dialed by a participant when placing a call, and causes the call to be routed to the appropriate conference. It either triggers the creation of a conference instance, or if a conference associated with that alias already exists, causes the call to be routed to that conference.
Each alias is associated with a conferencing service (Virtual Meeting Room, Virtual Auditorium, Virtual Reception, scheduled conference, Media Playback Service, or Test Call Service), which defines the type and settings (such as PIN) for the conference that is created.
In most cases, the alias received by the Conferencing Node is the same as the alias that the conference participant dialed from their endpoint, but there are some exceptions (for more information see About aliases and access numbers).
Depending on the dial plan, multiple aliases can be used throughout a network to access the same service.
A participant/device that will have a call placed to it from a Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium whenever a conference using that service starts.
For more information, see Automatically dialing out to a participant from a conference.
A link between the Management Node and a Conferencing Node, or between two Conferencing Nodes, used to transmit Pexip control messages. Backplanes between Conferencing Nodes also transmit conference audio, video, and data packets.
All packets are secured through authentication and encryption designed to protect the privacy of the data. For more information, see Encryption methodologies.
Local backplanes exist between Conferencing Nodes in a single location.
Geo backplanes exist between Conferencing Nodes in different locations.
You can easily apply your own corporate branding to the Pexip Infinity platform, and produce a personalized user experience for all of your Pexip Infinity services.
You can use themes to customize the voice prompts and images used in your conferences, and you can apply branding customizations to change the look and feel of the Connect apps (Pexip's free video apps, which can also be used to access those services).
Branding packages and paths allow you to provide a variety of differently-branded web app experiences within your environment:
- Branding packages define the look and feel of the web app used to join a conference.
- Branding paths are the URL paths (such as /webapp, /webapp2, and /webapp3) that are used to access the web app, from where people can join
Breakout rooms are separate sessions that are split off from a main VMR or Virtual Auditorium that allow smaller groups of people to meet together. When participants are in a breakout room they can only see, hear or share content with each other — they are separated from the main room and any other breakout rooms.
Typically, a Host participant using Connect Webapp3 will manage the breakout rooms — creating rooms, assigning participants to rooms, specifying any time limits, and moving people between rooms or bringing them back to the main room as and when required. Guests in a breakout room can request help from a Host, and any Hosts can join (with full audio and video) any of the breakout rooms at any time.
See Breakout rooms for more information.
Pexip Infinity deployments can burst into cloud-hosted services when primary conferencing capabilities are reaching their capacity limits, thus providing additional temporary Transcoding Conferencing Node resources. See Dynamic bursting to a cloud service for more information.
An optional identifier for each participant in a call that can be specified in client API requests and then used by app developers to correlate other API requests. For more information, see Tracking usage via service and participant call tags.
As an alternative to deploying your Pexip Infinity platform on premises (in your own datacenters), you can deploy nodes on a hosted cloud platform. See Deploying as a cloud service via Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for more information.
Cloud Video Interop (CVI) is a Microsoft Qualified third-party solution that enables third-party meeting rooms (telepresence) and personal video devices (VTCs) to join Microsoft Teams meetings.
A general term that can be used to refer to a specific instance of a meeting being held in a Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium.
A conference with active participants that exists on one or more Conferencing Nodes. A unique conference instance is created when the first participant dials an alias associated with a Pexip Infinity service alias, and lasts until the last participant disconnects.
A virtual machine (VM) that provides the capacity for conferences, handling the media processing and call signaling.
A Conferencing Node can have either a transcoding or a proxying role:
- Transcoding Conferencing Nodes are required in all deployments; they manage all of the media processing required to host a conference, and can also handle direct connections to/from endpoints if required.
- Proxying Edge Nodes are optional; they handle call signaling and the media connection with the endpoint, but forward the media on to a Transcoding Conferencing Node for processing.
For more information, see Conferencing Nodes.
A suite of software clients that allows end users to connect to Pexip Infinity services from a web browser, an installable desktop client, or a mobile client. For more information, see Introduction to Connect apps.
A connection can be a call or presentation from an endpoint to a Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium, a backplane between Transcoding Conferencing Nodes, or a call into or out of the Infinity Gateway. In this context, a connection is analogous to a port. Note that a Skype for Business client may require two connections (one for the video call, and one for presentation content).
