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June 30, 2016 by Since the introduction of VBSS in the article (VBSS) for Skype for Business last year Microsoft has released several changes to the platform to further leverage this technology. This new article will serve as an update to the concepts outlined in the original as well as outline any future behavior or functionality. It is recommended to read through the original article to gain a basic understanding of what VBSS is to better appreciate the changes and improvements covered in this new article. Conferencing Support First and foremost Microsoft has delivered, in two separate stages, the ability for Skype for Business 2016 Windows clients to leverage VBSS in conferences now.

As covered in the previous article when this new capability was released in 2015 it was only available for peer-to-peer Desktop Sharing sessions between to 16.x version Windows clients. In the event that these same clients were participating in a multi-party conference then the Skype for Business Front End Server’s Application Sharing Multipoint Control Unit (ASMCU) would be driving the media control for sharing content between all parties. This ASMCU, whether it was in an on-premises Lync or Skype for Business Server deployment or instead running in the Office 365 cloud as part of Skype for Business Online would still be using the legacy Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) technology.

Online Meetings Since posting that original article though this has changed. Early in 2016 Microsoft quietly added VBSS support to the ASMCU components in their Skype for Business Online platform.

This means that any conference hosted by a Skype for Business Online user and attended by only Skype for Business 2106 Windows clients can leverage VBSS for sharing their desktops. If any older client versions were to join the meeting then the ASMCU will immediately step-down to using RDP, just as peer sessions were already reverting to RDP in the event that the receiving party would attempt to take remote control of the session. It is important to understand that the ASMCU does not create a multiple codec stream scenario like the AVMCU can do with X-H264UC encoded video.

As covered in a past the AVMCU can request that the active speaker in a conference should send two encoded video streams: one using Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and the other in Real Time Video (RTV). This is a “highest-common denominator” experience which continues to provide the SVC video streams to all other meeting participants which support that video codec, yet also allows a legacy client which only supports RTV to still see the active speaker’s video.

The ASMCU does not function this way as only a single Desktop Sharing stream is provided by the sending client, it cannot simultaneously encode an SVC stream and and RDP stream. Thus the inclusion of any client in the meeting which does not support VBSS (which is literally every Lync/SfB client available except for the 2016 Windows desktop client) will trigger the ASMCU to request the client that is sending content to only use RDP, otherwise referred to as a “lowest-common-denominator” experience. Hmake google home page on firefox for mac. On-Premises Meetings As of this week with the release of the June 2016 Skype for Business Server 2015 (a.k.a. CU3) now on-premises Skype for Business deployments can join in the fun.

With the application of these server updates the ASMCU and all related components are now VBSS-aware and the functionality is identical to what is explained above, although it can be turned off if desired. Upon closer inspection of the various June update articles there exists one interesting item that may seem a bit confusing at first glance: some of seemingly unrelated server components are referencing VBSS updates. For example the knowledge base article states that this cumulative update introduces VBSS. So does the update article. It does seem plausible that,, one might think that X-H264UC could now be utilized to somehow provide desktop sharing across the VIS server, but how in the world could a Mediation Server leverage VBSS?