videoconference@cern · • created in 2007 in the cern it department (it-uds-avc) •...

CERN IT DepartmentCH-1211 Genève 23

Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it

Videoconference@CERN

João Fernandes

Video Services - CERN

Educonf Workshop 18th-19th October 2010

Lisbon, Portugal


Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it2

CERN

• European Organization for the Nuclear Research• International Organization founded in 1954

• Physics (and Technology) laboratory

• Fundamental Research in High Energy Physics but also:

• Important contributions in computing (Grid)

• Several challenges in engineering fields

• More than10000 scientists and engineers of 80 nationalities

• ~2600 staff of the Organization, Member State nationals

• ~8000 from more than 500 Institutions (worldwide)

GEANT Educonf Workshop, 18th - 19th October, Lisbon – Portugal


Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it3

LHC

• LHC (Large Hadron Collider)• Particle accelerator of 27km diameter, 100 meters underground

• 4 Main Experiments (ATLAS, CMS, ALICE e LHCb)

• Each Experiment represents an average of 2000 physicists and engineers

from 37 countries

• Grid

• WLCG (Worldwide LHC Computing Grid) aggregates 170 computer centres in

34 countries in order to process ~15 Petabyte (15 million Gb) of data/year

Massive Collaboration, Global scale!



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it4

LHC Challenges

How to have a set of international collaborations working

reliably and efficiently?

– As integrated entities

– Everyone is included and can collaborate in the best possible way

– Location independent (globally dispersed communities)



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it5

Videoconference at CERN

• Videoconference usage begun in 1995• Dispersed initiatives (without central coordination)

• Developments inside the community: VRVS• To respond to the LHC Requirements (scalability and low cost accessibility)

• not satisfied by at commercial solution at that time

During 2006, a LHC internal report (RTAG 12) concludes that was critically urgent to

organize the videoconferencing activity inside the LHC, due to the rapid growth!

• Videoconference Service at CERN• Created in 2007 in the CERN IT Department (IT-UDS-AVC)

• Responsibilities• Provision and management of the videoconferencing infrastructure available

• VC rooms, MCU, Gateways, Gatekeepers, Servers, etc.

• Management of the User and Operations support lines

• Troubleshooting, User training and assistance, Tutorials, Hands-on sessions

• Technology Investigation and development

• Solution provision to the operational activities

• Service and Tool integration

• Service strategic definition

• new services, systems and technologies



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it6

Systems and Protocols

• EVO (VRVS successor)– Developed at Caltech (California Institute of Technology)

– More than 80% of the worldwide activity: LHC collaborations

– Java based

– Accessible from

• H.323 devices

• PCs

– Integrates

• Chat

• Recording

– non-standard format

– Scalable to hundreds of participants

• Current peak:

– 250 participants in the same session

– 700+ system wide



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it7

Systems and Protocols

• H.323/SIP

– Videoconference standards

– Point2Point calls or to MCU

– MCU services used at CERN:

• CERN (in operation from 2009)

• ESNET (Berkeley in California)

• DFN (Germany)

• KEK (Japan)

– Scale

• Depending on the use cases, the limitative factor can be

the number of available ports



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it8

Infrastructure (endpoints)


• 51 VC endpoints installed at CERN

• centrally managed

• 4 installations ongoing • total de 55 in the end of 2010

• Standard H.323/SIP installations• All done or refurbished from 2007

• ~85% HD

• Rooms with several capacities

• from 6 people (small rooms) to big auditoria (100+ people)

• Global project over 3 main lines:

• Homogeneity of systems and interfaces

• Endpoint reliability

• Remote administration and support


Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it9

CentraI infrastructure

• CERN MCU Service– Codian 8000 MSE (array of MCUs)

• Max capacity of 720 ports

• Gatekeepers – GNU GK (load balanced)

• H.323/ISDN Gateway – Phone connections in VC meetings and from VC endpoints

• PC encoders from the main venues for live webcast– Integrated with the VC endpoints

• Virtual servers – Flash Media and Windows Media servers

• EVO servers– Network of 64 servers

• 5 serving CERN directly



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it10

Videoconference use cases

• 95% of the VC sessions

– 8h00-21h00 (CET)

– LHC Experiments

• Sessions between globally dispersed working groups

• Weekly reports from the LHC Experiments

– 300+ participants (videoconference and webcast)



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it11

Control Center CMS (DESY)

