Feature Story Internet2 Technology Revolutionizes Oceanographic Research Celine Rice Ocean State Higher Education Economic Development and Administrative Network

On a rainy afternoon on the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay campus, several dozen ocean exploration enthusiasts – guests of Dr. Robert Ballard’s Immersion Presents program – watched, rapt, as the world-renowned explorer spoke with them via Internet2 videoconferencing from aboard the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown. Misty undersea images of the Lost City, a series of hydrothermal vents in the mid-Atlantic, flooded the large screen at the front of an amphitheater in the University’s Coastal Institute.

The images, beamed back to URI in real time from Ballard’s robotic explorers Argus and Hercules, were simultaneously sent from URI to 24 other sites nationwide – including the University of Washington laboratories of Dr. Deborah Kelley, who discovered the Lost City in 2000. The time required to send the images from 2,100 feet below the surface to Kelley and her colleagues, 4,500 miles away in Seattle: 1.5 seconds.

Elsewhere on the Bay Campus, in Ballard’s Inner Space Center, banks of monitors were illuminated with similar images as a 6-person crew worked continuously to integrate and edit various feeds from the Brown – creating seamless transmission to the Immersion Presents sessions and to scientists at three research universities, and streaming to the Internet for worldwide viewing. Down the hall, a group of URI scientists gathered around a command center similar to the one that accommodated Kelley and her team at the University of Washington, as well as colleagues at the University of New Hampshire.

The Lost City expedition was the first in which a principal scientist participated entirely through telepresence – marking a new era in undersea exploration and possibly revolutionizing scientific inquiry, said Ballard. “We are able to marshal the intellect of America – involving 200 Deborah Kelleys in a mission without asking them to leave their classrooms and laboratories for several weeks and go to sea.” He added that, should a new undersea life form be discovered, for instance, an expert biologist can be summoned at the touch of a cell phone.

The Lost City expedition was launched by the Institute for Exploration in Mystic, CT, which also worked with the Institute for Archaological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. URI worked in partnership with the Ocean State Higher Education, Economic Development, and Administrative Network (OSHEAN) – a not-for-profit consortium of universities, hospitals, and government agencies that brings Internet2 access to members throughout Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts – to make the historic mission possible. Using the infrastructure and video resources that OSHEAN members have put in place over the past five years, the mission was streamed via multicast to sites across the United States.

For more information about the University of Rhode Island, visit www.uri.edu.

For more information about the Institute for Exploration and Dr. Ballard’s undersea discovery initiatives, visit www.ife.org.

For more information about OSHEAN, visit www.oshean.org

What's Happening Megaconference VII Highlights Bob Dixon, Chief Research Engineer, OARNet and Ohio State University

Megaconference VII was held on Dec 1, 2005. See http://www.megaconference.org for details. The conference continues the trend of growing bigger every year.

• There were 432 registrants. Estimated audience of 1000 people.
• 22 MCUs
• 40 countries, 6 continents
• 42 states of the USA
• 3 streaming video sites (Finland, Slovenia and USA)
• 1 cable TV location (University of Wisconsin at Lacrosse; campus and 11 cities)

• 15 1/2 hours
• 28 wonderful presentations
• 3 Cafes
• 3 Roll Calls
• 3 Megachoirs, led by maestro Tim Poe
• 6 Technology Showcases for the Prize Donors
• 15 Door Prizes
• 3 parallel chat sessions running, Audience, Presenters and Technical.

Some Firsts this year:

• 3G/H.324 live video from a cell phone (from London)
• Many new countries for the first time. China, India, Fiji, Indonesia, Philippines,
• Niger, Nigeria, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Colombia, Estonia, Panama Access Grid connection
• Seeing the Stars thru a Telescope (from Australia)

Many wonderful messages have been received; here is one that gets to the heart of the theme Increasing Empathy through Vide Conferencing:

"Thank you very much for your excellent and extremely diligent work to organize megaconference VII. It was a really huge success which left me with a nice memory.

And I also want to express my gratitude for giving us a special opportunity to sing a song.

We all treasured this chance, so we sung this song with deepest love to the megaconference and the world. Such a feeling came from our heart. We used three minutes to show our warm welcome to you and all the new friends we met in this conference. Thank you again for allowing us to sing a whole song. The song we sung on the morning of Dec. 2 was a Chinese folk song, called "Jasmine flower".

You praised us by waving your hand and my students were deeply moved. We were all excited for a long time. We all love you and the megaconference you originated.

This was our first time to participate in the megaconference, and also the first time for all institutes in the Chinese Academy of Science. It was a great experience for us to join this kind of activity.

Videoconferencing is an effective way of communication. It opened a window for us, by which we can see how people in other countries work and live. And at the same time a real China has been shown to the world. I believe that more people will comprehend the meaning of the videoconference by attending it personally. We will want to participate in the next megaconference.

I hope we will have more academic and cultural exchanges by using VC with the universities in the USA.

Best regards
Yafen Jin
Manager of the Network Center of the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science.
Chinese Academy of Science."

