Pexip Infinity version 23 features and specifications

• Software-based, virtualized application architecture, running on industry-standard servers.
• Management using industry-standard tools, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper‑V, KVM and Xen, and the ability to deploy onto generic hypervisors and orchestration layers.
• Ability to deploy on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) cloud platforms, including dynamic bursting into those services when primary conferencing capabilities are reaching their capacity limits.
• Flexible deployment model allowing customers to deploy the platform in the way that is most appropriate for them without needing to consume additional software licenses or purchase dedicated hardware.
• Ability to seamlessly increase capacity by deploying new, updated, or additional hardware resources.
• Management API supporting configuration, status reporting and call control.
• Support for Russian and Chinese language in the Pexip Infinity Administrator interface.

• Efficient distribution to reduce bandwidth consumption over expensive WANs.
• Able to deploy dedicated Proxying Edge Nodes to handle all external connections, and leave the conference media processing to privately-addressed Transcoding Conferencing Nodes.
• Keeps media as local to each endpoint as possible, reducing the negative impacts of latency, jitter, and packet loss commonly experienced on centralized deployments.
• Able to overflow capacity between nodes and locations, providing support for conferences that span multiple physical boxes.
• Industry-leading resilience and redundancy capabilities.
• A flexible licensing model that allows you to pool conference resources and quickly increase capacity in response to current local requirements.

• Upscaling all connected participants to provide a seamless experience to all.
• Ability to respond dynamically to fluctuating network conditions by downspeeding and upspeeding individual participants, and support for endpoint-based packet loss recovery and adaptation methodologies (such as packet loss concealment and dynamically adapting bandwidth), thereby protecting the user experience in the event of information loss.
• Bandwidth-optimized content sharing towards Infinity Connect clients for crisp image at low bandwidth.
• Full support for individual transcoding and transrating of both main stream video and audio, and dual stream content.
• Simple conference management and interaction for conference participants using Infinity Connect clients, including the ability for Host participants to add, disconnect, mute and unmute other participants.
• Advanced conference management and interaction for administrators (using the web-based Administrator interface or the management API).
• Optional tagging of services to allow service providers to track VMR use in CDRs and logs.

• Virtual Meeting Rooms providing personal meeting spaces for everyone within the organization.
• Virtual Auditoriums designed to hold larger lecture-style conferences.
• Virtual Reception IVR (Interactive Voice Response) service.
• Pexip Distributed Gateway enables endpoints to make point-to-point calls to other endpoints that use different protocols and media formats (e.g. from Skype for Business / Lync or WebRTC to H.323). Includes DTMF support. It can also route calls into an externally-hosted conference, such as a Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business meeting, or Google Hangouts Meet.
• VMR Scheduling for Exchange enables Microsoft Outlook desktop and Web App users to schedule meetings using Pexip VMRs as a meeting resource.
• One-Touch Join enables the "click to join" functionality available in VTC endpoints.
• VMRs, devices and users can be bulk-provisioned from directory information contained in a Windows Active Directory LDAP server, or any other LDAP-accessible database.
• Choice of layouts: main speaker only; 4 main speakers; main speaker + 7 video thumbnails; main speaker + 21 video thumbnails; or 2 main speakers + 21 video thumbnails (see Selecting the layout seen by participants for more information).
• Conference participants can chat and share messaging content.
• Can output a dedicated multimedia stream to enterprise CDN (Content Delivery Network) streaming and recording services such as Wowza, Adobe, VBrick, Quickchannel, Qumu, Microsoft Stream and Azure Media Services, and to public streaming services such as YouTube, Facebook and Periscope.
• Ability to manage conferences and participants:
  • PIN-protect conferences and differentiate between Hosts and Guests.
  • Lock a conference to prevent any further participants from joining.
  • Transfer a participant to another conference.
  • Limit the number of participants in a conference, on a per-conference basis.
  • Limit the bandwidth used by each participant, on a per-conference and/or global basis.
• Ability to re-brand with your own images and voice prompts, on a per-conference basis.
• Ability to re-brand the Infinity Connect experience.
• Ability to integrate Infinity Connect (WebRTC/RTMP) functionality with third-party applications and websites via a front-end SDK.
• Call policy decisions can be taken by an external system or a local policy script.
• Test call service that allows users to check their connectivity and the quality of their video and audio.

