Transcript vrvs

VRVS Overview
Philippe Galvez
California Institute of Technology
September 27, 2000
Historical Background
 Starting by the end of 1995, the Caltech/CMS group started the
deployment of videoconferencing facilities and the development
of a first Web-based user interface.
 At the beginning of 1997, pushed by strong demands from
users preparing the LHC experiments, Caltech/CMS group
started a prototype service.
 In 1997, The VRVS System became the basis of the
Videoconferencing Project, approved by the LHC Computing
Board (LCB).
 In 1998/1999 VRVS received Widespread and Strong Support
from the Research and Education Communities and became the
foundation for new video and multimedia services to be
deployed throughout Internet2.
Why a challenge ?
Some key points for the HEP community
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Very Large Community
Very Disperse Community (located in all continents)
Large number of different Physics experiments
Need collaboration between small or large groups inside
experiments
 Need one or several features: Audio, Video, Shared Application,
Shared desktop, Very high Quality,..
 Area of work is physics research and not “Collaborative tools”
Today no “magic” commercial tools available
 ISDN still very limited to cover all the mentioned key points
 No H.323 deployment done in large scale
Clients and Gatekeepers interoperability problem.
MCU’s management
However, Initial test and deployment in some well control network
clouds..
 No tendency to provide very high quality (address mass market)
 No tendency to provide integrated system
Vi5tual Room Videoconferencing System
Current System
VRVS is now a production system:
 As of today, more than 3327 machines from 2025 different
users are registered into the system.
 During the year 1999, 872 Multipoint Conferences were
conducted (Total 2325 Hours).
 More than 3000 point to point connections were established.
 Since January 2000: 100 multipoints (300 hours) of
videoconference per month in average.
 The system provides Video, Audio, Whiteboard, Chat in multi-
point and point to point connections.
 Organizing videoconference via a full graphical booking
system.
 Advanced options are available, such as the access control
via passwords, the recording and the playback of session.
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VRVS Statistics
Number of Machines and People registered in VRVS
Machines Registered
People Registered
Months
HENP Community
HENP Community.
Hosts registered from: CMS, Atlas, Alice, Lhc-b, Aleph, NA48, NA49,
NA50, AMS, Aleph, Babar, RHIC, CDF, Ceres/NA45, Chorus, Delphi,
DESY/ZDV, H1, CEBAF, KLOE, KTeV, L3, Minos, Soudan2, OPAL, PHENIX,
STAR, SpEcTrE, WA95, WA98, ZEUS, etc …
ATLAS
CMS
ALICE
LHC
DELPHI
CDF
Aleph
RHIC
BaBar
L3
782
503
94
39
98
48
45
12
14
26
MINOS
STAR
COMPASS
ZEUS
AMS
KTeV
KLOE
OPAL
wa98
Phenix
17
16
10
15
17
10
1
31
8
7
GLAST
JET
116
12
Hosts from
Different Hosts
America
653
Asia
45
Australia
10
Africa/Mid-Orient
Europe
Sw itzerland
Italy
England
France
Germany
Finland
Russia
23
1690
553
236
177
163
155
60
55
Sw eden
39
Others
107
User Statistics: Scheduling
450
1997
400
1998
1999
350
2000
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
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Mar
Apr
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User Interface 1/6
http://VRVS.cern.ch
Full Documentation and Tutorial
A download VRVS package area
Latest News page
A user profile editor with identification and general information
Virtual Room Booking, Scheduling; Request Reserved
Bandwidth
the Virtual Room Join process
Point to Point meeting within Registered Persons
the “About” section with all the information about the
organization and the project
User Interface 2/6
The Schedule Manager
 Booking a Virtual Room is performed in the same way as you
would book a local conference room.
 If all the Virtual Rooms are booked, it means that the (pre-set)
maximum number of parallel conferences has already been
reached.
Select the
Virtual Room
Select the scope of
your videoconference
Continental
Virtual Rooms
World Wide
Virtual Rooms
User Interface 3/6
Schedule Manager
Different views are provided like a Year, a Month and a Day view from
the calendar. The user can see in one shot what is reserved and what
is free.