Pexip's direct media feature enables end-to-end encrypted calls. When enabled in a VMR, it provides non-transcoded, encrypted, point-to-point calls between any two WebRTC-based participants.
See Direct media (end-to-end encrypted calls) for more information.
A conference instance that exists across two or more Conferencing Nodes. It can be locally distributed, globally distributed, or both:
Locally distributed conferences exist across two or more Conferencing Nodes in the same location.
Globally distributed conferences exist across two or more Conferencing Nodes in physically different locations.
Locally and globally distributed conferences exist across two or more Conferencing Nodes in one location and at least one other Conferencing Node in a different location.
A hardware device or soft client capable of participating in a conference. The endpoint's capabilities can vary from audio-only to full audio, video, and data sharing support.
Enhanced Room Management (ERM) is a separately-installable Pexip product that provides management of your Cisco and Poly devices and room systems. From system monitoring to bulk provisioning of software upgrades, address books, and branding profiles, it provides everything you need to manage your systems from one single management interface.
See Enhanced Room Management overview for more information.
An external service to which Pexip Infinity can send details of every participant and conference management event. For more information, Using event sinks to monitor conference and participant status.
A conference participant who has privileges to control aspects of the conference.
The physical hardware on which the virtual Management Node and Conferencing Nodes reside. For more information, see Host servers.
An application that is used to create and manage virtual machines. For more information on the hypervisors supported by Pexip Infinity, see Supported hypervisors.
Identity Providers are third-party services (such as ADFS, Microsoft Entra ID or Okta) that store and manage digital identities, and with which users authenticate using SSO. Within Pexip Infinity you configure individual VMRs to require that Hosts, Guests, or both authenticate with an Identity Provider to access that VMR.
See About participant authentication for more information.
IVR technology allows participants to use a DTMF keypad to interact with Pexip Infinity services to:
- select which Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium they wish to join. For more information, see About the Virtual Reception IVR service.
- enter a PIN, for those Virtual Meeting Rooms that have restricted access. For more information, see About PINs, Hosts and Guests.
The layout used in a conference determines how meeting participants are displayed when they are connected over video, and how other participants — such as those with an audio-only connection — are indicated.
The layout for a meeting is configured in advance by the administrator, but can be changed during the meeting by Host participants using SIP/H.323 endpoints that support DTMF keypad controls (*8 by default), or by using the Connect app, or on Cisco endpoints via the Pexip Layout Controls macro.
See Conference layouts and speaker names for more information.
A virtual machine (VM) on which the Pexip Infinity software is installed. This machine hosts the Pexip Infinity Administrator interface. It is used to create one or more Conferencing Nodes and configure information about the conferences that can exist on those Conferencing Nodes.
Pexip's Media Playback Service allows you to play prerecorded video content (such as adverts and informational videos) to consumers. When the media finishes playing, the user can be transferred to another service, such as a VMR conference, or they can be disconnected.
The size of the largest packet of data that can be transmitted via the network interface of a device (endpoint, Conferencing Node or Management Node).
If you have a dual screen endpoint you can display conference participants across both screens, allowing you to show more participants than if you have a single screen. This display mode is currently only available for the following meeting, layout and endpoint types:
- Conferences hosted in a VMR or Virtual Auditorium.
- Calls into a Microsoft Teams or Google Meet conference.
- Where the conference layout is 1+7, 1+0, 2x2, Adaptive Composition or Teams-like.
- Available to SIP and H.323 endpoints.
You can toggle multiscreen display mode on and off by a using a DTMF keypad command sent from the endpoint. This command defaults to *9 but it can be customized via themes. This command can also be used to apply multiscreen display mode to a dual screen endpoint that has dual screens but the additional screen has not been detected.
When toggling the multiscreen mode, it only applies to the endpoint sending the enable/disable command, and not to all participants in the conference.
NUMA is an architecture that divides the computer into a number of nodes, each containing one or more processor cores and associated memory. A core can access its local memory faster than it can access the rest of the memory on that machine.
See Achieving high density deployments with NUMA for more information.
An authorization framework that enables users to grant third-party access to an HTTP service / web resource without sharing their passwords.
