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Cisco: Avoid Coronavirus, Stay Home, Use Webex (arstechnica.com) 58

Posted by BeauHD from the work-from-home dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Networking giant Cisco is getting into the coronavirus monitoring and mitigation game with its Webex remote meeting property. The company notes that in the wake of mandates issued to employees to halt travel plans and/or work from home, traffic across its Webex backbone has increased significantly. Webex meeting traffic connecting Chinese users to global workplaces has increased by a factor of 22 since the outbreak began; traffic in other Asian countries is up by 400 percent or more, and free signup rates in impacted countries have increased 700 percent or more. In response, Cisco is offering temporarily unlimited usage (with no time restrictions) in all countries where the service is available (full list here), not just the ones worst hit by coronavirus. The company is also offering free 90-day licenses to businesses that are not currently Webex customers and offering free upgrades to customers whose current plan is insufficient to accommodate increased traffic due to the outbreak.

In the worst affected countries, telepresence and remote work software like Webex is currently the only alternative to a complete shutdown of activities. In its press release, Cisco highlights the Nesbitt Center, an organization working with disabled young adults in Hong Kong. All Hong Kong schools, including the Nesbitt Center, have been required to suspend day programs during the outbreak. Webex videoconferencing has allowed the Nesbitt Center to continue delivering educational sessions despite the lockdown. Ars Technica also recommends Jitsi, a "free and open source software, offering video call and screen sharing capabilities." There's also Jitsi Meet for people "who just need to get something done on-the-fly with no setup at all."

Do you have a favorite remote work software?
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Cisco: Avoid Coronavirus, Stay Home, Use Webex More

Cisco: Avoid Coronavirus, Stay Home, Use Webex

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  • WebEx is fine and all, to be honest I've not used it in years, it's probably OK by now.

    But I'm kind of suspicious of "Jitsi", a company I've never heard of at all for doing video conferencing, and I've done video chats in a lot of different work environments.

    Why not mention the elephant in the space, which is Zoom? So far I've found I like Zoom and it works better than most other video platforms, in terns of quality and screen sharing options.

    Also pretty good, is the video chat built into Slack now. In fa

    • ...Why not mention the elephant in the space, which is Zoom? ...

      I would have thought it was Skype...

      • ...Why not mention the elephant in the space, which is Zoom? ...

        'I would have thought it was Skype...'

        No, that's the mammoth in the universe.

      • This has been unresolved since May 2019 and will probably never be fixed. Thanks, Microdouche.

        With the latest update the behavior of the tray icon on Linux has changed. Left clicking the tray icon on Linux does not open Skype anymore.

        Before:

        - Left click opens the Skype window
        - Right click opens a menu (Status, Open Skype, Sign off, ...)

        Since the last update (Skype-Version 8.44.0.40):

        - Left & right click both open the menu.

        So now if you want to open Skype you need 2 clicks- you have to move the mouse ov

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by CoolStoriesBro ( 6610564 )
      Jitsi is an open source video conferencing program. It isn't a company. Been around for years.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gatkinso ( 15975 )

      >> it's probably OK by now.
      Nope.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by BobC ( 101861 )

      Ars Technica has been doing a great series on the remote-work tools they use to get their distributed staff "on the same page". I hadn't yet seen any mention of Jitsi in their posts, but I suspect, like their other tools, it's not so much about the tool itself as it is about how the tool can be used to meet the team's needs and workflow.

      The Ars folks had clung to some rather ancient tools for quite a while before switching to newer things, mainly because the newer things needed way too long to mature to a

      • When I worked for a multi-state blood bank we had to do pandemic planning (part of critical infrastructure)

        Our approach was to reduce the direct contact with other people by employing Citrix, this allowed out entire staff to work from home and see the exact same desktop and resources as they would in the office

        Once that we saw the opportunity, we expanded it to our own 'private cloud', removed all PC's and servers from our offices and installed dumb terminals that could present desktops from citrix

        Of course

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Don't forget to get your food prepared and delivered by magic, never in contact with any human ever or any surface touched by a human. Want to trap yourself in a bunker, just keep this in mind, thought a low percentage, lets say 0.1% many end up as carriers, the infection having limit impact on them whilst remaining in place and ready to infect others, just numbers and genetics. You finally exit the bunker, and unprotected you wander into a world that still carries that infection and you done suddenly.

