Internet2 Showcase
Internet2 regularly showcases our members' efforts on behalf of advanced research and education networking. We not only encourage Internet2 members to share their achievements with the community, but also the interesting people, events, developments and collaborations that make those achievements possible. If you have suggestions for news, events, projects or people that might be featured, please contact info@internet2.edu and include a brief description, appropriate links and images and contact information. Thanks for helping us spread the word.
The world's first Gigaconference videoconferencing event was held 9 August 2005 showcasing the use of high-end, high-performance videoconferencing equipment. The Internet2 Commons and Codian Corp. sponsored the event. Some presentations from the more than 20 sites from around the world included: "Classical Music and the IP Prince" by the Cleveland Institute of Music: "Telemedicine via Live High-Performance Video" from Helsinki, FN; "Live from the Distance Teaching and Learning Conference", in Madison, WI; and "The Ohio State University Marching Band."
Dr. Bob Dixon, Chief Research Engineer, Ohio State University (OSU) and OARnet, Gigaconference co-organizer, and one of the world's foremost videoconferencing experts, said the idea for this event was born out of a desire to test the limits of new videoconferencing equipment in a multi-vendor environment. OSU collaborates with the Ohio Supercomputer Center to house and maintain the Commons for the Internet2 community.
Gigaconference was the first videoconferencing event to be held completely at speeds above 1 Megabit/s across a bridge that could have included as many as 40 locations. Codian provided technical support for the Codian MCU, resolving compatibility issues encountered at various endpoint types. Polycom and Sony participated in the event providing technology and assistance. Highlights from the event will be shown at the Fall 2005 Internet2 Member Meeting in Philadelphia, 19-22 September 2005.
In conjunction with the recent CANARIE/ESCC/Internet2 Joint Techs workshop, the Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative (E2Epi) held a Network Performance workshop to help campus network administrators begin deploying network performance tools such BWCTL, OWAMP, and NDT. These tools assist in tackling network performance issues important to campus NOCs and researchers. BWCTL, OWAMP, and NDT also provide a foundation for perfSONAR, a web-services-based measurement framework being developed by Internet2 and its partners. The perfSONAR measurement framework includes services such as discovery, authentication and authorization, measurement points, and data archiving for critical network performance measurement data, which will help users routinely and successfully use advanced Internet applications.
The Access Grid will make its debut at the SIGGRAPH 2005 conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, as one of 32 interactive installations in the Emerging Technologies venue. The Access Grid (AG) is an ensemble of resources including multimedia large-format displays, presentation and interactive environments. This emerging, scalable teleconferencing technology enables interaction between individual desktops, 3,000-person theaters, and everything in between. The Access Grid program at SIGGRAPH will focus on the arts, and feature sessions including a dance performance distributed among five continents, demonstrations of Virtual Reality over the AG, and panels on consciousness and connectivity. Internet2 member organizations that are participating in Emerging Technologies venue include Boston University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Purdue University, University of Florida, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Donna Cox, of UIUC and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, served as chair for the SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies Committee. Jennifer Teig von Hoffman, of Boston University, and Jeff Carpenter, of NCSA, served as co-chairs for the Access Grid subcommittee. Significant equipment and software was contributed by Internet2 corporate sponsor inSORS Integrated Communications.
"We see this as a great opportunity to enable knowledge creation and learning in this unique and collaborative environment," said James L. Mohler, SIGGRAPH 2005 Conference Chair from Purdue University. "Since SIGGRAPH is the place where barriers are broken, it is especially significant that this will be the first time in history that the Access Grid will host a performance with artists working together on the same piece from five different continents." George Lucas, storyteller, director, producer, and visionary will present the keynote address at SIGGRAPH, which takes place 31 July through 4 August 2005 in Los Angeles, California.
Live MPEG-2 and Windows Media video streams will be provided by the Internet2 Commons. The MPEG-2 stream will be driven by new Internet2 corporate member HaiVision Systems recently released hai210 encoders and decoders. Click here for schedule of the events available in MPEG-2 and Windows Media. A subset of these events will also be available at select AG locations.
