ConferenceXP Update Fred Videon & Andrew Whitaker University of Washington

I’m ConferenceXPI’m Access Grid

Talk Outline ConferenceXP Background and Current Release Upcoming Release: ConferenceXP 5.0 ConferenceXP Deployments of Interest Questions/Discussion

Center for Collaborative Technologies Microsoft funded center Mandate: – Investigate education and other collaborative scenarios – Extend and maintain the ConferenceXP platform – Build the community of users and developers

ConferenceXP Platform for Real-time collaboration High-quality multipoint conferencing Full-screen, real-time video at 30 fps Built-in presentation capability, whiteboard & screen sharing

A Brief History of ConferenceXP Project began at MSR in 2001 as DISC Successful UW deployment for distance learning, ongoing since Spring way distance learning deployments Autumn 2004, 2005 & 2006 July 2007: UW Center for Collaborative Technologies founded to continue CXP development & support

ConferenceXP Services Venue Service – Provide virtual meeting spaces – Simple web service Archive Service – Conference archive & playback Reflector Service – Unicast tunnel – Multicast support is not great in many areas

ConferenceXP is a Shared Source Platform Provides a great platform for research in collaborative environments – APIs designed for extensibility –.Net Framework shortens development cycle – Includes rich AV device support Provides a proven platform for distance learning and distributed meetings – Existing tools support integrated TabletPC based presentation, archive post-processing and integrated archive playback

Current Release ConferenceXP 4.1 released December 2007 – Localization support Extracted strings to resource files Chinese version checked by native speakers – Vista Support – x64 Support

Upcoming Release CXP 5.0: Aiming for Summer 2008 Release – Improved Diagnostics – Security Enhancements – NAT-friendly reflector – High-quality audio

Diagnostics Problem: Understanding network failures is very difficult Approach: Aggregate connectivity information at a diagnostic service Details (similar to multicast beacon): – Leverage the diagnostic info in RTCP Receiver reports, sender reports – Each RTCP packet is copied over unicast to the diagnostic service

Diagnostics: UI Changes Warning icons Tool tips Missing participant “Ghost icon” Access to Detail view

Diagnostics: Detail View

Security 4.x has minimal security – Any client can join any venue 5.0 provides password-protected venues Two implementations: – Weak: Password required to access the mapping from venue name to multicast IP Protects against accidental accesses – Strong: Password is hashed into a symmetric encryption key

Security: User’s view

NAT-Friendly Reflector The 5.0 ConferenceXP allows multiple clients to run behind a single NAT device Details: – 4.x assumes all clients use standard RTP, RTCP ports NATs map different machines to different ports – 5.0 removes this assumption Requires changing the JOIN protocol to use UDP

High-Quality Audio Changes to DirectShow buffering enable high-quality uncompressed audio Higher quality compressed formats added User control via advanced audio configuration UI Credit: José Feghali (TCU)

Recent Deployments of Interest Shared Course with Lahore University Initial work with Latin America Virtual Institute Music instruction and performance Initial work with Aravind Eye Hospital

Shared Course with Lahore University Masters class, Spring 2008 – University of Washington – Lahore University of Management Science – Microsoft Computing for the Developing world

Technical Challenges Ensuring adequate bandwidth – Limited bandwidth to Pakistan Reliability Ensuring this did not compromise UW-MS class Limited time to prepare

3-way setup for UW, MS, LUMS PMP Venue 1 PMP Venue 2 Archiver MicrosoftLUMS UW CP3 Server CP3

Future Work: Improved Support for Heterogeneity Reduce complexity for scenarios such as the Lahore class Enhance Venue to use multiple multicast groups – Admin & user configurable stream-to-group assignments – User configurable group subscription

Work with LATAM Virtual Institute March, 2008, LACCIR Meeting – Latin American and Carribbean Collaboration for ICT Research Seattle and University of Chile, Santiago, Chile Seminar presentation CXP Unicast reflector

Music Instruction & Performance Work led by José Feghali at Texas Christian University Master class in piano performance with the Royal Academy of Music in London Other recitals and instruction including: – USC School of Music – Julliard School of Music – The New World Symphony

Piano Master Class Video

Aravind Eye Hospital Video conferencing for telemedicine in southern India Challenge: scaling beyond ~6 vision centers

Get the ConferenceXP Source ConferenceXP and related projects are available in source & binary distributions – Collaborate with us on new features, etc.

Resources & Contacts CCT Website/Wiki Announcements List Contacts: cct.cs.washington.edu