Remote Access, Web Conference, Webinar Software Delivered in Appliances

RHUB Support

The RHUB support is based on the current release, which is Version 4.4. If your appliance is not updated, check this RFQ.

Please use the contact form below to submit your support requests. The RHUB support is also available at 408-899-2831 (9:30am - 6:30pm PDT, Monday to Friday).

• Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 7

• 10.4 or later, Intel or PPC based

• A full fledged browser is available (view only)

1. How stable and scalable are RHUB appliances?
2. Do I need special IT skills to install an RHUB appliance? Do I need to maintain it?
3. How do I ensure the best VoIP audio conferencing quality?
4. How do I ensure the best image quality?
5. How do I ensure the best speed?
6. How much bandwidth does the system take? What are the minimum bandwidth requirements?
7. How are software updates handled?
8. Can I use my server to authenticate users?
9. I have hundreds of remote computers to be accessed. How do I organize them with the RHUB appliance?
10. My appliance is not updated. What is wrong?
11. After I deploy my RHUB appliance behind my firewall, can I still invite attendees outside my firewall to join my meetings?
12. Can anyone join my meetings?
13. Do I need a fixed public IP?
14. Can I reserve port 80 and 443 of my IP address for other purpose?
15. How does the RHUB free audio conferencing work?
16. How do I purchase add-on licenses?
17. Is a separate meeting room required for each registered user or can multiple users schedule a meeting for a room?
18. I have a large screen. How do I limit what is viewed by the attendees?
19. Do RHUB appliances provide SSL encryption? Can they be accessed by SSL only?
20. Can anyone including RHUB staff access my appliance without my knowledge?
21. How do I customize my TurboMeeting web page beyond the logo and organization name?
22. Is Java required to run TurboMeeting?
23. How do I backup my appliance database?
24. What service can I have from RHUB if my appliance does not work for any reason?

RHUB appliances are designed for both individual organizations and service providers. The stability and scalability have been well stress-tested by RHUB service provider customers worldwide. They rely on RHUB appliances to deliver high quality real-time web collaboration services to their customers.

Complying with the high standards of system stability and scalability demanded by service providers, the RHUB appliance should meet your needs in terms of the system stability and scalability.

If you know how to install and manage your home router, you are able to quickly install and setup RHUB appliances within 10 to 30 minutes. All RHUB appliances come with the plug-and-play installation function.

You don't need to maintain your RHUB appliance. When new software is available, your RHUB appliance will be automatically updated as long as it is under warranty. The RHUB appliance supports your critical meetings or remote-support sessions all time. You have never concerned with your router. You can expect the same experience with your RHUB appliance.

1. Make sure you have opened the UDP Port 8889 on your firewall. For VoIP to work properly it is extremely important to open the UDP Port 8889 of your firewalls for the inbound UDP traffic to your RHUB appliance. If the UDP Port 8889 is not opened, the VoIP audio will have serious issues like dropouts and long delays. See the Administrator Manual’s “Configuring the Firewall” chapter for directions on how to open the port.
    
2. Ask each attendee to use a headset. Although the system has embedded an echo-canceling function, all meeting participants should use good headsets to avoid echo and reduce background noise. Headsets from Plantronics are highly recommended. Note that when an attendee does not use a headset, everyone else except that attendee will hear an echo. That is, the echo is generated by the attendee who does not use a headset.
   
   

   If you need to use a speaker phone with echo cancellation, a Jabra USB speaker phone 410 Oc is recommended.

3. When you as the meeting host hear noise or echo, right-click an attendee and change him to use “Push-to-talk”. If this does not fix the problem, change the attendee to use “Free-to-talk” again and then select a different attendee. Once you find the attendee who causes the echo and noise, leave him in the “Push-to-talk” mode for the entire meeting.

1. Use the 100% zoom. By default, the system uses the "Fit-to-screen" zoom, which decreases the image quality greatly. Fit-to-screen brings convenience to viewers without scrolling the view window.
    
2. Use the Interactive Meeting type to force attendees to use the download client software. If there is one attendee using a browser-only client in a meeting session, the image quality will decrease slightly.
    