Click here to view the video streams.
No, its not a city where people once lived with glamorous ruins creating a backdrop to a former civilization. This city has more in common with life on Mars. The area was discovered in 2000 when scientists using underwater cameras came across strange 90 to 200 foot white towers west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Identified as a completely new kind of underwater hot spring environment, it was named the Lost City Hydrothermal field. 2100 feet below the oceans surface, an extreme environment created by heat, pressure and toxic chemicals surrounds the vents. It provides conditions for life forms that have learned to thrive in ways that may yield new insights into how life evolved on our planet and might survive under the surface of Mars.
Dr. Deb Kelley, University of Washington, joins Dr. Bob Ballard, University of Rhode Island as Co-Chief Scientists on this expedition that will collect geologic and biologic data, and provide live educational programming to museums, aquariums and Boys and Girls Clubs nationwide. Live TV-quality video from the expedition will be multicast over Internet2 networks. Captured by deep-sea remote operated vehicles (ROVs) launched from the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, the shipboard control system enables direct broadcast through a satellite telecommunications system to workstations across the country. Equipped with Iinternet2 technology, participating sites will be able to experience the exploration as it happens.
Produced shows will take place each day from July 23 through August 1 at 10am, 12pm, 2pm and 4pm U.S. Eastern Time.
Shibboleth®, federated authentication technology developed by the Internet2 community, enables more scalable, privacy-preserving access to online resources. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, an Internet2 corporate member, has announced that Shibboleth-enabled access to its FirstSearch service is now available. Using Shibboleth-enabled access simplifies management of access permissions for both the campus and for OCLC. The organization is looking forward to hearing from Internet2 members interested in exploring this new feature. More than 53,548 libraries in 96 countries and territories use OCLC's services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials. In addition, OCLC is a member of the InCommon Federation.
Internet2 has recently established a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). MCIT will interconnect the Egyptian research and education networks, which include the Egyptian Universities Network (EUN), and the Egyptian National Scientific and Technical Information Network (ENSTINET). This MoU will enable Egypt to connect to the global advanced R&E networking community, in addition to its recently established connection to GEANT via the EUMEDCONNECT project. EUN/ENSTINET now connects to the US Internet2 advanced networking infrastructure via the MAN LAN international exchange point located in New York City.
Movaz Networks, an optical networking equipment supplier and an Internet2 corporate sponsor, is providing Internet2 members with valuable opportunities to take advantage of the changes brought about by optical
networking capabilities. Movaz is supporting the Dynamic Resource Allocation via GMPLS Optical Networks (DRAGON) Project, which involves several Internet2 members working to expand the technologies relating to the intelligent management of dynamic optical transport networks, which are key to realizing the maximum benefit of the current trend by the research and education community to own optical networking infrastructure. In addition, Movaz is working on advanced optical initiatives with several Internet2 members including Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Colorado, and PeachNet. Movaz is also engaged in the Michigan LambdaRail research network.
Proposals for sessions, demonstrations, side meetings, and posters at the Fall 2005 Internet2 Member Meeting to be held September 19-22 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania will be accepted until Thursday, June 30th. Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania and MAGPI, the meeting program will focus on the many and varied innovative uses of advanced networks as well as the constantly evolving network infrastructures that enable them. Sessions will examine new networking technologies, exciting advanced network applications, how campuses are managing the development and deployment of new Internet2 technologies, and new opportunities for companies and other organizations to work with the university and K-12 communities.
Many features of the Internet2(R) Detective are now accessible directly from web browsers. A new Java applet version of the Internet2 Detective allows you to test a computer's network connection for IPv6, multicast, as well as bandwidth available to an Internet2 backbone network without installing special software. The applet version is the result of a combined effort by staff and individuals from member institutions. Begun in 2001, development of the Internet2 Detective has benefited from the support of and feedback by the Internet2 community.