          Suck

          • If you bunker it while this is going on, there is hope that when you come out of your shell, there is a vaccine for it. The problem is, is it logistically possible to wait the amount of time it will take for that to be a reality. One source says it will be a year before a vaccine suitable for human use will be available.

            • Also there are actual medicines and such under development, with some good early results.

              So if one of them actually proves effective then getting the disease later rather than now will be safer as currently the treatment is just treatment of symptoms.

      • Ars Technica has been doing a great series on the remote-work tools they use to get their distributed staff "on the same page". I hadn't yet seen any mention of Jitsi in their posts

        That seems pretty suspicious to me, especially how in this article they don't mention using it themselves normally - I think they just recommended it because the platform is open source. That's nice and all, But I wish the article would offer not just an OS alternative, also the one they know works well because they use it day t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      Why not mention the elephant in the space, which is Zoom? So far I've found I like Zoom and it works better than most other video platforms, in terns of quality and screen sharing options.

      I used them all and found that Zoom is better than Webex which is better than Skype.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mtmra70 ( 964928 )

        Unless you need/want SIP for video, then Zoom pricing skyrockets and pales in comparison to Webex. Keep in mind Webex is pretty powerful by not only offering traditional Meeting experience, they have H323/SIP support for video, unlimited audio offerings (call back and call in), tie in with Webex Teams, user Insights, etc etc etc.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrKaos ( 858439 )

          Unless you need/want SIP for video, then Zoom pricing skyrockets and pales in comparison to Webex. Keep in mind Webex is pretty powerful by not only offering traditional Meeting experience, they have H323/SIP support for video, unlimited audio offerings (call back and call in), tie in with Webex Teams, user Insights, etc etc etc.

          Ok, I'll have another look. Can you point me to a download for Linux Mint?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • That is a really good point that game streaming has performance so much better than most videoconferencing... though they get the benefit usually of a single source out to multiple people, so only one video feed to broadcast. The multi-feed bidirectional aspect has to add a lot of complication to the equation.

        For instance, if you are using h.264 hardware to decode an incoming stream, can it also work to encode your video out? Maybe that is a problem.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by MrNaz ( 730548 )

          Hardware encoders and hardware decoders are different silicon, and so they are perfectly capable of working at the same time. Even if not, software deciding of h264/5 is an order of magnitude lower on CPU use than encoding, so getting the CPU to do it on multiple streams would be no issue, especially at typical video conferencing resolutions.

    • We switched to Zoom two years ago and haven't looked back.

  • I wouldn't inflict webex on my worst enemy, even for free.

    • I wouldn't inflict webex on my worst enemy, even for free.

      Bluejeans is worse...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jmccue ( 834797 )

      I wouldn't inflict webex on my worst enemy, even for free.

      No kidding, I am with you. Today at work webex worked like crap, no video and people speaking were breaking up like cell phones from the 80's. I noticed on Tuesdays and Thursdays webex is pretty much useless between 10 and 3, rest of the week is fine if most people on the call disables video.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mtmra70 ( 964928 )

        Sounds like your network is at fault, not Webex. If it was Webex, what did support say when you opened a ticket about the reproducible issues?

        Let me guess, you didn't open a ticket...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      I wouldn't inflict webex on my worst enemy, even for free.

      I was being paid to use it and blech. The reason it's free is because it sucks.

  • I know it is a backhanded way to get people to try it, but I don't care. They are offering for free and upgrading existing users for free to help. It is nice to see when any company does things for free to help out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Considering that the load appears to be overwhelming their network I suspect that the marketing people made the announcement without bothering to ask the techies if they could handle the extra traffic.