3. If you as the presenter want to show your attendees your screen image with absolutely 100% accuracy, click the "Tools" menu, select "Change Color" and then choose "True color". Note that the true color will decrease the speed greatly. It is designed mainly for artists and physicians. For most users, the "High quality" option is more than enough. As an ordinary viewer, you can hardly see any image quality difference between True Color and High Quality. Click here for the image quality comparison between TurboMeeting and WebEx.

The following discussion is pretty tedious. TurboMeeting is one of the few systems that deliver the best and consistent speed in the industry. If that is all you care about, skip the following discussion.  

First, note how the RHUB appliance (and all web conferencing service providers) works: it basically moves the screen images of the presenter's screen (only the changing parts) to the viewers' desktops. In other words, the system speed is measured by the time required to move the presenter's screen images to viewers' desktop.

Then, what speed is considered as good speed? When the presenter screen (in 1024 x 768 pixel resolution for this discussion) changes completely, for example, changing a full-screen PowerPoint presentation slide, that is the case the system takes most time to move the presenter's screen image to viewers' desktop. The time required for this worst case is what we use to measure the system speed. Here is the user experience regarding speed:

1. Good: 1 - 2 seconds
2. Acceptable: 4 - 5 seconds
3. Unacceptable: 8+ seconds

TurboMeeting can achieve the good speed (i.e., 1 - 2 seconds) for you.

Now let's see what affects the speed of the image transmission from the presenter to viewers besides the TurboMeeting itself:

1. The size of images of the presenter screen
2. The Internet upload bandwidth of the presenter
3. The Internet upload and download bandwidth of your RHUB appliance
4. The Internet download bandwidth of viewers
5. The Internet transmission speed between the presenter's local ISP (Internet Service Provider, for example, AT&T, Comcast, etc.) and your RHUB appliance's ISP
6. The Internet transmission speed between the viewers' local ISPs and your RHUB appliance's ISP.

Assuming you are the presenter and you own the RHUB appliance, you can control everything except #4, #5 and #6. The following shows how you can optimize #1 to #3.

1. Minimize the size of images of the presenter screen:
   • Use a smaller screen resolution, or the application sharing function to control the screen area to present.
   • If you have multiple monitors, choose one only. To choose a monitor to present, click the "Show My" drop-down list on your TurboMeeting control panel and then select the monitor you want to present.
   • Avoid to use the "True color", which delivers images with 100% accuracy at the cost of large image size after compression.
   • Avoid webcam and movie clips on your screen as it will introduce high traffic all time over the play period. If you are the only meeting host of your RHUB appliance, you can ignore this concern. Otherwise, the bandwidth taken away by webcam movies will affect meetings hosted by your colleagues. For the webcam function, you may consider to use it initially during a meeting and then turn it off.
   • Reduce the background image richness of your PowerPoint or desktop in order to allow the system better to compress the presenter's screen image.
2. Have a decent Internet upload bandwidth. To have the good speed (1 - 2 seconds), you would need at least 1.5 mbps upload bandwidth. If you don't have the bandwidth, your meetings will still perform, just at a slower speed. 
3. Have enough bandwidth to host your RHUB appliance, especially the upload bandwidth for the RHUB appliance to send out images to many attendees.  It is recommended to have 50 kbps bandwidth per attendee in order to deliver the acceptable or good speed. For example, if you want to support a meeting with 100 attendees, you should have 5 mbps.

If you have branch offices oversea, you should consider to install RHUB appliances for them individually. Internet transmission speed cross continents is the single major factor affecting speed for international attendees.

Note that there is a subtle speed-related case with TurboMeeting. When your attendees join your seminar-type meetings or interactive-type meetings using the "Guaranteed Attendance" link, TurboMeeting will first try to use Flash. If an attendee does not install Flash, TurboMeeting will rely on the attendee's browser completely. You can identify the attendee by an eye-icon shown on the attendee list. Browsers with slow Internet connection speed may pause image update after a while, especially when you present a lot of moving images. Although the pausing will usually go away after about 20 seconds and the attendees can manually break the pausing by refreshing his browser (a tip for this is provided on the attendee page), it does impact user experience. Whenever possible, use the TurboMeeting download client software to achieve the best speed and stability with the most functions.

