Authors
Jason Bell (ARCS) and Phillippe Galvez (California Institute of Technology)
Abstract
It is generally agreed that video conferencing helps reduce travel costs and greenhouse gas emissions when working with a geographically separated group of people. However, there are many different opinions on which video-conferencing systems to use.
The Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) currently supports two video conferencing systems to help members of the Australian research community collaborate. These are Enabling Virtual Organisations (EVO) and Access Grid (AG). There are actually many different tools available in the market place and, more often than not, two people using different tools are unable to talk to one another.
ARCS has been investigating how these tools can communicate with one another and what support is necessary to make this happen. This presentation will provide an up to date overview of what is available in the market place, and what is necessary to bridge different videoconferencing systems together.
We will also detail some of our experiences and issues that have been encountered when attempting to provide connectivity between different video collaboration systems.
About the speakers
Jason Bell is the main developer and tester of the AG global Quality Assurance program and runs a weekly AG test session for the Asia Pacific region. Jason has provided code for the AG toolkit that is now part of the released packages and has been successfully building and implementing Access Grid for over 8 years. He has also developed numerous guides, including Linux installation, AG improvements and other miscellaneous documents as well as helped to develop and implement the global node listing. He holds a Bachelor of Information Technology (with honours) from CQ University Australia. Jason is based at CQ University Australia and is a member of the ARCS Collaboration Services Team.
Philippe Galvez has worked for the California Institute of Technology since April 1995. He represents one of the partners responsible for the management of high speed transatlantic network in support for high energy physics research. Currently Philippe is the head of international teams in Pasadena, CERN and Košice that develop the next generation communication system.
Phillipe’s videoconferencing and networking developments, include the international web-based videoconferencing system known as EVO (Enabling Virtual Organization); see at http://evo.caltech.edu) which allow several thousands of scientists world wide to collaborate. This system is currently running in more than 60 countries and has become a standard part of the toolset used daily by a large sector of High Energy Physics, and it is used increasingly for other DoE/NSF-supported programs. These developments, on behalf of the high energy physics community, have led to his assignment as project leader and chief developer for these new forms of videoconferencing at Caltech and CERN in Geneva, in support of international research. Current activities included the implementation of new digital video technologies, including H.323 I.T.U. standard integration, High Definition videoconferencing integration, shared environment, security, and Quality of Service into EVO.