Bob Dixon Ohio Academic Resources Network

Transcription

1 Bob Dixon Ohio Academic Resources Network

2 Telepresence Interoperability Demo at Internet2 Conference Oct 6, San Antonio, Texas Tandberg T3 3 screen TP Oporto, Portugal Tandberg T3 3 screen TP Lisbon, Portugal Tandberg T3 3 screen TP at Tandberg, via IBM Research New York, NY Cisco CTS screen TP room with Tandberg codecs at IBM Research Hawthorne, NY Sony 1-screen HD Yorktown, NY Tandberg TP Server (MCU) at IBM Yorktown Heights, NY Polycom simulated 3-screen TP at IBM Research Yorktown, NY Polycom TPX 3 screen TP San Antonio, TX Either/Or Tandberg HD Recorder at IBM Research Almaden, CF Either/Or LifeSize 1-screen HD Columbus, OH Polycom RMX MCU at OSU Columbus, OH Polycom RPX 4 screen TP At IBM Research Armonk, NY Polycom RPX 2 screen TP At Iformata Dayton, OH Polycom RSS HD Recorder in Berrein Springs, MI LifeSize Conference 3 screen TP At OARNet Columbus, OH Polycom TPX 3-screen TP Andover, MA Bob Dixon

3 Polycom, Tandberg and LifeSize all in the same conference Polycom 3 screens San Antonio, TX Tandberg 3 screens in New York, NY LifeSize 3 screens in Columbus, OH

4 Mixed vendors and screen numbers in the same conference Polycom 3 screens in Andover, MA Tandberg 3 screens in New York, NY Polycom 2 screens in Dayton, OH LifeSize 1 screen in Columbus,OH

5 Mixed vendors and screen numbers, with 4 screens displayed on 3 Polycom 3 screens in San Antonio, TX Tandberg 3 screens in New York, NY Polycom 4 screens in Armonk, NY

6 Mixed vendors and screen control illustration Polycom 4 screens displayed as 2 screens, in Armonk, NY Polycom 3 screens in San Antonio, TX Cisco 3 screens in Hawthorne, NY

7 Polycom 3 screens in San Antonio, TX Tandberg 3 screens in New York, NY Polycom 4 screens in Armonk, NY

8 Telepresence is a system which uses high definition video conferencing and an immersive room environment to create the illusion that you are in the same room with the people on the other end of the conference. Telepresence systems from different vendors have not in general interoperated with one another. No vendor claims interoperation with another. Yet it is widely noted that telepresence will succeed only if interoperation becomes the norm, as it is with standard and high definition video conferencing. Each of the last three Internet2 conferences over the past 2 years have had demonstrations and presentations about telepresence interoperability, which have served to illustrate the then-current state of the art and to urge the vendors toward interoperability.

9 The most recent demonstration was on Oct 6, at the Internet2 Fall Member Meeting in San Antonio, TX. A description of the subsequent discussion session, and the slides used by the speakers can be found at agenda.cfm?go=session&id= &event=980 The slides may not yet have been placed there, but they will appear soon. This event demonstrated interoperability among Polycom, Tandberg, LifeSize and Sony telepresence and HD systems, with 1,2,3 and 4 screens.

10 Many pieces of equipment were used, located around the country and world. 12 endpoints 32 screens 2 telepresence MCUs 2 HD recorders All of the equipment is off-the-shelf, and can be purchased by anyone today. (With one small exception explained later.) All of the equipment uses the industrystandard H.323 protocol, which makes interoperation much easier. The details of the equipment and locations are shown in the attached diagram. In addition, some Tandberg systems in Singapore, Melbourne and Norway were used briefly during preliminary testing, but were not available in the final event.

11 1. Polycom RMX, with telepresence option, 40 HD ports. MLA software running in a separate remote PC controls screen layout selection. 2. Tandberg Telepresence Server, 16 HD ports. Both MCUs have powerful telepresence intelligence which enables them to automatically deal with the many issues involved in telepresence: Varying number of screens Voice-activated switching of multiple screens at once 4:3 vs 16:9 screen aspect ratios Varying camera aiming philosophies, either cross-eyed or wall-eyed These two MCUs were cascaded together, which has never been done before. That required three separate interconnections. The combination provides huge interoperability capabilities.

