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Rob Bristow, NREN Exchange Fellow, TENET
4th Nov 2014 Video-conferencing for higher education and research
Introductions
» Who am I? › On secondment from Jisc in the UK for two years – Part of Jisc Futures division – Worked at Jisc on video-‐conferencing projects
› What is Jisc? – UK NREN parent company – Janet is the TENET equivalent – runs national video-‐
conferencing service – Jisc runs services and development programmes in all
areas of technology and tertiary education
› What do I/Jisc know about video-‐conferencing and education? – Quite a lot!
Why are we here?
» It is clear that there is an unmet need aroundvideo-‐conferencing
» TENET ran PoC with hosted VMRs › Take up was patchy (for a number of reasons) › In the end, being able to connect H.323 rooms to each other was not
that useful › Expensive and not that flexible
» What else can we do?
» Is Adobe Connect the answer?
» Should there be a central “bridge”? 4th Nov 2014 TENET 3
Responses to questionnaires
» Really good response rate -‐ So Thank you! » Responses show desire for: › Interoperability › Understanding of the mixed nature of what is in place › Desire for some sort of central bridging facility » Demand for more bandwidth » H.323/SIP, Lync and Skype predominate as deployed technologies » Streaming and wider delivery seen as important by some 4th Nov 2014 TENET 4
Teliris Express Telepresence conference
What is Video enabled collaboration?
» Anything that involves collaboration and video (but may also include other things)
» From Telepresence to the desktop
» Room-‐based conferencing
» Desktop conferencing » Web conferencing
» These things are now converging – mobile is here
» The goal is a system that spans from web-‐conferencing to Tele-‐Presence
» How to join things up?
» Interoperability! Desktop Conferencing using Vidyo
Key benefits (From Jisc study)
» Reduced stress & time of travel (75%)
» Better control of time (61%)
» Easier to stay in touch (49%)
» Better work-‐life balance
» Compensate for travel difficulties
» Easier to arrange meetings
» Involve more people
» Improved communication with external partners
» Tangible travel and subsistence savings
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What’s wrong with conferencing?
» The room is booked out or locked
» The support people have gone home
» The equipment is out of commission
» There is echo on the audio feed
» The system I have is not compatible with the one the other people are using
» The network is up and down and the video quality makes this system unusable
» I can conference from a room but why can’t I join from my laptop or cell phone or iPad at my desk, or at home or from anywhere in the world?
» I want to easily share content from whichever device I am using
» Etc…
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Jisc Project conclusions
» There are considerable benefits accruing from, and opportunities for more, virtual meetings
» Virtual meetings don’t always replace travel › new uses – enabling that which simply used not be possible › stimulating and sustaining contact
» Considerable CO2 benefits for all › largest element in research intensive universities is (long haul) air
» Air travel generally dominates CO2 equivalent travel
» But overall business benefits are mainly related to short-‐medium distance travel air travel
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Video-‐conferencing
» Parts to this presentation: › The changing landscape of video-‐conferencing › Meeting the needs of South African Higher Education › The intentions for this workshop
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State of play of conferencing
09/10/14 TENET 12
23/10/14 TENET 13
Immersive Telepresence
» Very expensive » Senior executives’ toy (the private jet) » Has been described as ‘telepresence is the equivalent of a company having a single “e-‐mail room”’ » In the end -‐ so what!
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“Legacy” conferencing
» Otherwise known as H.323 or SIP or standards based
» The old way – expensive room based systems and heavy duty back end processing
» Betrays its telecommunications roots
» Only now waking up to the growth of demand for mobile and desktop conferencing
» Easy to use (relatively) » Limited functionality beyond video and audio (e.g.
content sharing)
» Vendors include Polycom, Lifesize, Ayaya, Cisco, etc.
