1. Project Summary (including a Project Synopsis) - Form A.1 (for publication) 3

2. Budget Information - Form A.2 6

3. Participants List - Form A.3 7

1. Rationale 9

2. Overall Description 11

3. Detailed Description 19

3.1 List of Work packages (free text) 19

3.2 Timing of Work packages 20

3.3 GANTT Chart 22

3.4 Description of the Work 22

4. Project Management 38

5. The Partnership (Consortium) 42

6. Relevant References 54

1. Work package list - Form C.1 56

2. Work package resources - Form C.2 57

3 Deliverables list - Form C.3 70

4. Equipment list - Form C.4 71

5. Other significant specific project cost - Form C.5 72

1. Budget information per Year- Form S.1 ( A.2 per year) 74

2. Labour rates - Form S.2 75

3. Confidentiality and IPR handling - Form S.3 83

4. Participants details - Form S.4 84

5. Contractual and Banking information - Form S.5 100

6. Full list of Validation Sites - Form S.6 107

7. Budget Information for the Demonstration Work - Form S.7 108

1 Codes for the participant roles are as follows: C1 = Co-ordinator, C = Contractor; A = Associated Contractor; S = Subcontractor; X = Sponsoring Partner

2. Please use ISO Country codes as described in annexed notes

1. Market situation and prospects

1. The State-of-the-art on Networked Multimedia Conferencing.

Significant efforts to make packet networks more suitable for network multimedia are coming to fruition. While the present generation of 2 Mbps Internet is on the margin of suitability, the lack of resource reservation has made their use marginal. This is now changing both because of the deployment of new Resource Reservation and multicast facilities in the Routers, and because the Internet bandwidth is increasing with the deployment of ATM and other high speed solutions.

There are significant improvements in codec boards for workstations at affordable cost; moreover, the general increase in processor speed has made it possible to provide more of the functionality in general purpose hardware, requiring minimal specialised boards. This has resulted in only a marginal increase in the cost of making workstations able to incorporate multimedia facilities. Growth in switched ethernet hubs, UTP-5 wiring, low cost higher speed 100baseT and FDDI LANs has made the local distribution of multimedia relatively straightforward. The improvement of video projectors to work directly from workstations has made the equipping of conference rooms cheaper. There are still problems, however, in dealing with audio problems in view of the variability of delays in multi-site working.

It has been possible to use n-channel Basic Rate ISDN for circuit-switched networks for some years; the growth has only recently been taking place, and few workstations or PCs are yet able to support these facilities for n>2. Moreover, the protocol structures supported on most of the ISDN boards available (PCs) have not been compatible with those on the packet networks. This is changing in two respects: more PC software now supports IP; ISDN gateways are becoming available which support the common ISDN protocol structures. It is realised that the H.221 adopted by the carriers for multimedia working on the ISDN is very difficult to input to computers. Some manufacturers are providing boards which do not rely on the H.221; others are providing special boards which allow for the H.221 peculiarities; yet others are providing alternate protocol stacks for next generation multimedia based on other coding algorithms.

Video Servers are being developed frantically to meet the hoped for "video-on-demand" market. These have the requisite hardware base needed for this project - but the software facilities are less flexible than we require. Discussion with several manufacturers of these devices, several of whom are mentioned in this proposal, indicate that they would like to develop this market also.

Many providers of workstations would like to incorporate security features. There is little problem in providing a light level of security; for this it is not clear that there is a serious demand. It is realised that stronger security, using RSA and DES, is desirable. Regulatory considerations, particularly in France and the US, still make it unclear whether uniform levels of secure products can be introduced on a world scale. This restrains the growth of these products.

It has been the requirement of the research community, particularly in the IETF, to bring real standardisation into the area of packet-switched environments with a truly flexible multicast capability. This is clearly much more powerful, economic and flexible than the circuit-switched one with multiway control units (MCUs); nevertheless, it will require further developments in network and router technology to allow easy deployment of such facilities. The technology is nearly there; the network speeds are nearly there to allow widespread deployment; we feel sure that with or without this project people will start deploying such functionality widely over the next few years. This project will help deploy the technology in Telematic Sectors who would be able to embrace it much more slowly without such a project.

