This release of NICE project quarterly newsletter synopsizes project achievements and news of the last three months (May to July 1997). It includes the following topics:
A self-assessment report for NICE major event for 1997, Global360, a facility which brought together four conferences and interactive sites over three continents; a preliminary description of a distributed event/workshop connecting all Eastern NICE partners' sites and NICE Big Technical Trial; a report of the first broadband conference in Moscow, co-organised by NICE; announcement of a promotional event hosted by NICE for the expansion of the National Host concept in the East; a major technical announcement by CANARIE Inc., NICE contributing partner.
Global360 was a large scale distributed event of impressive content that confronted succesfully outstanding technical challenges. The "Global360 Channel" carried sessions from conferences in Brussels, Madeira, Calgary and Moscow and also offered news reports, panel discussions, software demonstrations, technical presentations and commercials from sponsors. People viewing at 15 different sites across Canada, Europe and Russia were able to actively participate in these programmes with their own questions and comments. The programme was also broadcast to many other receive-only sites on the MBONE section of the Internet.
Both the networking platform and the programme management were run from the same central location: the premises of KPN Research in Leidschendam, the Netherlands. It was the first time that a major ISABEL-based teleconference was not directly controlled by ISABEL developers at DIT-UPM Madrid.
NICE proved that it could offer a continuous stream of interactive programmes over three days. The few interruptions were managed professionally and the programmes kept on schedule throughout. Programmes were run from four conferences on three continents.
Programmes were also run from a number of other NICE partner sites, including amongst others a Greek government minister over the satellite link from Athens. Given the right structure and management everyone can become a broadcaster! The Global360 facility also hosted the complex demos between the Calgary and Madeira conferences in a close collaboration with the demo teams.
Global360 showed a succesful merge of professional TV-style techniques with state-of-the-art teleconferencing tools, over a European high-speed network. It was only a beginning, with some imperfections, but it helped in making this technology more attractive and acceptable.
In mounting Global360 NICE took considerable risks. The application control was taken away from its developers in UPM and given to KPN. The succes of the event proves that this technology is getting mature and trasferable. To create a continuous stream of programmes on the Global360 Channel heavy scheduling constraints were imposed.
A map of Global360 Interconnected Sites
NICE made commitments to the Calgary and Madeira conferences to provide them with a service to link their conferences programmes - and delivered them.
Last of all, NICE Moscow team took risks in mounting a major conference at short notice, with uncertain funding and all new technology. The result speaks for itself: not only was their conference a success, but a senior DG13 official was "beamed in" right on time, a number of their sessions was published, interactive sessions were run and a Global360 panel was chaired from Moscow.
It is worth mentioning that this was the first ever ATM broadband connection out of Russia.
One should also not forget acknowledging explicitely the development work done in order to enhance ISABEL functionalities for higher level of interactivity and to provide an ISABEL-to-MBONE gateway software (Isa2Mbone) for MBONE watchpoints.
Reports from MBONE sites (such as Minsk site in Belarus and Novosibirsk site in Siberia) show that the received quality of sound and video was quite satisfactory and stable and certainly higher than Internet standards, despite the low available bandwidth. Remote sites in the former USSR and other regions outside the EU helped in increasing the visibility of NICE work and in promotion of its goals.
Nevertheless one should bear in mind that G360 was an advanced technological experiment and a number of lessons were derived from it, giving pointers for further R&D work. NICE intends to work further in the direction of improving the networking solutions used in its events and trials and also explore new event content and scenarios enhancing the interactivity that Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) enables.
The Broadband Communications Conference (BBCC) was opened by Deputy Minister of Science & Technology A. Kuzmitsky and by A. Servantie of DGXIII who pronounced his speech in Brussels. This speech was brought to the audience in Moscow (at the premises of the Institute of Organic Chemistry) by the ATM network of the Global360 event, set-up by NICE project. This was the first time that the representatives of the Russian Government andthe research community witnessed the live global ATM network in operation.
The conference itself was the top of a technological iceberg created by the efforts of the FREEnet NOC (Moscow) and the team of Yaroslav University Internet Centre in co-operation with the western NICE partners. Apart from introducing the necessary technology for establishing a Global360 site at BBCC, the event itself was designed by an international team of specialists working together in a project funded by the EU, OSI, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Russian Ministry of Science.
The unique for Russia telecommunications and videoconferencing facilities were set up and tested in a very tight time frame and proved to be working efficiently throughout the event. Russian and international companies, such as FORE, Sun Microsystems, Moscow Telecom Corporation, ATM group and others provided sponsorship and support to the event.