Internet2 is soliciting advanced networking applications demonstrations for the Fall 2005 Internet2 Member Meeting, which will be held at the Wyndam Philadelphia at Franklin Plaza hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 19-22 September 2005. Internet2 university members, corporate members, affiliate members, association members, working groups, and international partners are all invited to participate in the demos. Internet2 would like to feature demos that showcase how advanced networking is enabling the research and education community to find new methods of scientific communication, collaboration, and visualization--often in partnership among U.S. researchers, faculty, students and their overseas counterparts. Applications from all disciplines are welcome. The primary objective is to showcase network-intensive applications that demonstrate the reality and the potential of Internet2 environments. Demos that illustrate how Internet2 can facilitate technology transfer from the lab to the marketplace are also welcome. To get an idea of the types of demos that were featured at past events, refer to the Internet2 demo archive. Demo proposal submissions are due July 8.
Photo courtesy of Washington University in St. Louis.Washington University in St. Louis broadcast its 144th commencement live on 20 May 2005 using multicast over Internet2 advanced networks. In 2004, Washington University provided a live multicast stream as an experiment. The "experiment" was successful enough that the Network Technology Services staff offered a live multicast again for spring 2005 and promoted it as an alternative viewing option for commencement attendees. According to Steven Wiese, Director of Systems and Operations at Network Technology Services for Washington University in St. Louis. "We wanted to provide the friends and family of our graduates the opportunity to view a high-quality stream of the commencement activities. The multicast technology and Internet2 allowed us to do this." And, echoing the apprehensions of all campus event planners, Wiese continued, "We also needed to be able to provide a stream that would provide a high resolution image to our remote viewing areas on campus in the event of bad weather. Luckily, we experienced sunny skies; but we were ready just in case." Former U.S. Representative Richard A. Gephardt delivered the spring 2005 commencement address.
Washington University in St. Louis, an Internet2 member since 1998, is a medium-sized, independent university with 6,509 undergraduates and 5,579 graduate and professional students, as well as 1,384 part-time students. Twenty-two Nobel laureates have been associated with Washington University, with nine doing the major portion of their pioneering research there. Washington University offers more than 90 programs and nearly 1,500 courses in a broad spectrum of traditional and interdisciplinary majors.
The 2005 GARR conference in Pisa, Italy—hosted by Garr, the Italian Academic and Research Network—invited members of the Internet2 Arts and Humanities community to help stretch the boundries of technology-enabled, simultaneous, remote learning and teaching. Hosted in Pisa from 10-13 May 2005, the conference was attended by 300 network specialists from the all over Europe who came to report on national and international research and achievements, and to explore the possibilities a ubiquitous network can bring to research, learning, and culture.
Working with the hosts at GARR, the team created virtual studio space for viola maestro, Hillary Herndon, at the New World Symphony, and viola student, Anna Simeone, from the Conservatory of Music in Pisa to meet for a class. Bridging languages through translators and distance through technology, the broadcast was the first of its kind between Europe and the US. Two laptop computers were used: one receiving the 30 Mbps NTSC signal from Miami and converting it to PAL, the other sending the outgoing PAL signal to Miami at 30 Mbps where it was decoded running DVTS software resulting in an aggregate bandwidth of 60 Mbps. In addition to the conference attendees on site, 170 viewers attended by netcast. Among the enthused attendees was the Principal of the Trieste Conservatoria who referred to the demonstration as "the most astonishing experience he had ever had" and proposed several future applications for his students.
While both geographic and language barriers were being erased, the enabling technology ultimately dropped away to reveal... a student, a teacher, and the intricacies of a music lesson. Internet2 would like to thank the following participants for their assistance in this demonstration, Claudio Allocchio, GARR; Stefano Zani, INFN Multimedia Group/GARR Netcast; Fabio Bisi, INFN Multimedia Group/GARR Netcast; Roberto Giacomelli, INFN Multimedia Group/GARR Netcast; Tom Snook, New World Symphony; Andrew Hollis, New World Symphony and Phil Ribeiro, New World Symphony.