A typical PowerPoint presentation session over broadband connection requires only 8 kbps bandwidth on average.  While the average bandwidth consumption is extremely low, your RHUB appliance does need sufficient bandwidth to support the peak traffic requirement. It is recommended to have 50 kbps bandwidth per attendee. For example, if you want to support a meeting with 100 attendees, you should have at least 5 mbps peak capacity to host your RHUB appliance.

If you plan to use a data center (co-location) from an ISP to host your RHUB appliance, you should always start with just 1 mbps for the appliance no matter how large the capacity of your RHUB appliance is. This is because ISPs typically charge only for the average bandwidth and the TurboMeeting average bandwidth consumption for regular web conferencing is just too low. Also, be aware that ISPs usually provide you very high burst bandwidth rate for free. If your ISP requires you to pay for the burst rate, we suggest you start with 3 mpbs. The higher burst rate, the faster speed. It will not make much difference after 8 mpbs.

If you host the RHUB appliance at home or office, choose a cable Internet connection (e.g., Comcast cable) if possible. Cable connection provides you sufficient burst bandwidth. A DSL connection is not recommended although it still works if you allow longer delay, which may take 4 or more seconds to update a full screen. To test your Internet connection speed, use speedtest.net.

For the bandwidth requirement at the participant end, a slow 56 kbps dial-up modem speed is acceptable for users using download TurboMeeting client software. For a browser-only attendee using a brower, a minimum 200Kb download speed (DSL speed) is recommended.

Your RHUB appliance checks the RHUB release server everyday at 3 AM. If there is an update available, the appliance will automatically download and install. If you do not want the auto-update function, turn it off and use the manual update function. The system clock and auto-update settings are available under the "System Settings" on the web-based system console.

Yes, you can use your own server such as a CRM server or LDAP to authenticate users so that all user authentication can go through a single system. Read the instructions for the integration.

In order to remotely access a computer, you need to start a meeting with the meeting type "Remote Access to This Computer" on the computer and input a computer name. In order to organize hundreds of computers, you name the computer carefully with a group name, for example, "San Francisco, Sales Office, Brian's XP".

To access the remote computer, sign in your TurboMeeting client and then click the "Active" meeting link. It will display all remote computers that are accessible. Type "San Francisco" in the search text box. It will display only those computers with "San Francisco" in the computer names. Locate the computer you are interested. Click the meeting ID and type the meeting password. You can access the computer now.

Your appliance will not update if it is out of warranty. Otherwise first check your DNS setting, which is on the "Configure Server IP Settings" page. Make sure you have a right DNS address.

If your DNS setting is correct, go to "System Settings" page and see whether you have disabled the "Enable auto update of system (recommended) ".  If it is disabled, click the "Update System Now" button to have your system updated.

If it still cannot update, the only reason left is that your firewall is blocking the HTTP connection between your RHUB  appliance and the RHUB release server. Configure your firewall to unblock the outbound TCP connection via the port 80 without any filtering rules just for the RHUB appliance.  You may block the HTTP traffic after you get the system updated.

Yes, you can. All you need to do is to forward TCP traffic on ports 80, 443, and 8889 from your firewall/router to the RHUB appliance. The TCP port 8889 forwarding is mandatory although forwarding for 80 and 443 is optional. All firewall/router devices including home routers provide this port forwarding function.

When you host a meeting, leave the box "Only attendees from my network" un-checked (the default). See the figure below:

You can invite anyone to join your meetings. You don't need to register them in the system. They do not need an RHUB appliance. However, you do need to register those users who want to host meetings using your RHUB appliance.

No, you do not have to have a fixed IP. The RHUB appliance has integrated with the dynamic DNS service provided by http://www.dyndns.com. All you need to do is to register a user account, either a free one or a paid one. Then input the account information into the RHUB appliance system. After that, you can use a domain name of your choosing to access the RHUB appliance from anywhere over the Internet. The RHUB appliance will detect the changes of the public IP address of your router or modem and sync the changes with the DynDNS service.

