System Architectural Design for DeliveringVideo Mail over the World-Wide-Web

This paper examines the feasibility of providing multimedia mail, in particular video mail, on the existing World-Wide-Web platform. In this instance,the Web browser will act as the user agent of the mailing system. With this,users will be able to compose, send and read video mail directly on the Web.This paper examines a number of different system architectures which can be employed for the development of Video Mail. Based on the following key issues:portability of system, flexibility of system, Internet standard support, securityand authentication, and message compression and storage, a final architecturewas chosen to build Video Mail. The approach taken is that the system will beinterfaced to the Web using a standard HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)server and a standard Web browser. This is achieved through the use of Common Gateway interface (CGI) programs and forms which reside in a standard HTTP server to provide the functionality of video mail, and a separate mail server for t…