Use Cases

• Video communications of “permanent presence” between several

remote control rooms of the Experiments

• Europe, US, Asia and Oceania

– Remote shifts

– Monitoring and Collaboration

Use of High Definition links: quality an important requirement

FNAL Control Center CMS (CERN)



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it12

Use Cases

• Special Events– Conferences

– Milestones

– Commemorations

– Outreach activities

• Remote Teaching– CERN researchers teach on their institutions

– Use of Smartboards for remote teaching

• Job Interviews



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it13

Scale

• 2500+ sessions/month– CERN,160+ Institutions in 37 countries



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it14

Scale

• 6000+ connections/month (video and audio)

– H.323/SIP endpoints, Desktops/Laptops and phone



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it15

Monitoring and Automation

• Central Management of Endpoints

– Usage statistics

– Alarms and diagnosis

– SW Updates

• Projectors and LCD screens with network interfaces

– Diagnosis

– Remote management

• CERN Management Framework (CMF)

– Remote PC management

– SW updates, standard central PC configurations

• Dashboard (under development)

– Snapshot of the infrastructure (VC endpoints, PCs, projectors,

LCDs, network, Google map with location, etc).



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it16

Technical Support

• CERN outsources the VC technical support

– Re-organized in February 2009

– Currently under ITIL certification

– Done by the Computing Helpdesk (VC certified)

• 80% of tickets solved remotely

– Only 3rd line of support is done by CERN staff

• System wide problems only

• Remote support

– Telephone

– Videoconference

• Service Desk equipped with endpoint

– Monitoring of sessions

– Remote access to the systems using standard tools

• Web interfaces, UVNC, Team Viewer, etc.



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it17

System Integration

• Objective:

– Maximize the ease of use of collaborative systems

– Reduce incidents as much as possible

• Solution:

– Development of an additional layer that increases

interoperability



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it18

Indico

• Indico (http://indico.cern.ch)– Event management system (meetings, lectures and

conferences) developed at CERN under GNU-GPL

• From the simple agenda to complex conferences with multiple sessions

• Developed in Python, Apache/IIS, ZODB and Ajax

– Massively used in the HEP community

• Ideal candidate to provide the additional collaboration layer for

collaborative systems



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it19

Indico Video services

• Plug-ins system

– Flexible architecture that allows adding or removing

functionality in a transparent way

• Through standard system APIs

• Indico plug-ins available

– CERN MCU

• Create/Destroy MCU meetings

• Centralized interface to initiate the session

– includes initiating the session for the remote participants



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it20

Indico Video Services

• Plug-ins for EVO (and Vidyo)

• Create/Destroy meetings

• Dynamic link to access the session

• Other Plug-ins: webcast and event recording



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it21

Indico Video Services



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it22

Desktop VC

• Ongoing Standardization

– Definition of both technical and financial model

– Set of requirements approved by the LHC

community

• Multiplatform (Windows, Linux e Mac)

• Integrated with H.323 systems and Telephone

• Scalable to hundreds of participants

– Location independent

• Integrated with standard streaming and recording

technologies (ex. Flash)

• Best quality possible

– In function of the available bandwidth



Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it23

Desktop VC


• Alternatives

– EVO: in daily usage (http://evo.caltech.edu/evoGate)

– Pilot service: Vidyo (http://vidyoportal.cern.ch)

• Advantage : H.264-SVC (vs. AVC video coding)

– Higher resistance to packet loss (LAN, Wireless, ADSL, 3G)

– “Rate Matching” to optimize connections

– Video layout flexibility

» each image is managed independently

» multiple resolutions, multiple frame rates, etc.

User experience: Better resulting quality

• VidyoDesktop client

– Windows, Mac

– Linux (under development)

• Interoperability

– H.323/SIP

– Telephone

• Tests still to perform

– Linux production client

– Scalability to hundreds of participants


Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it24

Next steps

• Infrastructure and service consolidation– Automate, Automate, AutomateM

– Seamless integration between Webcast and VC

• Central support of a Desktop VC solution– Fully integrated in the current environment

– Financial model well defined and fully transparentGEANT Educonf Workshop, 18th - 19th October, Lisbon – Portugal


Switzerland

www.cern.ch/it25

• Questions?

• Thank you very much! ☺

[email protected]

[email protected]


videoconference@cern · • created in 2007 in the cern it department (it-uds-avc) •...

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