Department of Information Technology Desktop Television Entertainment Video over the Campus Data Network Northwestern University Information Technology

Department of Information Technology Outline What has been deployed? Why deploy desktop TV? Northwestern campus infrastructure Deployment across the campus Future directions and next steps

Department of Information Technology What Has Been Deployed? 20 channels of entertainment television –Combination of off-air and CATV channels Multicasted to all undergraduate dormitories (4350 unique locations) MPEG2 encoding, FPS, ~2Mbps per stream (128Kbps mono audio)

Department of Information Technology Why Deploy This Type of System? No CATV in student dormitory rooms –Only in common areas/lounges Over 60 residence halls –Cost to wire with coax very high ($2-5Million) –Estimated time of completion: ~4 years CATV major issue for the student population

Department of Information Technology Northwestern Network

Department of Information Technology

System Components

Department of Information Technology System Features Live encoding of television Additional pre-encoded video Small footprint viewer software Viewer downloaded as part of stream Viewer available for multiple operating systems Program guide for content labeling

Department of Information Technology Initial Testing Phase Deployed 4 off-air channels Deliver to well-supported residence halls Get feedback on content and distribution from the students Tested for six weeks, followed by student vote on service One significant problem discovered in testing phase

Department of Information Technology Full Deployment Ramp up from 100 students to 4000 students in 3 week RAs, Rescons, and new students first Clients for all Windows Platforms and Mac OS 9 initially Mac OS X and Intel Linux Clients available by November 1, 2002

Department of Information Technology Operational Experiences Test phase problem –RP for multicast tree not distributed correctly Two deployment problems –IGMP snooping and CGMP fast leave Switch table flush occurs prior to router flush, causing a flood condition on all switch ports –IP multicast TTL Threshold Command causes all multicast packets to be route processed

Department of Information Technology Future Directions Subscriber services (conditional access) Security (encryption of video streams) Client-controlled closed captioning Set top boxes Additional subscriber base –Greek houses Other content sources –NU content; Law School, School of Communication

Department of Information Technology Questions?