Even if you have a fixed IP, it is still desirable to use the DynDNS service, which will allow you and your attendees to access your RHUB appliance by an easy-to-remember name rather than an IP address.

Yes, you can. However, it will have the following impacts to your RHUB system:

1. Your meeting server URL, which is shown in your meeting invitations, has to carry the port 8889 number, for example, http://webmeeting.acame.com:8889.
2. Some of your attendees may not be able to join your meetings since their firewalls do not allow traffic via any ports other than the standard Internet ports 80 or 443.
3. The meeting IDs, meeting passwords and user passwords will transmit over the Internet in plain text without SSL encryption.
4. You and your attendees will experience a longer time for the first-time connection since the TurboMeeting client will try to use the port 443 SSL connection and eventually fail over to the port 8889. After the first-time connection, the next connections will be fast as the TurboMeeting client remembers the working port.

Note that the TCP port 8889 has to open to the public.

All RHUB appliances include landline audio conference call service at no extra cost to you. You may decide to use this service or choose your own audio conferencing method.

RHUB audio conferencing service provides a toll-based US number that can be dialed by all meeting participants. Participants are then charged their standard long-distance rate for calling this toll-based number, just as if they made a regular long-distance call.

RHUB does not provide toll-free audio conferencing service yet. You can select any of audio conferencing services including your own audio conferencing bridge. Integrating with audio conferencing is as easy as inputting a call number to the TurboMeeting system. The call number will be passed to your meeting invitation messages and the TurboMeeting meeting control panel automatically.

In addition to setting up a system-wide call number, each user can define his call number.

Login to the web console of the RHUB appliance and issue a license request to your reseller. After payment, the reseller will issue you a new license key that you can input into the RHUB appliance to upgrade your license.

No meeting room is required for a registered user. A meeting room in the RHUB system is a measure of license in terms of the maximum number of active concurrent meetings. Before a meeting actually starts, a user does not hold any meeting room although he may have scheduled many meetings.

You can register as many users as you want in the system. The system only controls the number of meetings that are active and the number of total participants (hosts and attendees) in those active meetings.  

Every RHUB appliance comes with a manufacturer's default SSL certificate with the key length at 2048-bit. Though the certificate does not match your domain name, it won't affect SSL-encrypted transmission between RHUB's TurboMeeting client and the RHUB appliance. All user passwords, meeting passwords and meeting IDs are transmitted via SSL. By default, a screen image is transmitted with RHUB proprietary encryption for efficiency.

You can configure your RHUB appliance in such a way that everything transmits over the Internet via SSL. Go to the system administration web console, click the "System Settings" link and check the option "Access this server only via SSL". In addition, you need to upload your own certificate in order to avoid the annoying security alert that is due to the default RHUB SSL certificate when users visit your RHUB appliance web pages.

No, no one can access the appliance without your knowledge, including the RHUB staff.

For TM-200, TM-500 and TS-300, the appliance is self-protected. You can simply place the appliance outside your firewall and router.

TM-250E, TM-550, TM-600, TM-800, TM-1000 and TS-700 are deployed in a regular Linux server. You need to place it behind your firewall and block all inbound ports to the server except the TCP ports: 80, 443, and 8889. The system is configured with a default password, which you should change after installation.

In case you need the support that requires the RHUB staff access to the appliance, you need to login to the web console as a system administrator and execute a special command. While the RHUB support staff remotely accesses your appliance, they cannot retrieve any user passwords or passwords for remote access meetings. All those passwords are irreversibly encrypted in the database.

See our customization page for more details.

No, Java is not mandatory. However, Java is used to facilitate the initial user experience to download and launch TurboMeeting. TurboMeeting client software itself is not dependent on Java in any way. If you do not have Java installed, you will be directed to a page to download the TurboMeeting executable and run it.

1. Go to your appliance web management console
2. Under the Configuration section, click "IP Settings". Input your backup computer public IP to "Authorized Public IP's to Join Internal Meetings".

We have servers in Europe and Asia and keep adding more. Please tell our support staff your location in order to select a server best for you.