Pexip's
A conference participant typically refers to the endpoint device or system that is connected to a conference — this could be a personal device or a room system (where the room might contain multiple people). A participant could be a video participant or an audio-only participant. Such participants are only counted once regardless of whether or not there is a presentation stream in addition to the main video, and they only consume a single call license. A Connect app can also join a conference as a presentation and control-only participant.
A virtualized and distributed multipoint conferencing platform that comprises a single Management Node and one or more Conferencing Node(s).
The files that are used to deploy the Management Node and Conferencing Nodes onto the physical virtual machine (VM) infrastructure or cloud service.
The term "port" may be used to describe a connection (such as a call or presentation) from an endpoint to a Conferencing Node or a backplane between Transcoding Conferencing Nodes. For more information, see Pexip Infinity license installation and usage.
Port can also refer to the virtual data connections used for network traffic between devices. For more information on the ports used by the Management Node and Conferencing Nodes to connect to other devices, see Pexip Infinity port usage and firewall guidance.
ERM supports the provisioning of configurations, commands, firmware, branding and macros/panels to one or more room systems.
See ERM provisioning overview for more information.
In large organizations with many employees and users of video conferencing, you may need to configure lots of Virtual Meeting Rooms (VMRs) and associated records to support those employees. Much of this data can be bulk-provisioned from directory information contained in a Windows Active Directory LDAP server, or any other LDAP-accessible database.
See Provisioning VMRs, devices and users from Active Directory via LDAP for more information.
A Proxying Edge Node handles all media and signaling connections with an endpoint or external device, but does not host any conferences — instead it forwards the media on to a Transcoding Conferencing Node for processing. For more information, see Distributed Proxying Edge Nodes.
Pexip Infinity can act as a SIP registrar and H.323 gatekeeper, which means that you can register SIP and H.323 endpoints directly to Pexip Infinity. This allows Pexip Infinity to route calls to those registered devices without having to go via an external SIP proxy or H.323 gatekeeper, or rely on DNS.
PexipConnect desktop apps can also register to Pexip Infinity Conferencing Nodes. This allows these devices to receive calls via Pexip Infinity and use directory lookup services.
A reverse proxy is an application that can proxy HTTP and HTTPS traffic from an externally-located client to a web service application located on the internal network — in our case a Pexip Conferencing Node. A reverse proxy can also be referred to as a load balancer.
See Introduction to using the Reverse Proxy and TURN Server for more information.
A conference held in a Virtual Meeting Room that has been created using the VMR Scheduling for Exchange service. Users can host their meeting in a single-use VMR that is created specifically for the meeting and only available for its duration, or they can host their meeting in their own personal VMR.
For more information, see VMR Scheduling for Exchange.
The VMR Scheduling for Exchange feature allows you to create an add-in that enables Microsoft Outlook desktop and Web App users in Office 365 or Exchange environments to quickly and easily add a Pexip VMR to their meeting invitations, enabling any meeting to be held over video.
In the context of this documentation, a Pexip Infinity service is one of the following: Virtual Meeting Room, Virtual Auditorium, Virtual Reception, scheduled conference, Media Playback Service, or Test Call Service.
Note that, separate to the Pexip Infinity self-hosted platform described in this documentation, Pexip also has a managed video conferencing-as-a-service (VCaaS) offering, referred to as the Pexip Service.
An optional identifier that an administrator can assign to a service, allowing them to track usage of the service via the administrator log. For more information, see Tracking usage via service and participant call tags.
Single Sign-On (SSO) is an increasingly common feature of web services and business tools that enables users to authenticate and log into a third-party service or web page, using the same login credentials as the other systems they already use.
- Convenience and security: the ability to securely log into multiple tools with the same login credentials.
- Reduced tech support costs and greater efficiency with only one password to remember.
- Faster, simpler user administration.
See About participant authentication for more information.
Pexip's standard Microsoft Teams and Google Meet interoperability solutions allow your own video conferencing endpoints (and your guests) to join Microsoft Teams / Google Meet meetings that you are hosting. The "SIP Guest Join" (SGJ) feature lets you join Microsoft Teams and Google Meet meetings with your own video conferencing endpoints where that meeting is being hosted by an external third-party organization who has not enabled Pexip interoperability themselves.