  • The Completely Insufficient Security COmpany recommends their back-doored crap-ware, so you can evade one human virus and load your computer with a dozen computer viruses. No thanks, Cisco, there are others who take way more care about security than you do.

    • I would worry about my mental health over most other things if I had to use webex for any length of time. That stupid music when you connect is enough to trigger all sorts of unhealthy responses.

  • Video Teleconferencing (Score:3)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @06:51PM (#59794100)

    I think zoom is pretty much eating WebEx's lunch these days.

    The last 4 companies that I consulted for all used zoom.

    Actually I have about 4-5 video conferencing service apps (including WebEx) installed on my system and a few more available in browser-mode only. They all more-or-less work OK but it is tiresome to have to switch between them all the time.

    Telecommuting is nice but it takes a different work discipline than driving into the office.

    • WebEx now has a decent web version. This is coming from a Linux user who can't run their software. That being said, I'd rather contract coronavirus than be in another webex meeting.

      • That being said, I'd rather contract coronavirus than be in another webex meeting.

        I wrote the same comment before I saw this.

        Webex is punishment for all the bad things we did in our past lives. That's the only rational explanation.

        I would rather slide down a razor blade banister into a pool of iodine than use Webex.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      And there's the problem, too many incompatible apps all doing the same thing - no standard...

      Or rather there are standards - SIP and h.323, but these don't work because the internet is broken by nat, so you end up needing a third party to provide a central service instead of having direct comms between users.

      Zoom i found especially bad, someone invited me to a zoom meeting and i got an email basically saying "someone invited you to a meeting, go to this website and download an exe" which i assumed was a phi

      • .... i got an email basically saying "someone invited you to a meeting, go to this website and download an exe" which i assumed was a phishing attempt and deleted.

        I'm not a Defender of Zoom or anything but it seems to me the problem wasn't with their product but that you didn't read your e-mail very carefully. #1: The sender should have been recognizable to you and #2: You had the option to run-in browser and not download and install any software.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          Email senders can be easily spoofed (or real accounts can be compromised and used for sending spam), this is a common technique of spam and/or phishing. In fact, i have seen this very pretext being used for phishing several times. Companies using bad practices such as these condition users that downloading executables linked from an email is a normal thing to do, making them far more susceptible to phishing.

          There was no in-browser option that i recall, this may have changed now but there certainly wasn't at

  • Healthy machines. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @07:37PM (#59794326) Journal

    We may also see a rise in automation since machines don't get sick, and not all jobs can be done remotely.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      Also you might see a dumb machine placed so that even sniffly workers can operate it from home.

  • I think I'd probably rather risk catching the coronavirus than be forced to use Webex.

  • I have to ask... (Score:3)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @04:02AM (#59795408) Homepage

    ...is there a video conferencing system that doesn't suck? Over the years, I've tried a variety of them. Every single one has its own unique problems. I have yet to see one that I would want to use.

    Most suck, because of latency problems, or poor usage of the screen. My favorite was this super high-tech installation put in as a demo (hoping my employer would buy it). Low latency, huge screens - but the screens were framed (for no functional reason) by a brightly lit frame that made looking at them physically painful. I'm sure it looked great in marketing brochures, but it was actually horrible - and not only because of the frames.

    Most recently, I've had to use Adobe Connect, which meant re-installing Flash (seriously?!). If that's still a competitive solution, it shows just how little improvement has been made in the newer systems.

    • What's so bad about skype? Where I work we went through one high-end system after another, invariably the more expensive they were the more incompatible and complex they were. Now we have Skype One Touch panels on our conference tables and with the Outlook integration it really is pretty seamless.

  • I work in a place (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    where the single most important thing is that the boss can see that we are sitting at our desk.
    I have had calls, asking where I was, when I was a at meeting in a room next to our office, and I was booked in my calendar which is visible to everyone in the office.
    It is time for me to find a new job.

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