2. Technical aspects of the Demonstrator

2. OVERALL DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT

1. Objectives of the Project

1. Methodology of the Project

1. Overall Approach

1. Validation plan

1. Self assessment

1. Demonstration stage

1. The Phases of the Project

1. The Relationship to the Different Phases

This work previous to this project spans already spans all phases: Analysis of user requirements (Phase 1), Definition of functional phases (Phase 2), Building of a demonstrator (Phase 3), Validation - including some verification - Phase 4a, but not really demonstration in the way used by the EU (Phase 4b). From our contacts with workstation suppliers, we see that there is already some movement even under Phase 5. Nevertheless, under MERCI we will do some work again in all phases. The purpose of the MERCI project is to help development the tools so that they are available to other applications; a major activity after the present proposals have been awarded will be to assess the real needs of such projects, which have stated that they want to use MICE tools, to see what they really need. Inside this project, we will only to Phase 4a over the two years proposed - though we expect also to go to Phase 5 of exploitation! The reason is that we regard that our main Demonstrators will be other projects which capitalise on the facilities being developed in MERCI. However to retain a clear assessment of the success of the technology, we have put in the three verification activities of WP11-WP13.

2. Previous work

The project has several aspects: the facilities required by the user, the technical development of the different aspects of the multimedia technology for this type of application, and the requirements of the applications themselves. The general lines of the user requirements have been developed from experience in running a series of MICE applications including a successful seminar series and a medical workshop. This identified a number of new user requirements, reflected in the material we have included in the Work-Packages of Section 2.2; examples are the need for better HCI, better audio and video, security, multimedia server facilities, ability to use more platforms, and the availability of support for more kinds of network. In fact the User Requirements have been extensively tested by the different applications we pursued under the MICE [1] and EUROBRIDGE [2] projects; they are well reflected in the improvements we have already made during the MERCI project to date, and those envisaged here. To ensure that we have not overlooked vital points, a special Work-Package (WP2) will address this issue, but otherwise little more is required as regards the user. The requirements for two of the Demonstrator applications - the MERCI seminars (WP11) and the surgery workshop (WP12) are known. We have developed those for the former from seminar series held during 1994/95 [8] and confirmed them by the seminars given since the start of the MERCI project. The requirements for the latter were developed as the result of the surgery workshop we held in November, 1994.

3. Baseline of the Project

The baseline of the MERCI project was the set of facilities deployed under the MICE and EUROBRIDGE projects.

A simple set of multi-media receivers were made available by the MICE project. A full reference to the MICE tools is available [9] from the UCL-CS WEB Server, and has been provided to the Commission in the final Report on the MICE project. The MICE tools are available on a number of platforms operating under UNIX over the Internet protocols; they work in Unicast and Multicast mode over a variety of networks including ATM and conventional packet-switched networks. A definitive set of these, upgraded to use the new Real-Time Protocol (RTP/2), were provided by this project as an initial software deliverable (D0) in February 1996.

The MICE Audio/Video tools comprised Release 3.4 of the IVS system, the provision of H.261 support under VIC, and audio under VAT. The VAT and VIC S/W has been provided by LBL (Berkeley). Error-tolerant audio was available under the new Robust Audio Tool (RAT) developed by the MICE project which incorporates a dual compression scheme to repair lost packets. Since the start of the MERCI project we have developed the facilities to encrypt VAT, VIC and RAT data streams. A style of e-mail based key distribution mechanisms, developed under MICE, is available for providing confidentiality in these packages. Session announcements are made via the new UCL tool SDR, a second generation version of SD.

