Introduction
As the WWW market grew rapidly, the browsers also tried to get the domination on the Web. Two browsers, Netscape and Internet Explorer, represent the current web browsers and 4.0 versions have been emerged recently. Both of companies made not only browsers but also web tool package, suites. They also include the collaboration tools which are raised as the convenient tools expending the usage of internet. Their new internet suites, Netscape Conference and Micfosoft NetMeeting, seem similar. Both of them offer audio conferencing, whiteboard, text-based chat, and file transfer. However, they have some differences.
Comparison of two Internet Suites
Netscape conference has two-party (point-to-point architecture). Though Microsoft NetMeeting has multipoint support, only two can be part in audio and videoconferencing at a time. However, other cases like text-based chat, file transfer, and whiteboard conferences, NetMeeting can get more than two people participated in.
Netmeeting provides a G.723 codec for low-bandwidth compatibility with products from Intel and other vendors. Conference supports H. 323 desktop conferencing standard and other open standard-based communication tools.
Only NetMeeting has videoconferening. It is compatible with many capture cards and parallel-port. It provides two codecs, 28.8-Kbps and Lan-based conferencing.
Only Conference can send voice mail, compressed audio files attached to standard e-mail.
Application sharing lets multiple parties edit a document in any program, even if one participants's computer does not have that program. Application sharing also enables collaborative browsing, since multiple parties can share a browser and surf together, using a shared cursor to annotate Web content. Netscape sends a URL to the remote users's browser without sharing.
NetMeeting provides multiple pages at higher resolutions but Conference supports one 800X600 page. NetMeeting maintains annotations as separate objects that can be moved or edited, while Conference merges all markings into one bitmap.
Netscape Calendar supports a proprietary personal, group, and resource scheduler. However, Microsoft has no such feature.
Reference