Portlet Access Grid (PAG)
Overview
The Portlet Access Grid project provides a fully-functional portlet client for the Access Grid Toolkit version 3 (AGTkv3) that in addition enables automatic and transparent switching to unicast when multicast becomes unavailable, allows the use of Access Grid behind restrictive firewalls and from low bandwidth connections, and significantly simplifies the installation procedure for users as it only requires a recent Java Runtime Environment (1.5 or newer) on the client machine.
The portlet client connects to any AGTk3 server and allows free navigation of virtual venues, communication using audio and video, access to the Jabber text chat, and access to shared applications and data within the venue. This client will be fully interoperable with other AGTk3 users and be designed to be easy to incorporate AGTk updates, as well as retaining the current level of AGTk interoperability with ioCom clients. These developments have the potential to benefit the significant portion of the academic community currently using Access Grid, allowing the use of Access Grid within a familiar web-based environment from almost any location, e.g. internet cafes/hotel rooms, and address the major perceived drawbacks to Access Grid compared to other collaboration environments.
The portlet is compatible with the existing AG-VRVS and AG-H323 bridges as well as provide hooks for future bridging between Access Grid and Skype and Access Grid and ConferenceXP.
PAG in a wiki and PAG in a blog
A reference Server of the Portlet Access Grid is now available and provides a running instance as well as the latest version of the software to download.
Screenshots