Note that this is a guest join experience, therefore someone has to be in the Microsoft Teams / Google Meet meeting to admit you from the lobby.
See Configuring Pexip Infinity as a Microsoft Teams gateway and Configuring Pexip Infinity as a Google Meet gateway for more information.
The socket on the host server's motherboard where one processor is installed.
A label that allows you to group Conferencing Nodes together, typically according to where they are physically located. For more information, see About system locations.
The Pexip Teams Connector is a Pexip application that is deployed in Microsoft Azure and is used to enable Cloud Video Interoperability (CVI) with Microsoft Teams. It handles all Teams communications and meeting requests from the Pexip Infinity platform and passes them on to the Microsoft Teams environment.
For more information, see Integrating Microsoft Teams with Pexip Infinity.
A Pexip Infinity loopback service that allows users to check the quality of their video and audio prior to joining a conference, and verifies that they can connect to a Conferencing Node.
Themes allow you to change the voice prompts and images provided to participants when they use a Pexip Infinity service (Virtual Meeting Room, Virtual Auditorium, Virtual Reception, scheduled conference, Media Playback Service, or Test Call Service) or use the Infinity Gateway to make a person-to-person call or to join an externally-hosted conference, such as a Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business meeting, or Google Meet. You might change the theme if, for example, you want to use your company's own logo, color scheme or terminology on the screens displayed to conference participants, or you want to change the language used in the voice prompts.
You can also define your own custom conference layouts within a theme and use those layouts in the same way as the standard layouts that are shipped by default in Pexip Infinity.
See Customizing conference images and voice prompts using themes for more information.
A smaller window at the bottom of the main picture which displays the live video stream from a conference participant. Sometimes referred to as a PiP (Picture in Picture).
In large Pexip Infinity deployments, a Transcoding Conferencing Node handles all the media processing, protocol interworking, mixing and so on that is required in hosting Pexip Infinity calls and conferences. When combined with Proxying Edge Nodes, a transcoding node typically only processes the media forwarded on to it by those proxying nodes and has no direct connection with endpoints or external devices. However, a transcoding node can still receive and process the signaling and media directly from an endpoint or external device if required.
See Distributed Proxying Edge Nodes for more information.
A TURN server is a media relay/proxy that allows peers to exchange UDP or TCP media traffic whenever one or both parties are behind NAT.
A meeting space that is optimized for use by a small number of Host participants and a large number of Guests. For more information, see About Pexip Infinity conferences.
A software implementation of a computer, which runs on a host server and is implemented and managed using a hypervisor. The Management Node and Conferencing Nodes are virtual machines. In a cloud environment it is typically referred to as a VM instance.
A Virtual Meeting Room (VMR) is a virtual meeting space that is always available to hold a Pexip Infinity conference. It can host any number of people from any type of device. Each VMR has one or more aliases associated with it, and participants access the conference by dialing one of these aliases.
Access to VMRs can be protected by the use of PINs or by authentication using SSO — or both. You can also use PINs to separate participants into Hosts and Guests, with different privileges. For more information, see About Pexip Infinity conferences.
The Virtual Reception IVR service provides a way for conference participants who cannot dial Virtual Meeting Room and Virtual Auditorium aliases directly, to access these services from a central lobby using DTMF tones. It can also be used to route calls via the Pexip Distributed Gateway to join an externally-hosted conference, such as a Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business meeting, or Google Meet.
For more information, see About the Virtual Reception IVR service.
The VMR Scheduling for Exchange feature allows you to create an add-in that enables Microsoft Outlook desktop and Web App users in Office 365 or Exchange environments to quickly and easily add a Pexip VMR to their meeting invitations, enabling any meeting to be held over video.
For more information, see About the VMR self-service portal.
Voice Focus is a platform-wide setting that improves the way in which voice activity is detected by better distinguishing between actual speech and background noise. This reduces the probability that people who are not speaking but have audible background noise will be switched into the main speaker position. Note that this does not remove any noise from the audio.
When enabled it applies to Virtual Meeting Rooms and Virtual Auditoriums, and it uses additional hardware resources (equivalent to an extra 6 audio connections per participant).