| International
Activities - Fall 2004 |
|
|
International Task Force Meeting, Part I
Monday, 28 September 2004
8:30 a.m. to noon
Location: Salon J
Hilton Austin
The ITF is made up of representatives from each of the organizations
with whom Internet2 has partnered through a Memorandum of Understanding
(MoU). The ITF serves as the forum for discussion of international
issues
relevant to the development of a high-performance, leading-edge network
infrastructure, advanced technologies and applications for research
and education.
Agenda
If you have any questions, please
contact Ana Preston <apreston@internet2.edu>
7:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. |
Continental Breakfast |
|
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Ana Preston/Heather Boyles - Internet2 (USA)
|
8:50 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. |
Infrastructure for Applications
Presentations followed by a short question and answer period on infrastructure deployment for applications in areas such as video, content delivery and collaboration. |
|
Introduction
Moderator: Ana Preston – Internet2 (USA) |
|
RNP Digital Video Overlay Network: Development and Launch
Guido Souza Filho – RNP (Brazil) [presentation]
The Digital Video Working Group (GTVD) of Brazil's Rede Nacional de Pesquisa e Ensino (RNP) has developed an overlay network for video, live and on-demand, for the national academic network. The system has been approved and will enter production by year's end. Highlights of the system include its flexibility regarding video formatting and protocols, and its ability to deliver high-quality content to lesser-provisioned users. Central to the design of the system is ample leeway for content generators. This is crucial for RNP because it helps increase participation on both sides: content generators are not locked into a single type of format or encoding scheme and users are able to access the content with a large variety of clients. The presentation will include an overview of system components, design architecture, and factors that influenced the direction of the project. Besides building a transparent video delivery service, the GTVD also had to develop a simple way for participating institutions to publish their content. This often involves moving and synchronizing files in the +500MB range. A publication procedure was elaborated by infusing the RNP backbone with a network storage layer. Advantages of this approach will also be discussed.
|
|
Two-level Content Delivery System in PIONIER Optical Network for interactive TV services
Cezary Mazurek - PIONIER (Poland) [presentation]
Large-scale interactive TV services are a network demanding applications. Delivery of high quality 750kb/s – 1,5 Mb/s streams to thousands of users generates huge amount of traffic that is not possible to carry for any network. Thus there is a need to utilize available resources in a more efficient way and optimize the access to multimedia content. That’s why the dedicated Content Delivery System (CDS) is needed to resolve this problem and enable scalable content delivery.
The iTVP project, which aims at providing access to the Polish National Television (TVP) archives and live broadcasts, covers the issues of content digitalization, production, encoding, distribution, delivery and access in a secure and scalable way. Under this project, we develop the Content Delivery System which is structured in two-level hierarchical way. At the first level there are Regional Data Centers (RDCs) which are connected with a high-speed dedicated links. The second level of the CDS consists of proxy/cache servers linked to the RDCs. The Content Providers (CTP) can supply the content to any RDC (in general) which allows them to bring it in for distribution and delivery in a whole system. There might be many different CTPs connected to the CDS (e.g. regional TV stations).
In the presentation we describe the design issues for this system, we discuss its structure and architecture. We present the content distribution schema and technology used for system development. The presented Content Delivery System has been developed using Microsoft .NET Technologies. For intra-system communication .NET Remoting technology is used and interfaces to other systems have been implemented as WebServices. The system uses Microsoft Windows Media Services, as a streaming platform, which is available in Windows 2003 Server. The Enterprise Edition of this software is used for multicast support. However, the system has been prepared for easy integration with other streaming media platforms through specified APIs.
The Content Delivery System is being deployed in the Polish Optical Internet PIONIER network. The guaranteed bandwidth for countrywide and region-wide content distribution will be provided based on layer-two separation where possible. VPNs will be deployed for added security. Three pilot RDC servers will be connected using Gigabit Ethernet switches, with trunked links when needed, for best throughput and scalability. Regional Data Centers will be connected using PIONIER network infrastructure with separated 2 Gb/s channels. About 40 Proxy/cache servers will be connected to RDCs with dedicated channels of 100-400 Mb/s each, which will allow high quality content distribution at reasonable time. For the first testbed the expected number of iTVP users is about 12.000.
* Reported work has been supported by the grant 6 T11 067 2001 C-5677 of the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research |
|
Megaconference Jr. Event
Gregory Palmer, University of Pennslyvania (USA) [presentation] |
|
Discussion |
|
BREAK (10:00 a.m. - 10:25 a.m.) |
10:25 a.m. - Noon |
The Future of International Interconnection of Advanced Research and Education Networks
The international interconnection of our respective advanced research and education networks and network facilities increasingly takes place in a variety of ways -- via direct router-to-router, layer 3-based interconnection and peering, via GigabitEthernet-based, layer 2-based exchange points, via exchange points supporting 'lambda grid' style connections and so on. What has been our experience with these various models? What are the emerging organizational and technical issues with respect to each? What will be the future of interconnection among advanced research and education networks and network facilities (e.g. wavelength-based of other dedicated connections, i.e., 'lightpaths' or 'lambdagrids')?
This session is designed with short presentations on these issues and substantial time for roundtable discussion amongst speakers and the audience. |
|
Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF)
Kees Neggers, SURFnet (The Netherlands) [presentation]
|
|
UCLP International Trasit Service
Bill St. Arnaud, CANARIE (Canada) [presentation] |
|
T-LEX -- A lambda facility in Tokyo
Akira Kato, JAIRC/WIDE Project (Japan) [presentation]
As a landing point of IEEAF Pacific circuit in Japan, T-LEX has been bootstrapped in March 2004. It is an edge of lightpath environment and it interfaces to number of academic networks including WIDE, APAN-JP, and others. In this talk, a brief introduction of T-LEX as well as near future plan is introduced.
|
Noon |
Adjourn for Lunch |
|