New Internet2 affiliate member, the U.S. Library of Congress will utilize
high-performance networking capabilities to advance various research and
education programs. Researchers at many Internet2 members working on the
National Digital Newspaper Program, which is creating a national,
digital resource of historically significant U.S. newspapers, will soon be
able to send these bandwidth-intensive files in seconds rather than minutes
or hours in collaboration with the Library. The Library will also leverage advanced networking for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, which seeks to conserve increasingly common "born digital" materials for which no hardcopies exist. Finally, with 34 state education networks providing 27,000 K-20 institutions with access to Internet2 networking, the Library will explore ways to enhance its K-12 educational outreach program.
Online game to launch May 24th at www.gamefilm.tv/game.html
Descent to the Underworld is a collaborative game-film project involving 8 universities around the world. A "game-film" is a participatory project that uses an interactive game that produces a linear film as an outcome. As players "move" through the game, they win different scenes from a film, depending on the choices they make. When the game is completed, the scenes the player has "won" are automatically edited and streamed to the participant. Descent to the Underworld is based on a myth that appears in many cultures. The story tells of humans successfully traveling back and forth between earth and the underworld. Some better known versions include the Greek "Demeter and Persephone" and "Orpheus and Eurydice"; the Norse "Baldur"; the Babylonian story of "Ishtar". Four teams of students meet online once a week to share sketches, ideas, animation and film clips; and debate their own approaches to the storyline. Their collaboration will result in twenty different scenes which will be played in a short film as a result of choices made during the game's progress.
The teams use the Access Grid (AG) across Internet2's Abilene Network and partner international advanced research and education networks. The AG, developed by the Futures Laboratory at Argonne National Laboratory, is an open source suite of tools that enable large scale, group-to-group videoconferencing. Final production is a collaboration between Drexel’s College of Media Art and Design and Druid Media. Each team has its own Wiki for out-of-class communications and its own mailing list. Descent to the Underworld is sponsored by and supported by a grant from Department of Community and Economic Development of the State of Pennsylvania. MAGPI, the Mid-Atlantic GigaPop located at the University of Pennsylvania, is providing additional support and also provides connectivity to the Abilene Network backbone for several of the participating organizations.
The 8 participating universities are:
To help meet the growing need within the research and education community for desktop conferencing and collaboration solutions, as well as the growing interest and development of SIP-based solutions, Internet2 is working closely with Wave Three to provide a cross-platform desktop collaboration solution. Wave Three's software provides point-to-point and multi-party conferencing functionality with audio, video, presence, and instant messaging features based on Internet Engineering Task Force's SIP and SIP-related protocol standards. Data collaboration, accomplished using a web browser, provides the ability to view, share, control, and mark up participant application data. The Wave Three software is available through the Internet2 Commons Real Time Communications Pilot.
Megaconference Jr. is the world's first all virtual K-12 videoconference event over Internet2 and other advanced networks around the world. The Internet2 Commons H.323 Videoconferencing Service provides the high capacity multipoint videoconferencing technology that makes this event possible. Now in its second year, Megaconference Jr. gives students in elementary and secondary schools around the world the opportunity to communicate, collaborate and participate in each other's learning, using real-time, advanced multi-point videoconferencing technology. Presenters will conduct learning activities that take advantage of geographical and cultural diversities to build international awareness. Students, teachers and staff will be able to address questions and collaborate with geographically distant peers. The 12-hour duration will make it possible for schools from many time zones to participate during their regular school hours. Megaconference Jr. takes place on 19 May 2005 and runs from 7:00 am until 7:00 pm EDT (UTC-4). This year there are over 190 registered schools with many schools bridging multiple sites from their locations. According to Jennifer MacDougall, Applications Coordinator at the MAGPI GigaPoP and a Megaconference Jr. organizer, "Last year we saw the power of how the Megaconference Jr. event can impact student learning and dramatically increase student engagement with other peoples and cultures using Internet2 and advanced networking technologies. We've already seen huge success in our goal of increasing opportunities for international collaborations using these technologies. Putting the process and the technology in the hands of the students and teachers is the key to empowering learning through engagement and improving our understanding of each other."