From EUROBRIDGE, a similar set of facilities are available for the PNO standards. The components operate on PCs using Windows and n-channel basic rate ISDN. These comprise a complete set of H320 S/W and H323 Multiplexed Control Units which allow multi-way secure conferencing over ISDN with a confidential capability mode - with the capability for multi-way working. The EUROBRIDGE tools run under Windows 3.1, 3.11, Windows 95 and OS/2. They are just being extended to include the T120 Standards series. There are also other tools for Eurofile transfer, Fax, Windows LAN interconnection, and Windows for Workgroups. There is also a WYSIWIS version of the tools, which will work with the T210 Standard. TELES also has implemented encryption mechanisms to encrypt audio (G711), video (H261) and user data.

The EUROBRIDGE and MERCI tools do not currently interface to each other; such interconnection is a function of WP5.

4. Conclusions from past work

1. Dependencies

The project partners are already involved with some dozen projects related to the MICE technology; some are national in scope, some are European, some transatlantic., We expect the number to increase dramatically during the coming year. We expect to collaborate fully with other technology projects, and to make our tools available to applications ones. We welcome the Concertation mechanism being proposed for the Telematics programme, and will collaborate fully with it and with the SCIMITAR project. We hope that an early meeting of all such projects will work out methods of co-operation - to avoid any risk of non-interworking of the resulting tools. The consortium agrees to co-operate with other projects in the TELEMATICS APPLICATIONS Programme within reasonable use of resources and to exchange non-confidential information with these projects. Especially the consortia agree to co-operate actively with Support Actions Projects contracted to arrange concertation and dissemination activities and to provide information requested by Support Action Projects contracted to perform social and economic impact studies.

We expect to maintain our collaboration in bodies such as the IETF, whose participants normally have R & D programmes as well as their Standardisation work. We expect that a number of applications user groups will form during the MERCI project, to ensure that specific user and sector needs are satisfied.

Clearly we will expect to participate strongly with certain infrastructure projects like TEN-34 and one providing a European security infrastructure - ICE-TEL. Each partner also has national projects in these areas.

2. Expected Results/Exploitation of Results plan

1. The Users

This project will have strong impact on the users. First, many users have access to different networks as part of their research or commercial activity; that they should be able to use their normal networks for these advanced services would be of immense value. Their organisation normally has a specific procurement policy be it PCs or UNIX workstations of various types; that the same platform can be used for multimedia conferencing has strong impact on the support requirements and investment decisions needed inside the organisation - and hence on the ease with which the technology can be introduced. At present there are a number of distinct groups of user doing conferencing - and their is no ability for them to interwork; the multi-platform and multi-network environment proposed here should remove much of this barrier.

There are already many specific conferencing products; most are much more limited in their approach to security, incorporation of servers and control functionality. Particularly without the security aspect, there are many application areas which cannot be addressed. The capabilities of the present approach, which is compatible with that in the research community in the US, would support much more flexible and comprehensive services; importing such a technology would be impossible given the present US export laws.

2. The Suppliers

Suppliers are interested in this activity because of its potential impact in many of their products. From workstation manufacturers, we have had considerable support - because of their interest in seeing the technology developed further. Two server suppliers have seen the impact; Hewlett-Packard, one of the sponsoring partners, is donating both workstations and a large 180 GB server from their interest in its utilisation in these applications; another server supplier is providing their software free of charge with the same motivation. The network operators are, of course, enthusiastic; BT is supporting many British national initiatives in this area (including at UCL), French Telecom has sponsored showing the MICE technology at the G7 summit and on a recent meeting with the French Prime Minister, and Norwegian Telecom would have been a partner in this project (as they were with MICE) if they could have completed the formalities in time. This is the only application project on the European ATM pilot where there has been uniform agreement amongst the PNOs that all the MICE sites should be connected via the Pilot; currently, this involves sites in all 6 countries. The research network operators are enthusiastic; UKERNA is a sponsoring partner, and is supporting the deployment of the technology over SuperJANET; many others are supporting the deployment of the technology in a proposal to supply a network of European support centres. Finally training organisations see the potential; hence the sponsorship of Hewlett-Packard to this project comes from their education and training centre, and we have language centres in involved in three countries with national projects.