Some options are available:
 the conference can be recorded automatically
 a previous conference already recorded can be played back
 a customized password can be entered to increase the control
of the access
 URLs about the subject of the conference can be added
User Interface 4/6
How to join a videoconference in VRVS ?
 Select the Virtual as in the Schedule Manager
 Enter the already booked Virtual Room.
 Fill the password requested for the security enhance
session.
 Start the client applications.
Information: Virtual Room name,Title, Current time
and ending time
Participants: geographical origin, media started,
Full name and email
Click to start: audio, video, whiteboard and web
links
User Interface 5/6
Client Applications currently used in VRVS.
 Public-Domain or Free Players
 Good “Sense of Presence”: 10 Frames/sec Within 100-200 Kbps or
20-25 Frames/sec within 300-500 Kbps
 Tunable Bandwidth/Quality/Resource Matching
 Multi-Platforms : Linux, Unix’s, Windows95/98/NT/2000, Macintosh
(only with QuickTime)
 Efficient, Tunable
CHAT
VIC
QuickTime Player 4.x
VAT
RAT
WhiteBoard
User Interface 6/6
Example: 9 Participants, CERN(2), Caltech, FNAL(2), Bologna (IT), Roma (IT),
Milan (IT), Rutherford(UK)
Implementation 3/4 : Reflectors
30 reflectors Running around the world.
 Europe:
Switzerland: CERN (2)
Italy: CNAF Bologna
UK: Rutherford Lab, Wales
France: IN2P3 Lyon, Marseilles
Germany: Heidelberg Univ.
Finland: FUNET
Spain: IFCA-Univ. Cantabria
Portugal: LIP
Israel: Weizmann Institute
 Asia:
Academia Sinica (Taiwan),
 KEK (Japan)
APAN/SingaREN (Singapore)
 Russia:
Moscow State Univ.,
Tver. University
JINR Dubna
 United States of America
 West: Caltech, LBNL, SLAC
 Center: FNAL, ANL
 East: BNL, Jefferson Lab
 DoE HQ Germantown
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Internet2: Ann Abor
 Esnet: Berkeley
 South America
Venezuela: CeCalcula
 Brazil: University de Rio de Janeiro
Implementation Model
VRVS Web User Interface
QuickTime
(vic, vat/rat,..)
V4.0
H.323
MPEG
Others
??
QoS
VRVS Reflectors (Unicast/Multicast)
Collaborative
Applications
Mbone
Tools
Real Time Protocol (RTP/RTCP)
Network Layer (TCP/IP)
done
Partially done
Work in progress
Continuously in development
R&D : Medium Term Plan
A Next Generation Integrated Environment for
Collaborative Work Across Internets
Principal Investigator: Caltech and ESnet
Collaborators:
CERN, Internet2/UCAID
The new system aimed at using the capability of Internet2 and ESnet for
rapid data exchange, will be based on VRVS
 Develop a prototype and start deployment of high performance
“next generation Integrated Environment for Collaborative work”
 We will adapt and extend VRVS API to accommodate and support
high performance multimedia application suites (MPEG1 and
MPEG2 streaming video, shared iGRID applications, integration
with H.323.)
 QoS tests over ESnet and Internet2 networks
R&D : Future System
VRVS Future evolution/integration (R&D)
 Deployment and support of VRVS.
 High Quality video and audio (MPEG1, MPEG2,..).
 Shared applications, environment and workspace.
 Integration of H.323 I.T.U Standard into VRVS.
 Quality of Service (QoS) over the network.
 Improved security, authentication and confidentiality.
 Remote control of video camera via a Java applet.
R&D : H.323 Integration
VRVS reflectors topology
(Only video from the speaker is sent to H.323 clients)
Mbone Client
VRVS Web Server
H.323 Client
VRVS H.323
Gateway
H.323 Client
R&D : H.323 Integration
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No limitation of cascading numbers of reflectors
No limitation of number of participants or parallel
conferences. The limitation will be only the network.