The Internet2 Commons is providing support for this week’s Megaconference Jr. event, which gives students in elementary and secondary schools around the world the opportunity to communicate, collaborate, and contribute to each other's learning in real time using hi-fidelity, multi-point videoconferencing technology enabled by advanced networking. Nearly 200 sites from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America have registered for this year’s event. Supported by and developed with Internet2 members, the Internet2 Commons provides a standards-based and scalable H.323 Videoconferencing Service that enables distributed classes, meetings, and conferences.
Photo by Fred Cattroll.
The Manhattan School of Music distance learning program is partnering with Michigan's St. Clair County Regional Educational Service Agency, located in a largely rural county just outside the Detroit metropolitan area, to present music programs delivered via interactive videoconferencing over Internet2 advanced networks. St. Clair County, which includes 57 schools in 7 local school districts, will receive offerings such as American Composers; A Personal Introduction to Opera; Jazz: Get into the Groove; Music from around the World; group instrumental lessons; and the type of custom telementoring sessions that require the high-fidelity, broadcast-quality streaming audio and video available over Internet2. Additionally, these programs will enable partner schools to tap into the rich musical resources of Manhattan School of Music's artist faculty and student teaching artists, thereby eliminating the barriers of time and distance and allowing musicians to extend their expertise to new students and audiences around the country. In the image shown above, saxophone students representing several Canadian universities and high schools receive broadband videoconference instruction from world renowned Manhattan School of Music faculty member, Dave Liebman, saxophone during a similar distance learning initiative.
The Spring 2005 Internet2 Member Meeting (2-4 May in Arlington, VA) will feature many exciting applications related activities.
Two noteworthy sessions are the "National Health Information Network Design and Recommendations" presentation and the Internet2 "Business Innovation Group Session." You can easily find the applications sessions you're interested in by going to the Spring Member Meeting program page, using the "Topic Area" pull down menu, and selecting "Advanced Applications and Technologies."
If you are new to the Internet2 member community, you will want to attend the "Internet2 101" orientation and overview. This session provides a basic overview of Internet2, covering the concepts and terminology in advanced network services, middleware and applications. It also provides information that will help you understand how to engage with the Internet2 community, with a focus on current projects, initiatives and Working Groups.
There are several Working Group meetings, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions (BoFs), and Special Interest Group sessions (SIGs) taking place that are of interest to the advanced applications community. Some of these groups are having their inaugural gatherings during this Member Meeting, include the Teaching and Learning Working Group and the Research Technology Collaboration SIG . The ResearchChannel / Internet2 Working Group, the High-Energy and Nuclear Physics SIG, and the Digital Anatomy BoF will hold meetings as well. Having been successfully incubated in the VoIP Working Group, SIP.edu has been spun off as its own Internet2 Working Group. To ease this transition, the meetings of the SIP.edu and VoIP working groups will be held back-to-back in a joint session. Finally, Vint Cerf, widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," will be a special remote presenter during the Peer to Peer Working Group meeting.
If you will be attending the spring member meeting in person, we hope you will participate in many of these activities. If you cannot join us in Arlington, you can watch the netcasts of several sessions.
More than 700 leaders in advanced networking gathered from 2-4 May 2005 for the Spring 2005 Internet2 Member Meeting in Arlington, Virginia. Thanks to dedicated effort on the part of the Spring 2005 Program Committee the outstanding meeting program included general session presentations by the new Director of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., and a panel on "National LambdaRail and Internet2: Technical and Organizational Progress". Nearly 150 formal program presentations and panels, as well as working and interest group meetings, covered a variety of topic areas including advanced applications and technologies, real-time collaborations, middleware, network planning and engineering, security for advanced networks, as well as teaching and learning. Archives of the netcast sessions are now available online.