There is no doubt that the technology is fast moving from prototype to product. It will not only embrace one product; several applications projects are proposing to take pieces of the technology developed here and emphasising specific areas. One intends to include microscopy-specific shared workspace software and develop an integrated product suited to that domain; another to develop a multimedia server incorporating parts of WP7 directly. Several are eyeing our network experience particularly closely; they intend to incorporate our control strategies into their products.

3. The Dissemination Strategy

We have a proven track record of broad dissemination in this area. We are deliberately making the software widely available - and this is very popular with the suppliers. Clearly the commercial partners have a considerable advantage; they will get the software at a much earlier stage, and will have more influence on what is produced. It is not expected that all the software from the commercial suppliers will be disseminated as freely as from the research ones - hence the advantage also of having so many research partners in this activity.

We disseminate information widely at conferences and exhibitions. During the MICE projects we have shown our capabilities at dozens of such events - creating a huge current of interest and awareness in broad segments of the communities. Moreover, more than a dozen high quality publications, and several theses, have come from the MICE and EUROBRIDGE activities. Already in MICE we established some dozen MICE National Support Centres to disseminate and support the information in different countries. We have some national funding already for this area for MICE dissemination - but the national bodies hope that the technology will be developed further for dissemination.

4. Business Plan

We feel that in view of the basic nature of the many technologies incorporate in this project, it would be inappropriate to formulate a central business plan. This will be pursued by the partners in accordance with their natural commercial allies. We do not expect to form a specific MERCI company as a result of this work; we do expect to spawn a number of products in companies, however.

3. European Added Value

1. Economic and social impact

2. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT
1. List of Workpackages

WP1 Management (C1)

This work-package deals with all aspects of the management of the project. It is entirely the responsibility of the Co-ordinating Partner. Both the Project Director and the Project Manager will be heavily involved.

WP2 Activity with External Groups (C1)

This work-package is concerned with all aspects of relationships with other groups. This includes concertation activities like the SCIMITAR project and anything else set up by the Commission. It also includes the three other groups with whom we expect to have a particularly close relationship: MANICORAL, COBROW and ICE-TEL. It will be necessary to ensure common interface specifications between the projects, co-ordinate deliveries of software between the projects, feed back one assessment of the quality of the deliverables, and ensure that the feedback is properly progressed inside the projects. Other activities will be the interface between the project and other communities such as the relevant Standardisation bodies like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the ITU standardisation bodies etc. Yet a third sector will be the various user groups in other programmes with similar needs.

WP 3 MM Conference Components and cross-platform support (C3)

This work-package is concerned with the development of the fundamental multimedia components: video, audio and shared workspace. Most developments will be improvements from the MICE components, but at least one video one will use a different coding scheme, and one shared whiteboard tool will arise from the MANICORAL project. Another aspect of the work-package is to ensure that the tools work on different hardware and software platforms.

WP4 Usability and Assessment (C6)

It is important to ensure that the developers really understand the user requirements, that the user interfaces are really user-friendly and with the evaluation of the tools produced. The work-package will serve as semi-independent activity between the developers and the users. It is no coincidence that it is in this work-package that X9, one of our sponsoring partners, intends to participate at their own expense.

WP5 Interworking (C7)

Of particular concern is the current split between the computer-based and the communications-based conferencing - and also that based on workstations versus that based on PCs. This work-package is concerned with addressing both these elements - and so is naturally led by an industrial partner. For some tools, this requires coding adaptation; for others, it requires inter-working units

WP6 Network Support (C4)

Only too often the tools are integrated, unnecessarily, into the network support envisaged by the supplier. In the MERCI project we are envisaging a variety of interconnected networks: LANs, Packet-Switched Networks, SMDS, ISDN and ATM. This work-package is concerned with ensuring that the tools work over the different networks, and to provide interworking units to ease their operation across the different technologies.