• Full support for existing industry-standard protocols (SIP, H.323), as well as other technologies (HTML5, Microsoft Lync, Skype for Business, RTMP, WebRTC, ORTC).
• Ability to enable and disable support for individual audio and video codecs.
• Easy integration with existing SIP and H.323 call control solutions including Cisco UCM, Cisco VCS, Polycom CMA, Polycom DMA, Avaya Aura, Microsoft Lync 2010 and 2013, Skype for Business and others.
• Integration with Microsoft Teams.
• Integration with Google Hangouts Meet.
• Integration with Microsoft Exchange and Office 365.
• Conferencing Nodes can act as SIP registrars and as H.323 gatekeepers; nodes in the same system location act as alternate gatekeepers for the purposes of H.323 registration.
• Support for automatic call escalation using Multiway (Cisco VCS), call transfer capability (Cisco UCM), and CCCP to a Microsoft Skype for Business / Lync meeting.
• Support for presence and customizable avatar published to a Microsoft Skype for Business / Lync client.
• Support for automatic dial-out to audio bridges, including automatically issuing conference aliases and pass codes via DTMF tone generation.
• IPv4 and IPv6 support.
• Support for Far-End Camera Control (FECC).
• Support for Cisco One Button to Push (OBTP).
• Ability to tag management, call signaling, and media packets independently with DSCP QoS support.
• Support for Forward Error Correction (FEC), downspeeding, bandwidth throttling, and other packet loss concealment technologies.
• Unicode support (SIP, Infinity Connect, Administrator interface).

• Support for static NAT.
• Support for static routes.
• Conferencing Nodes can be deployed with dual network interfaces.
• Support for far-end NAT traversal (media latching).
• Support for media over a TCP connection to assist with firewall traversal.

• Designed to comply with US Federal security requirements.
• TLS certificate management, HSTS, certificate signing requests (CSRs).
• DTLS support.
• Active Directory / LDAP integration for administrator account authentication and authorization.
• SNMPv2c and SNMPv3 support.
• Support for multiple roles of access.
• Authenticated SIP trunks.
• Limit Pexip Distributed Gateway calls to registered devices only.

• Can be used to join conferences as a full audio/video participant, an audio-only participant, or as a presentation and control-only participant.
• Can be used to make point-to-point calls in conjunction with the Pexip Distributed Gateway.
• Provides conference control to Host participants.
• Allows participants to share and view content, whether or not they are connected with video and/or audio. Supported formats are JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF and PDF.
• Infinity Connect desktop client and Infinity Connect web app via Chrome, Opera or Firefox users can share their screen in addition to sharing images and PDFs.
• Chat (Instant Messaging) support.
• Supports sending of DTMF tones.

• Allows participants to join a Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium, or make a call via the Pexip Distributed Gateway, using a web browser as their video endpoint.

The web app is supported in:

• Google Chrome version 61 and later (64-bit only)
• Mozilla Firefox version 60 ESR and later (Firefox version 68 and later requires Pexip Infinity version 21 and later)
• Microsoft Edge version 41 and later (including Edge Chromium)
• Opera version 53 and later
• Apple Safari version 11.1 and later on macOS. Note that Safari version 11 and later will not work with Pexip Infinity version 15 or earlier.
• Apple Safari on iOS 11.2 and later.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer version 11 and later on Windows 7 (requires Flash Player 11 and later ActiveX® plugin, and must not be in Compatibility View); Windows 10 is not supported. In all cases, Internet Explorer redirects to the legacy web app. As of 1 January 2020, we no longer provide support for customers using the Infinity Connect web app with Microsoft Internet Explorer.

We strongly recommend using the latest publicly-released version (i.e. "stable version" or "supported release") of a browser.

• Allows a participant to join a Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium, or make a call via the Pexip Distributed Gateway, using a lightweight client on any PC with any operating system.
• Allows users to register their clients in order to receive incoming calls and use directory services.
• Can be integrated with Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS), allowing users to register their clients using their AD credentials.

Supported on:

• Microsoft Windows 7 and later
• macOS 10.11 and later
• Ubuntu Linux 16.04 and later

Note that 32-bit operating systems are not supported with the Infinity Connect desktop client.

• Allows a participant to join a Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium, or make a call via the Pexip Distributed Gateway, using a client downloaded onto their mobile device.
• Enables participants to view presentations on their mobile device, regardless of whether they are a video, audio-only, or presentation and control-only participant.

Available versions:

• Infinity Connect mobile client for iOS
• Infinity Connect mobile client for Android

• H.323
• SIP
• WebRTC
• RTMP
• Microsoft Skype for Business / Lync
• Individual protocols can be administratively enabled and disabled.

• G.711(a/µ)
• G.719 (this product is covered by patent rights licensed from Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson)
• G.722
• G.722.1, G.722.1 Annex C (licensed from Polycom®)
• Siren7™, Siren14™ (licensed from Polycom®)
• G.729, G.729A, G.729B
• Opus
• MPEG-4 AAC-LD (MPEG-4 video technology licensed by Fraunhofer IIS)
• Speex
• AAC-LC

• H.261
• H.263, H.263++
• H.264 (Constrained Baseline Profile, Baseline Profile and High Profile), H.264 SVC (UCIF Profiles 0, 1)
• VP8
• VP9 (for connections to Conferencing Nodes with processors using AVX2 or later)
• Flash video (for Internet Explorer and Safari versions 6-10 browser support)
• RTVideo (licensed from Microsoft®).

• H.239 (for H.323)
• BFCP (UDP for SIP)
• VbSS (for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business)
• RDP (for Microsoft Skype for Business / Lync)
• PSOM (for presenting PowerPoint files from Microsoft Skype for Business / Lync clients)
• VP8, VP9 (for WebRTC high framerate)
• JPEG (for apps and web).