12 The equipment was interconnected by various networks: Internet2 Advanced IP Network commodity internet IBM corporate network Polycom corporate network Tandberg corporate network Iformata Telepresence Network No QOS or other special arrangements were made or needed. Telepresence units typically use a fairly high bandwidth to provide a good immersive experience; depending on availability and the equipment in use, bandwidths can range from 1 to 5 Mbs per screen (and units may have from 1 to 4 screens). The bandwidth used in this demonstration was typically 4 Mbs/screen.

13 The event was recorded by both Polycom and Tandberg HD recorders, connected to their respective same-brand MCUs. There are no immediate plans to make the recordings widely viewable, because of the logistical and editing requirements. The interoperability event lasted 30 minutes, and was repeated 3 times at the conference. The recordings run for many hours, including setup beforehand and random conversations at other times, so they are not very interesting in their raw forms. Some excerpts from the Polycom recorder were played back to the audience at the discussion session which occurred the day after the demos. Several still images were extracted to illustrate a few of the various interoperability capabilities, and they are attached. The recorders are "single-screen" endpoints, so the images shown were formatted by the Polycom MCU to fit on a single screen. That in itself illustrates the capability of the MCU, to make an excellent single-screen display of multiple-screen images. You will note a "Cisco" room shown in one of the illustrations. That is in fact a real Cisco telepresence room, which IBM Research has outfitted with Tandberg codecs connected to the audio and video outputs. Cisco systems are not at present interoperable with other HD telepresence systems except at degraded resolution.

14 In addition to the telepresence interoperability demonstrations, a demonstration of how telepresence is now in use in education was provided. John Chapman of Georgetown University in Washington, DC described how Polycom telepresence systems are heavily used to teach in both directions between Georgetown and Doha, Qatar (on the Arabian peninsula). The Polycom TP system in San Antonio was connected to their Polycom TP system in Doha, and it worked fine.

15 First and foremost, it all worked! There is always room for improvement, and that is the point of doing events like this. Telepresence interoperability works best when appropriate MCUs are used to mediate the connections. The Polycom, LifeSize and Sony endpoints and MCUs all connected together with no problems. The Tandberg endpoints work best when connected to the Tandberg Telepresence Server. That is because they regard any non-tandberg system as a single-screen device, and so the multiple screens are displayed on other brand systems as a small film strip across a single screen. However, the TTPS can connect fine to other brands. We urge Tandberg to change the way their endpoint software works, so that the TTPS and its cost not always required.

16 A minor problem is the occasional left-to-right reversal of the images from multiscreen endpoints, thru the MCUs. That is caused by the various camera aimings, their inconsistent numbering, and the MCUs not receiving information about that. Also the MCUs do not pass this information from one to another, which makes the situation worse. This meant we sometimes had to initially guess about the screen layouts, and then make corrections later. The situation can be easily corrected with the MCU control software, and it only needs to be done once for each endpoint, but it is troublesome in a large multivendor activity such as this event. We urge all vendors to send this information from the endpoints, and the MCUs to use it, so this happens automatically. This may require an extension of the H.323 standard, so that everyone does it the same way. The Polycom MLA screen image software is powerful, but not very easy to use. We urge that its user interface be made simpler, and that it be incorporated into the standard MCU control program, so that two different programs are not needed to control the telepresence layouts. In addition the use of a number in the name of each endpoint to denote a telepresence system as well as its screen position seems less than ideal. In our testing, endpoints named with room numbers on the end caused confusion. The Polycom MCU is located at the Internet2 Commons, so it can be used as needed to support other telepresence events.

17 This event could not have occurred without the enthusiastic participation by many people and organizations. I will mention just a few here: Stefan Karapetkov of Polycom, who championed this event within Polycom, and arranged for the Polycom TP unit to be installed at the conference in San Antonio. Bill Rippon of IBM Research, who provided the Tandberg Telepresence Server, recorder, Tandberg endpoints and much knowledge of Tandberg and other systems. Mark Duckworth of Polycom, who provided much assistance with the MLA software. Gabe Moulton and Robbie Noble of Ohio State University, who programmed and operated the Polycom MCU. Russ Colbert of Polycom, who provided the Polycom MCU to the Internet2 Commons. Elaine Shuck of Polycom, who provided access to the Polycom recorder. Elaine Lauerman of Internet2, who made the arrangements to install the Polycom TP unit at the conference, and for general support.