WP7 Multimedia Server (C4)

Multimedia conferencing embraces much more than human-human interaction; it is often very important to introduce pre-computed data into the conference, or to record information developed during the conference. This work-package is concerned with implementation, deployment and utilisation of multimedia servers.

WP8 Conference Management and Control (C1)

The set-up, management and control of conferences is essential to allow widespread usage. This work-package is concerned with providing the components to allow distributed control: booking systems, the set-up of the conference and of intermediate relays, the control of active conferences and fault diagnosis.

 

 

WP9 Conference Room Support (C5)

It is currently fashionable to talk only of workstation conferencing. In some applications, there is a natural agglomeration of people in a Conference Room. This work-package is concerned with aspects particularly appropriate to the Conference Room environment: Whiteboards, use of hardware codecs and full familiarity with echo-cancellers.

WP10 Security (C2)

Many uses of conferencing require confidentiality, and assurance that only specific people are participating in the conferences. This requires authentication and encryption of the multimedia streams. The provision of encrypted streams is a function of WP3; the provision of the security technology itself is an activity of the ICE-TEL project. This work-package is concerned with the design of the architecture for secure conferencing, the key management architecture, the participant authentication, and the provision of encryption gateways where these are required.

WP11 MERCI Seminars (C1)

Distance education is an excellent consumer of the MERCI technology. For this reason, we have organised this validation work-package to apply the tools in several distributed seminars. The components developed in the technology work-packages (WP3 - WP9), will be tried out in this work-package, and the feedback will be used to improve the tools further.

WP12 Surgical Workshop (C1)

Another important testbed for the technology is an annual series of surgical workshops held at the Middlesex hospital. The needs for surgical teaching are more demanding than those of the specific WP11 seminars. This work-package will validate the highest quality Audio-Visual facilities demanded by the surgeons, together with the security (form WP10) needed in this domain, and the instrumentation data which is also vital to this area.

WP13 Commercial Trials (C2)

There has a persistent interest from industry for testbeds with the MICE tools. In this work-package, we will try to satisfy this pent-up demand by carrying through complete applications in close partnership with commercial bodies. Of course, it will first be necessary to carry out detailed task analyses collaboratively, to ascertain which tools will be appropriate to the different potential applications - and which applications make sense to tackle with these tools.

2. Timing of the Work

The following tables illustrate the dependencies arising between the deliverables and the feedback needed from the various evaluating groups. The feedback deliverables are 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4.

In these tables the dependent objects are coded as:

D deliverable

I internal deliverable

Those deliverables to which the Work Package is a contributor are show in bold type.

ACT	SUBJECT	M3	M6	M9	M12	M15	M18	M21	M24
A3.1	High Quality Audio	-------->D0	--------------	-------->D1	IA4/D4.1--	I10A--------	D4.2-------	I10B-->D3	-------->D4
A3.2	High Quality Video	-------->D0	--------------	-------->D1	I4A/D4.1--	I10A--------	I4B/D4.2--	I10B-->D3
A3.3	Stream Synchronisation						I4B---------	-------->D3
A3.4	Shared Work-space Support	-------->D0	---------------	-------->D1	I4A/D4.1--	I10A--------	I4B/D4.2--	I10B->D3
A3.5	User Interfaces						D2/D4.2---	-------->D3	D4.3-->D4
A3.6	Porting Activities				D1----------	-------->D2	-------------	-------->D3	-------->D4

Table 1.1 Inter-dependencies and Timing of Deliverables in WP3 - MM Conference Components & cross-platform support

 

ACT	SUBJECT	M3	M6	M9	M12	M15	M18	M21	M24
A4.1	Requirements Capture	-------------	------->I4A
A4.2	User Interface Design			I4A---------	------------	------>I4B
A4.3	Tool Evaluation		D0---------	----->D4.1	D1---------	----->D4.2	D2---------	----->D4.3	D3-->D4.4