» Generally business – not education focused
09/10/14 TENET 15
Polycom TPX 204M
Web conferencing
» The other end of the spectrum
» Content is king – so presentation is centre stage » Video and audio not usually as well done. Lack of
echo-‐cancellation can cause really bad problems
» Good for push – webinar or for where interaction is not so important
» Examples include Adobe Connect, Cisco Webex, Blackboard Collaborate and Big Blue Button/MConf (open source)
» Doesn’t really move off the desktop to enable bigger groups to interact
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Consumer and desktop clients
» Skype › Great for one to ones and presence
› Network parasite
› Can’t interoperate with anything else
» FaceTime
› Apple only
» Lync › Part of the MS Office stack – so on a lot of desktops
› Replacing traditional telephony – soft phones
› Can interoperate with many other systems
› One to watch
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Transcoderless and scalable Video-‐conferencing
» These use variants of the SVC extension to theH.264 video compression standard (Annex G)
» Sends a base layer which is enough – and then enhancement layers as the circumstances dictate
» Traffic goes through a media router – but the decoding/encoding is done intelligently on the end points
» Endpoints get the resolution and detail they can handle
» Advantages:
› Efficient low cost infrastructure – backend is much cheaper than traditional MCUs
› Excellent network resilience -‐ copes well with variable bandwidth situations
› Real time adaption – constant tailoring of what gets sent to each end point
› Flexibility
» Gateways to H.323/SIP world
» Lync and Outlook integration 09/10/14 TENET 18
Access Grid Session in Progress
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Uses of video-‐conferencing -‐ Music
» LOLA – Low Latency Project
» Enable real time musical performances where musicians are physically located in remote sites – useful for:
› Rehearsals before a concert
› Masterclasses
› Performance with distributed performers
» Heavy network requirements:
› Needs from 94Mbps to 500Mbps end-‐to-‐end
› Network jitter must be very stable (<3ms at 30fps, <6ms at 60fps)
› Hops must be minimised, and firewalls opened
» From Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Tartini from Trieste (Italy)
4th Nov 2014 TENET 20
Cloud services & Integrators
» But we may still have islands on video-‐conferencing
» Enter the integrators and cloud services » But most of these mean traffic going to Europe or the US – so not really an option at present in South Africa
» Promise of any system connecting to any system – but this really means going via H.323/SIP for now
4th Nov 2014 TENET 21
Some emerging themes
» Software endpoints and infrastructure › Much cheaper › More flexible › User provisioned and launched
» Cloud based offerings – pay for what you use
» Desktop and mobile – anyone connecting from anywhere
» Unified communications – presence, IM, telephony and video
» The right tool for the job » Video in browser – WebRCT
4th Nov 2014 TENET 22
UK Developments
» Janet (UK NREN) recently launched new service called V-‐Scene
» Old offering was a farm of MCUs and a rather clunky booking service, along with a dreadful desktop client
» Some advice and guidance on purchasing and use
» Quality assurance of endpoints
» But use was patchy and seemed mostly directed at schools
» Some heavy use in colleges with multiple sites
» New Platform incorporating Vidyo for desktop/personal and Cisco MCUs for H.323/SIP
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VIDYO
» Scalable, modular, flexible, configurable
» Mostly virtualised
» Good traction in research communities (CERN, SKA)
» Desktop and web client
› All participants can share content
» All registered user get a virtual meeting room
» Room systems
» Gateway to H.323/SIP
» Pay as you use pricing model
» API and SDK allows for custom intgration options
09/10/14 TENET 24
Vidyo at CERN
» CERN needed to scale V-‐C capabilities
» Traditional V-‐C was way too expensive
» Settled on Vidyo » 20,000 user accounts » Routers in many locations (one coming on line
in Cape Town)
» Over 800 concurrent connections at peak
» Cool graphic here: http://avc-‐dashboard.web.cern.ch/Vidyo
» CERN asked TENET to provide hosting for Vidyo Router for SA use
09/10/14 TENET 25
So what to use?
» What do you want to do › Teaching and learning › Research collaboration and coordination › Outreach
› Administration
» What does you have in your university? › Rooms › Desktop
» What can you get access to via the cloud? › Some of the new approaches can be run in a browser – Web RCT
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Who will use it?
» Admin › Split sites › Cross institutional organisations » Research collaboration › Project management » Teaching and learning › Video-‐conferencing everywhere › Record sessions or stream to wider internet › Role here for Web-‐conferencing?
09/10/14 TENET 28
And finally – some words of advice
» Local Network Configuration needs to be stable, and in particular firewalls need to be correctly configured.
» Room systems need to be properly configured including network and routing settings.
» Meeting rooms need to have good acoustics and good light
» Provide good quality audio play back in rooms
» Laptop / PC / mobile users need to have reasonable spec hardware & preferably headset and microphone (although Vidyo has built in echo cancellation)
» Laptop / PC / mobile users can connect using only a web browser, but get more functionality if they install the Vidyo client before connecting.
» Test the setup before a meeting starts, not when the meeting is supposed to start
» However good the hardware is, bandwidth across the internet will always be a limiting factor, however latency is even more critical.
» User familarisation and expectations are key – make sure people understand how to use the system and kit
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