New intelligent adapters, advanced bus architectures, and powerful microprocessors have resulted in a new generation of personal computers with true multimedia capabilities. Collaborative applications are the most demanding applications of multimedia technologies today. We present a performance analysis of how effective video conferencing applications can be supported with personal computers connected through a local area network (LAN). We also evaluate the performance impact of an advanced, peer-to-peer I/O protocol. The key factor in the performance of a video conferencing system over a LAN is the video compression and decompression algorithms. At high video frame rates, the peer-to-peer I/O protocol performs better than the traditional, bus-master, interrupt-driven I/O protocol.