Table 1.2 Inter-dependencies and Timing of Deliverables in WP4 - Usability and Assessment

 

 

ACT	SUBJECT	M3	M6	M9	M12	M15	M18	M21	M24
A5.1	Low-level Interoperability	-------------	-------------	------>I5A	-------------	-->I5B/D2	-------------	->I5C/D3
A5.2	QoS Negotiation	-------------	-------------	-------------	-------------	-------------	-------------	------->D3	-------->D4
A5.3	Common Conference Control	-------------	-------------	-------------	-------------	-------------	-------------	------->D3	-------->D4
A5.4	White-board Interoperability				D1----------	------->D2	-------------	------->D3	-------->D4

Table 1.3 Inter-dependencies and Timing of Deliverables in WP5 - Interworking

 

 

ACT	SUBJECT	M3	M6	M9	M12	M15	M18	M21	M24
A6.1	Support for Technologies	-------------	-------------	-------->D1	-------------	------->D2
A6.2	Network Measurement	-------------	-------------	-------------	-------------	------->D2	-------------	--------I6A	------->D4
A6,3	Network Monitoring	-------------	-------------	------->I6B	-------------	------>I6C	-------------	-------------	------->D4

Table 1.4 Inter-dependencies and Timing of Deliverables in WP6 - Network Support

 

 

ACT	SUBJECT	M3	M6	M9	M12	M15	M18	M21	M24
A7	Multimedia Server	-------------	-------------	--------->I7	-------------	-------->D2	I10A-------	------->D3	------->D4

Table 1.5 Inter-dependencies and Timing of Deliverables in WP7 - Multimedia Server

 

 

ACT	SUBJECT	M3	M6	M9	M12	M15	M18	M21	M24
A8.1	Booking and Conference Set-up	-------------	-------------	-------->D1
A8.2	Conference Relay Set-up				D1----------	-------->D2
A8.3	Conference Control				D1----------	-------------	D2----------	-------->D3	-------->D4
A8.4	Fault Diagnosis	-------------	-------------	-------->D1	D1---------	-------->D2	--------------	-------->D3	-------->D4

Table 1.6 Inter-dependencies and Timing of Deliverables in WP8 - Conference Management & control

 

 

ACT	SUBJECT	M3	M6	M9	M12	M15	M18	M21	M24
A9	Conference Room Support	-------------	-------------	-------------	D1----------	-------->D2	---------------	-------->D3	-------->D4

Table 1.7 Inter-dependencies and Timing of Deliverables in WP9 - Conference Room Support

 

 

 

ACT	SUBJECT	M3	M6	M9	M12	M15	M18	M21	M24
A10.1	Security Architecture	-------------	---->D10.1	D10.1>D1
A10.2	End-end security			D10.1------	----->I10A	------->D2	----->I10B	------->D3
A10.3	Participant Authentication			D10.1------	-------------	------->D2	--------------	------->D3
A10.4	Encryption Gateways			D10.1------	-------------	-------------	-------------	------->D3	-------->D4

Table 1.8 Inter-dependencies and Timing of Deliverables in WP10 - Security

 

 

3. Structure of the Work

The different technical work-packages are largely independent, feeding into the major software deliverables each six months. Portions of these deliverables will then be the basis for further upgrades of the facilities. In Section 3.2 we have provided a series of GANTT charts showing the timing of the various activities. These charts can be used also to show the dependencies between the different work-packages. Table 2 shows the relationship between the technical and the evaluation workpackages.

