APAN 24 Medical Working Group Xi'an China Conference XP Andrew Howard Advanced Communications Research

Agenda  Medical WG activities  DVTS  Typical setup for APAN meeting  Are we near the technical limit of the current system ? Experiences running an event Troubleshooting  Microsoft Conference XP Demo  Conclusion

Pushing the boundaries  Medical WG Activities Singapore AARNet 3 Launch Manilla Xi'an  Each event more participants more countries more complex  Great team work lead by Dr Shimizu Prof Okamura Tora

DVTS – Digital Video Transport System  Standard definition High fidelity  Uses “off the shelf” equipment Digital Video camera (or Analog camera and Canopus box) PC Firewire  ~30Mbs per station  Designed for Point to Point video transmission

Typical setup for APAN meetings  Network setup  DVTS Hardware setup Local testing International testing  Security VPN setup  Test, test, test then test some more  Many, many IM and mail messages

Technical limits  Each DVTS stream is ~30Mbs Quatre mixer used to tile multiple images on the screen 8 stations generate ~240Mbs  Development of DVTS code FEC available but not widely implemented Old versions have stability issues  Video standards NTSC used by US and Japan Other countries in region use PAL  Encryption Required for patient privacy

Some experiences from the AARNet3 Launch  3 station DVTS Canberra Flinders University Kyushu University  Multicast Failed Reflector network required to direct traffic Network performance is critical Difficult to debug

What happens when something doesn't work ?  DVTS is a difficult system to troubleshoot Network performance is critical Not tolerant of packet loss CPU requirements  Audio Echo cancelling  APAN NOC tools dvping  VPN setup

Feature comparison

Microsoft ConferenceXP  Microsoft Research project Open source Multicast or Unicast Archive service  Recording and replay of events Echo cancellation built in Can use Firewire for high quality or Webcam Local language versions available   Demo

Conclusion  ConferenceXP is an alternative software system which uses the same hardware base as the existing DVTS system  Provides greater access to Medical WG activities  Scales to multiple sites using multicast  Archiving and playback of meetings  Point to point calls supported  Perhaps we could try a small event with ConferenceXP and evaluate the results  Download from  Thank you