Lesson 3: Configuring Windows Meeting Space

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a client/server-based architecture means that you can create Meeting Space meetings in the

absence of traditional network infrastructure.

As it is possible to create a meeting in an unsecured environment like the local café, Meeting

Space ensures that data is secure. This is done through SSL encryption of network traffic. Even

if someone in the coffee shop is capturing network traffic, that person will be unable to deci-

pher the contents of that traffic because it is encrypted. Each meeting is also protected by a

password, limiting the people who participate to the people who have explicitly been invited.

Configuring People Near Me

Before you can invite people to meetings, you and your meeting participants need to be con-

nected to People Near Me. People Near Me is a Windows Vista technology that allows users on

the same subnet to announce their availability. This announcement is made using the Web

Services Discovery protocol. When making the announcement, People Near Me broadcasts

the following identification information to the network:

■

User configured nickname

■

Computer’s name

■

Computer’s IPv6 address

■

Port number

When you first run People Near Me, you are prompted to allow elevation of privileges so that

Windows Firewall can be configured to allow traffic to the Windows Peer-to-Peer Collaboration

Foundation program. A user who is unable to access credentials that allow elevated privileges

cannot use People Near Me until the firewall is appropriately configured to allow this traffic.

You activate People Near Me from the Control Panel in the Classic View. In the Settings Tab,

shown in Figure 9-22, users can enter their People Near Me names. This defaults to the user’s

logon name, but it can be anything that the user chooses. In a meeting, a person’s picture is

always displayed even if the person has cleared the Make My Picture Available check box. The

picture displayed is the same as the Windows Vista logon picture. Clicking Change Picture

allows you to select a different picture. Changing this picture also changes the Windows Vista

logon icon. The default setting allows invitations from Anyone and gives the user an audio

prompt as well as a visual one when an invitation is received. It is possible to set up People Near

Me so that invitations can be received only by Trusted Contacts. Trusted Contacts are entries

within Contacts that have a digital certificate associated with them. Alternatively, it is possible

to configure People Near Me so that all invitations sent to the user are blocked. If either of

these settings is enabled, the user is not notified that an invitation has been automatically

rejected. Blocking invitations does not block a user from joining Meeting Space meetings. It is

still possible to view available meetings or to use an invitation file to connect to a meeting. The

final option allows People Near Me to automatically start when the user logs on to Windows.

This setting is configured on a per user basis, so just because one user on a Windows Vista