 

ACT	SUBJECT	M3	M6	M9	M12	M15	M18	M21	M24
A11.1	Weekly Meetings		D0---------	---------->D4.1	D1---------	---------->D4.2	D2-----------	---------->D4.3	D3--------->D4.4
A11.2	MERCI Seminars		D0---------	-->D11.1/D4.1	D1---------	-->D11.2/D4.2	D2-----------	-->D11.3/D4.3	D3->D11.4/D4.4
A11.3	Other Seminars		D0---------	---------->D4.1	D1---------	---------->D4.2	D2-----------	---------->D4.3	D3--------->D4.4
A12	Surgical Workshop				D1---------	-->D12.1/D4.2	D2-----------	---------->D4.3	D3->D12.2/D4.4
A13	Commercial Trials				D1---------	-->D13.1/D4.2	D2-----------	---------->D4.3	D3->D13.2/D4.4

Table 2 Interdependence and Timing between the Technical and Validation Work Packages

Table 2 does not indicate specifically the feedback from, and the deliverables to, MANICORAL and other user projects; this is really identical to the relations between the internal Validation work-packages of Table 2 and the Technical work-packages of Tables 1.1 - 1.7

4. Description of the work

Our fundamental model is of a multi-way conferencing environment. For this reason, all our components are designed to operate in a multi-way environment. This means that they should be able to operate with underlying multicast protocols - though some pieces of the system would operate in unicast mode also. It is also a fundamental assumption that packet forms of data will be used on the majority of the systems - though several workpackages will address the interworking of the packet and circuit regimes.

Each of our technical activities will have Deliverables. However, rather that specifying a unique paper to each activity, we will have 4 major Demonstrations during the project; these will incorporate the latest results of each Activity, as specified in the workpackages. D1, D2, D3 and D4 represent the Demonstrations arranged for Formal Deliverable purposes. In addition, D0 represents the packaging of the tools existing at the beginning of the project, which will be made available to our User Groups three months after the beginning of the Project.

The Validation Deliverables WP11-WP13, have their Deliverables incorporated into the Work-package.

2. WP1 Management

The Objective of the Management work-package is to ensure that there is an adequate management structure and appropriate management activity to ensure that the Consortium members, the Project Management, the Commission, and External Bodies interacting with the project have the relevant information on the financial and technical progress to plan and develop their relations with the project.

1. WP2 Activity with External Groups

Objective

The Objective of this work-package is to ensure that all activities concerned with external groups are adequately staffed, carried out and funded.

 

Description

There are a number of separate external interactions of the Project with the outside world. Under this work-package we include the following: concertation activities, interaction with user groups, annual reviews, dissemination activities, production of information activities, and collaboration with other projects; each will be considered below.

It is planned that the SCIMITAR project act in a co-ordinating role; this will include concertation meetings, at which the project partners will be represented. We are organising particularly strong ties with the MANICORAL and ICE-TEL projects. For these we will ensure that there are joint meetings with these projects - probably organised around the concertation meetings. The Project Manager of SCIMITAR will be invited also to attend these joint project meetings. It is intended to have a joint in-depth study of what each project has to offer to the others. We will then provide documents between the projects detailing what products each expects to provide to the others. In the joint meetings we will review progress in these promised products - flagging any potential delay or shortfall in specifications. After delivery of the products to other projects, we will expect feedback from them; it is under this work-package that we remedy defects or make improvements in the products we have provided externally. Similarly, it is under this work-package that we provide feedback to other projects, e.g. MANICORAL and ICE-TEL, from which we expect products. Of course we will provide the relevant material, and participate in, the annual reviews - whether they are organised directly by the Commission or via the SCIMITAR project.

The interaction of the project partners with the User Groups within the project will be an integral part of WP11, WP12 and WP13. However, we expect considerable interaction with both our Sponsoring Partners and other User Groups who also will wish access to the MERCI products. We will organise publicity material, documentation, and limited information and training meetings with such groups. While the initial responsible for documentation is with the component provider, the production of appropriate external technical documentation will be carried out under this work-package.

