ConferenceXP Update

Fred Videon & Andrew WhitakerUniversity of Washington

I’m ConferenceXP I’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

• http://cct.cs.washington.edu

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 2003

• 4-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

Microsoft LUMS

UW

CP3

CP3Server

CP3

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– http://www.codeplex.com/ConferenceXP

Collaborate with us on new features, etc.

Resources & Contacts• CCT Website/Wiki

• Announcements Email List

• Contacts:

cct.cs.washington.edu

cct-announce-request@cs.washington.edu

cct@cs.washington.edufred@cs.washington.eduandrew@cs.washington.edu