The BBCC assembled over 200 participants from 14 countries and was distributed not only by the Global360 network but also via the Internet MBONE infrastructure to multiple sites in Russia, including St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Vladikavkaz, et al. and has attracted the attention of the federal and regional governments which were represented in the site. The BBCC/G360 event catalysed the creation of the Russian National Host, a few weeks after.
The people who worked for the success of the event expressed their satisfaction for their collaboration with NICE consortium, for the support and help they were provided during the preparation and realisation of the event.
The theme of the workshop is the Future developments of Broadband Communications in the CEE/NIS Countries and which benefit they will have by establishing a National Host, specially regarding participation in further EU-funded R&D Programmes.
For this purpose a group of high level policy makers in the area of telecommunications from CEE/NIS Countries will be brougth together to present them the concept of the National Host and to demonstrate the benefit for their way to a more advanced infrastructure and better services. Following topics will be arised:
The workshop will take place in Vienna, a central place to be reached from the CEE/NIS countries.
NICE is currently planning the realisation of two more large scale technical trials for the rest of 97:
The Big Technical Trial is one more challenging experiment for NICE participants, with respect to the technical advances to be demonstrated and its scale.
The purpose of the event is to assess all system integration and development work that has been carried out by NICE. The list of experiments to be executed includes among others: Creating a LAN emulation (LANE) sub-network to be connected with the main IP over ATM network. Two-way MBONE connection. On line demo of Video Archive and Retrieval developments. An MPOA demo/presentation.
All NICE eastern partners will participate as a test for the following CEE/NIS event (11/97).
The program and detailed content for the Big Technical Trial is under preparation and will be composed of presentations, live demos and debates promoting interactivity.
CEE/NIS Distributed Workshop (13-14/11)
This trial will be the first NICE distributed event were the control site will be in the East (CESNET, Prague). It will be a large scale evant with the participation of all NICE eastern partners.
The sub-network connecting eastern sites will be the same in Big Technical Trial. EU partners will participate to present development/integration results.
The content of the event will include presentations and discussions about networking R&D activities and achievements in eastern countries.
The provisional program of the event includes the following sessions:
CANARIE is an industry led and managed consortium created in 1993 as an innovative way for the Federal Government and private sector to collaborate in stimulating the development of the Information Highway in Canada.
CANARIE has played an instrumental role in the realisation of global experiments such as Global360.
CANARIE had a major announcement this last month. The opening of CA*net II as the world’s first next generation Internet took place on June 25, 1997 - Industry Minister John Manley and the President and CEO of CANARIE, Dr. Andrew K. Bjerring, launched CANARIE's CA*net II network at Showcase '97 in Ottawa.
CA*net II is the first "next-generation" Internet in the world and is intended to support advanced multimedia applications not possible on current networks.
Participating in the launch were John McLennan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Bell Canada, George Harvey, President, Business Services Group of AT&T Canada Long Distance Services and Guthrie J. Stewart, President and Chief Executive Officer of Teleglobe Canada.
"CANARIE and their telecommunications partners have shown great leadership in the building of CA*net II," said Minister Manley. "Advanced networks and the applications they support are critical to Canada's economic future," he added.
Built on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) facilities contributed by the carriers, CA*net II will support high-speed multimedia applications that cannot tolerate the delays experienced on the current Internet. Initial applications to be explored include distance education, telemedicine services and collaborative research activities, such as a bioinformatics research project of the National Research Council.
"The commitment, continued support and expertise brought by our carrier partners in developing CA*net II is a key element to the success of the project," said Dr. Bjerring. "The university and research networking communities are also key contributors to this project," he added, "and they will be the initial users of the network."
"Business will benefit from CA*net II as well," said John McLennan. "Since it's constructed around Bell's ATM network, everything we learned designing and building CA*net II can be transferred to Bell's commercial customers right away."
"Our participation in CANARIE projects such as CA*net II represents our continued support of the organization and its mission to help develop Canada's information society," added George Harvey.
CA*net II is the first international "next-generation' Internet network to connect to its American counterparts, although the American networks are at an earlier stage of development. Planning is underway to connect to similar European and Asian networks within the year.
"The interconnection of CA*net II and the advanced research networks in Europe and Asia, once those are completed, will achieve a long-held dream," commented Guthrie Stewart. "Such a global research network will be the first step towards the global broadband network of the future," he concluded.
CANARIE is a non-profit, industry-led consortium of private sector organizations, research institutes and the federal government. With support from its members and Industry Canada, CANARIE's mandate is to accelerate the development and deployment of next generation networking technology and applications in Canada.