Optimize calling process for by passing firewall issues.
Possibility to have muticast/unicast between reflectors
and multicast/unicast between the client and the reflector.
Possibility for the H.323 client to:
 See the video from the speaker only
 See all video using vic application
 See all video from all the participants in a round robin way
following a specified timer
 Selected and see ONLY the video from one selected participant
even if he is not the speaker.
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Possibility to have Mbone applications (vic, vat/rat) in the
same videoconference
R&D : H.323 Integration
R&D : MPEG2 deployment
Goal : To deploy MPEG2 technology among HENP community.
MPEG2 will provide full TV quality, full frame and full
interactivity in a range of 2 to 15 Mbps
 Acquisition of MPEG2 Encoder/Decoder boxes.
Support for the RTP (Real Time Protocol)
Very low latency (around 120 ms for full duplex mode)
during the real-time communication (videoconference).
Availability of a Video Development Toolkit (VDK) for
integration with existing applications or with the VRVS
framework.
 One box has been installed at two sites: Caltech and CERN
 Other boxes are available among ESnet sites
R&D : MPEG2 deployment
VRVS MPEG2 reflectors
(Only video from the speaker is sent to MPEG2 clients
and the current speaker still receives video/audio from the previous one)
VNP MPEG2 box
VNP MPEG2 box
LNBL
CERN
VNP MPEG2 box
LLNL
VNP MPEG2 box
Caltech
Instance of MPEG2
topology already tested.
Video: 2.0 Mbps
Audio: 224 Kbps stereo
R&D : Sharing Desktop
VNC technology integrated in the next VRVS release
Examples
LEPC broadcast from CERN (November 9,1999)
35 participants connected via VRVS (ex. QuickTime Player)
Examples
GLAST meeting (October 14,1999)
10 participants connected via VRVS (and 16 participants in Audio only)
Requested received last
weeks
 Francis Lee (Application manager SingAREN) “I am a
member of the Asia Pacific Advance Network(APAN) as well as
Singapore Advance research & education network(SingAREN). We are
members of the Internet2 community. I found your VRVS site very
interesting. I would like to explore some point of collaboration…”
 Pavel Murin (Slovak outreach). “..Slovak institutes participating
in LHC program have an interest to install VRVS reflector in Slovakia.
Some financial support we have obtained from NATO (NATO net
infrastructure program for Partner countries), we would like to buy a
computer equipped with hardware proper for VRVS server/reflector…”
 Dan Mønster (Danish Research Network, DARENET). “..I am
presently looking into the possibility of using our network for
videoconferencing between the universities in Denmark. One of the
applications is to create virtual class rooms, in which a teacher can
interact with both local and remote students. VRVS is extremely
interesting for the applications that I have in mind..”
Requested received last
weeks
 Steve Williams (University of Wales Swansea) ”..I have been
looking at the vrvs pages and am impressed by what it can do. What is
the situation with the reflector/server side software - is it available for
outside use? We may have a requirement for a similar system..”
 Rodrigo Castro (Spanish National Research Network
(RedIRIS) ) :”..Our first idea would be to introduce this technology in
our research network and extend it along different points of Spain.
Since one of the lines of future development you mention in your Web
pages is the distribution of a package containing VRVS, we feel we can
collaborate with you in this are..”
 James MacKinnon (Univ. Alberta Canada) “..This looks
encouraging, as we are very interested in providing a framework for
conferencing within ATLAS Canada, and a reflector site would greatly
facilitate this..”
Some Conclusions

VRVS is now a production system with more than
3327 registered host computers located in more than
52 countries.
 VRVS will support all the types of
videoconferencing; from the Mbone and the H.323
applications to a very high video and audio
quality like MPEG2;
 Manpower resource shared between the
production system and the R&D -- Critical
Situation -Videoconferencing is a just one piece of a collaborative
toolkit which is today a vital part of the widely spread
Research and Education community
Questions ?
Philippe Galvez
California Institute of Technology
[email protected]