Cascading Conferences
Polycom®, Inc. 187
When the Mute Participants Except Lecturer option is enabled in the Conference Profile, all
participants (including the link participants) except the lecturer are muted. Only the lecturer is not
muted.

Flags controlling Cascade Layouts

Setting the FORCE_1X1_LAYOUT_ON_CASCADED_LINK
_CONNECTION System Flag to YES (default) automatically forces the cascading link to Full Screen
(1x1) in CP conferences, hence displaying the speaker of one conference to a full window in the video
layout of the other conference.
Set this flag to NO when cascading between an Collaboration Server and an MGC that is functioning
as a Gateway, if the participant layouts on the MGC are not to be forced to 1X1.
Setting the AVOID_VIDEO_LOOP_BACK_IN_CASCADE System Flag to YES (default) prevents
the speaker’s image from being sent back through the participant link from the cascaded conference.
This can occur in cascaded conferences with conference layouts other than 1x1. It results in the
speaker’s own video image being displayed in the speaker’s video layout.
This option is supported with Basic Cascading. If a Master MCU has two slave MCUs, participants
connected to the slave MCUs will not receive video from each other.
For more details on defining system flags, see Modifying System Flags.
Basic Cascading
In this topology, a link is created between two conferences, usually running on two different MCUs. The
MCUs are usually installed at different locations (states/countries) to save long distance charges by
connecting each participant to their local MCU, while only the link between the two conferences is billed as
long distance call.
This is the only topology that enables IP cascading links:
When linking two conferences using an IP connection, the destination MCU can be indicated by:
IP address
H.323 Alias
If IP cascading link is used to connect the two conferences, both MCUs must be located in the
same network.
One MCU can be used as a gateway.
The configuration can include two Collaboration Servers.

Basic Cascading using IP Cascaded Link

In this topology, both MCUs can be registered with the same gatekeeper or the IP addresses of both MCUs
can be used for the cascading link. Content can be sent across the Cascading Link.