Site Reports University of Pittsburgh's International Business Center

The International Business Center in the University of Pittsburgh's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business organized a real-time, multi-point videoconference with Michael S. Dell, founder and chairman of the Board of Directors of Dell computers on 12 April. Dell addressed Master of Business Administration students from his office in Austin, Texas via videoconference. Seventeen other institutions with Centers for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) were able to take part in the conference through Internet2's advanced high performance network which connects all of the participant Internet2 member universities. The Internet2 Commons H.323 Videoconferencing Service provided the technology for this multi-site event.

The event began with Dell sharing his experience of and insights into international business. After his remarks, Dell fielded questions from Pitt students, as well as students interacting live via videoconference from Duke University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Indiana University, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, Temple University, Thunderbird-The American Graduate School of International Management, and the universities of Colorado at Denver, Connecticut, Hawaii at Manoa, Kansas, Memphis, Michigan, South Carolina, and Washington. For more information, see http://ibc.katz.pitt.edu/PastEvents/Dell.htm.

If you are interested in submitting a site report, please send an email to commons-info@internet2.edu.

Tip of the Quarter "Virtual" Site Coordinator Training Megan Troyer and Bob Dixon Ohio State University

In the last six months, the Internet2 Commons Operations group trialed a new way of training new Site Coordinators. Since most of the people looking to gain the designation of Site Coordinator already have some experience with H.323 Videoconferencing, we began offering the training by videoconferencing. This offering has been overwhelmingly popular and we have had 260 registrants for training between the four classes taught in July, August, and November of 2005 and January of 2006. As always, all who take our course are invited to join the ranks of the Official Certified Site Coordinator. To see who all 291 individuals who have taken that additional step, please see: http://commons.internet2.edu/sitecoordinators.html

In addition to our standard H.323 training for administers, the Internet2 Commons was asked by the World Bank’s Global Distance Learning Network to prepare a more basic H.323 class for their centers in Africa. On February 2, 2006, we delivered a 3-hour course in the basics. This was a customized version of the four-hour course we have been teaching regularly to other parts of the world—mainly North America and Europe.

The audience was very serious, of varying knowledge levels and backgrounds (managers and technicians), and asked many questions. The course went very well, and was much appreciated. We ourselves learned many things from their questions, and feel both discouraged and inspired. We are discouraged because they have such serious technical and political problems. Inspired because we believe we can help them with at least their technical problems, through continuing contacts and free consulting services.

Megan Troyer designed and taught the course, Gabe Moulton provided technical support in the background, and Robert Dixon helped answer questions and added additional perspectives.

For more information about the phone bridge, please send an email to commons-techsupport@internet2.edu

Do you have a tip to share? Email your tip to commons-info@internet2.edu.

Technology View Sharing a Little Bit about H.239 Mary Trauner, Video Development Initiative

Those who have used collaborative technologies for some time know that the T.120 standard was developed to support application sharing and data collaboration. Being written and implemented initially for H.320 (ISDN) video conferencing appliances, many implementations of T.120 (particularly for desktop conferencing) were not very scalable. Bandwidth for the data stream was also very limited and therefore only small screen changes resulted in any sense of smooth collaboration. Some more current H.323 solutions began to provide T.120 functionality in the MCUs, but by that time we noticed a plethora of web solutions all claiming promises of “the best ever” – with price tags to match and proprietary architectures posing road blocks to interoperability across institutions choosing different products. So again the customer base looked toward standards to save the day.

In mid 2003, ITU Recommendation H.239 arrived on the scene, followed by an Implementor’s Guide in January, 2004. An updated ITU Recommendation H.239 was approved by ITU Study Group 16 in September, 2005.

So what is H.239 and how does it solve your collaboration problem? Well, it depends on what your definition of collaboration entails. First, the H.239 Recommendation defines the procedure for using multiple video channels in H.320 and H.245 signaling based (aka H.310, H.323 and H.324) systems and for labeling the individual channels with a “role”. The purpose of the role is to indicate the requirements for processing the channel and channel content in the call. The procedures defined include control, indications, and capability exchange mechanisms.

Note: While Recommendation H.239 covers both H.320 and H.245 signaling based systems, this article will only cover H.245 aspects since we are, after all, an Internet based service.

In a nutshell, while the H.245 Recommendation provides for multiple video channels, it does not define a one-way transmission method nor ways to label the channel content. H.245 also does not describe how to control presentation video in a multipoint conference. H.239 has stepped in to handle this by separating the idea of transport channels from what it calls “roles”. Roles have a “role label” which indicates the purpose of the stream as well as how the stream should be presented at the end-user system and how it should be processed by an MCU. (In general, this role label can be assigned to any audio, video, or data channel when it is useful to establish policies for presentation, management, and distribution.) The H.239 Recommendation currently defines two roles:

• Live – video is processed normally and suitable for live video of people
• Presentation – a token-managed presentation that is distributed to all devices.

• One or more capabilities for the traditional video channel (that is, the main video channel.)
• One or more capabilities for the second video channel, one or more capabilities for the main video channel while the second video channel is open.