• Connections from 8 kbps per participant (G.729, audio-only), up to 6 Mbps per participant (will vary depending on the deployment environment, video resolutions, etc).

• Video resolutions from QCIF to Full HD 1080p (1920 x 1080); 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios.
• Content resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 (depending on remote side capabilities)
• Frame rates up to 30 fps.
• Customizable video watermarking.
• Pexip StudioSound™ for recording-studio audio quality.
• Wideband audio mixing.
• Automatic gain control.
• Control individual audio via Infinity Connect clients.
• Support for AES (128-bit key size), DTLS SRTP, and H.235 for H.323 media encryption.

CPU

Conferencing Nodes

• We recommend 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Cascade Lake) Gold 62xx or 52xx. We also support Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Skylake) Gold 61xx generation or E5-2600 v3/v4 Haswell/Broadwell architecture from 2014 or later. Also works with Xeon E5-2600 v1/v2 processors (Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge from 2012 or later). AMD processors that support the AVX and AVX2 instruction set are also supported.
• 2.3 GHz (or faster) clock speed.
• We recommend 10-20 physical cores per socket.

Management Node

• Any processor, 2.0 GHz or faster.
• 4 cores minimum.

Conferencing Nodes

1 GB RAM per vCPU, so either:

• 1 GB RAM per physical core (if deploying 1 vCPU per core), or
• 2 GB RAM per physical core (if using hyperthreading and NUMA affinity to deploy 2 vCPUs per core).

Management Node

• 4 GB RAM minimum.

• 50 GB minimum per Conferencing Node
• 500 GB total per server (to allow for snapshots etc.)

Management Node

• 100 GB SSD

• Host servers do not require any specific hardware cards or GPUs.

• The Pexip Infinity VMs are delivered as VM images (.ova etc.) to be run directly on the hypervisor. No OS should be installed.

• Gigabit Ethernet connectivity is strongly recommended.
• In general, you can expect 0.5-3 Mbps per call, depending on call control setup.

• Pexip Infinity Conferencing Nodes and Management Nodes may share the same physical host.
• Pexip nodes may also share the same physical host with other virtual machines.
• Pexip virtual machines must be configured with dedicated CPU and memory resources, i.e. Pexip virtual machines do not support oversubscription.

A Pexip deployment can manage multiple customers in various ways:

• Single Management Node, multiple domains, shared Conferencing Nodes

  A single installation with one Management Node and one or more Conferencing Nodes is used by all customers. Call control or DNS sends calls for all domains to the shared Conferencing Nodes. Does not provide dedicated capacity per customer.

• Single Management Node, multiple domains, dedicated Conferencing Nodes

  One or more Conferencing Nodes per customer. Allows for dedicated capacity per customer.

• Dedicated Management Node and dedicated Conferencing Nodes per customer instance

  Allows for close customer network integration, using VLANs, hosted on a shared server farm with multiple VLANs. The dedicated Management Node allows for customer self-management.

Capacity is dependent on server specifications. As a general indication, using our recommended hardware (Intel Haswell, 10 cores, 2.3 GHz) Pexip Infinity can connect:

• up to two High Definition 720p30 calls per CPU core (based on 1.1 GHz per call plus 20% headroom)
• up to 20 audio-only AAC-LD calls at 64 kbps.

Servers that are older, have slower processors, or have fewer CPUs, will have a lower overall capacity. Newer servers with faster processors will have a greater capacity. Use of NUMA affinity and hyperthreading will also significantly increase capacity.

• Version 23.1 of the Pexip Infinity platform supports VMware vSphere ESXi 5.x and 6.x, although we recommend ESXi 6.x.
• We recommend at least the Standard edition.
• The Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions have additional features that can be taken advantage of by Pexip Infinity in larger deployments.
• The Pexip Infinity platform will run on the free edition of vSphere Hypervisor. However, this edition has a number of limitations that mean we do not recommend its use except in smaller deployments, or test or demo environments. Notably, automatic deployment of Conferencing Nodes is not supported.

Microsoft Hyper-V

• The Pexip Infinity platform supports Microsoft Hyper-V in the form of:
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 and later (including Hyper-V Server 2016)
• Windows Server 2012 and later (including Windows Server 2016)

• Pexip Infinity requires your KVM environment to include Linux kernel 3.10.0 or later, and QEMU 1.5.0 or later. This means the following distributions: Debian 8, RHEL 7, SLES 12, or Ubuntu 14.04 (or later, where appropriate).

• Pexip Infinity requires Xen 4.2 and later.

Other hypervisors and orchestration layers

• Conferencing Nodes can be provisioned with a configuration document generated independently of a generic VM image. This permits deployment of Pexip Infinity onto unsupported hypervisors as well as onto supported hypervisors that are managed by an orchestration layer.
• Pexip Infinity can be deployed on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and on the HPE Helion Openstack® Cloud platform.