The MICE and EUROBRIDGE project were both particularly strong in presenting their activities at public demonstrations, conferences and in journal articles. We expect to carry on this tradition in the MERCI project; of course we will strive to present our results at the relevant meetings organised by the Telematics Programme or the SCIMITAR project; we expect also to participate in important other events such as the Joint European Network Conferences, the Internet Society Conferences, and other relevant Technical Conferences and Exhibitions. Finally, while presentations at conferences provide substantial short-term exposure, it does not replace publication in the learned journals; we expect to provide material for conferences to such a standard that the organisers will wish it to be reproduced in the journals which often publish the best conference papers, and will also submit papers independently to the relevant journal editors.

It is relatively straightforward to develop products and services to meet specific narrow needs; it is much more complex to develop them in a way that interworks with products developed in other projects or by other vendors. In the original proposal, there was a special work-package developed to participation in Standards activities. We have chosen to remove this work-package in this Project Plan - though the technical work-packages retain their intention to use such Standards where feasible, and often mention participation with relevant groups - particularly the IETF. We expect, through this work-package, to retain our participation with the relevant co-ordination and standardisation groups.

With the inclusion of CRC, new areas of collaboration are opened up. Under this Work Package CRC will be particularly concerned with co-ordination with three international projects that are concerned with trans-Atlantic connections and demonstration of user services across that infrastructure (NICE-Global, GIBN, MAY) and nationally with the CANARIE research activities, especially the Multicast Project and the NTN MBONE trials.

NICE-Global The NICE (National Host Inter-Connection Experiments) project addresses the High Speed Networking area of the ACTS Workplan. NICE-GLOBAL addresses extending this work internationally. The primary objective of NICE is to integrate systems so as to enable EU, Central and Eastern European and Canadian National Hosts to provide broadband applications support functions based on ATM.

GIBN (Global Interoperability for Broadband Networks) is a project started by the Ministerial Conference on the Information Society of the G-7 nations. The fundamental objective of GIBN is to provide a means for developing and testing trans-national applications that will support the promise of a Global Information Society. The purpose of the project is to facilitate the establishment of international links among existing high-speed data networks of the industrialised countries. The project will support experiments on inter-connectivity and interoperability, the establishment of standards and serve as a testbed for a wide variety of research on education, industrial and other applications. Initial infrastructure efforts have concentrated on Europe to Canada, Canada to the USA and USA to Japan links.

MAY (Multimedia Applications on Intercontinental High Speed Networks) is a consortium formed by Deutsche Telekom, Sprint and Teleglobe Canada under the Global-One Alliance. MAY contributes to the support of international (USA, Germany and Canada) co-operation in R&D of multimedia applications for office communications, education and training, distributed design and construction, publishing, medicine, tourism and interactive television.

DeTeBerkom (Berlin) and the International Computing Science Institute (Berkeley, California) are the organisations supporting Deutsche Telekom and Sprint, respectively, in the consortium. The initial infrastructure links Berlin, Ottawa and San Francisco.

CANARIE (Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education Inc.) is sponsoring a multicast Test Project to develop a multicast capability between the routers located at the ATM National Test Network (NTN) nodes and to conduct a series of interoperability studies and application trials. One goal of the multicast Test Project is to explore the provision of a Canada wide MBONE service on the CA*Net using trunking from the NTN.

CRC (DRX & BADLab) has participated in some of the initial MBONE/NTN activities. DRX will continue to explore possibilities for co-operation between MERCI and the multicast Test Project.

Technical studies taking place in the four projects identified above are complementary to research activities in MERCI. The emphasis of the effort made under this Work Package will be on the exchange of information and to explore possibilities for co-operation and to consider collaborative activities where mutual benefit could be obtained. There are some possibilities for sharing infrastructure. That will be an additional point for discussion.

Deliverables

Publications, publicity material as requested by the Commission or required for conferences, annual reviews, documentation for user groups and other projects.

 

 

2. WP3 Multimedia Conference Components and Cross-platform Support

Objectives

The objective in this workpackage is to provide multimedia components to meet the conferencing needs expressed by the users of the service. We see these are principally the ability to provide better quality video, better quality audio, and stream synchronisation than is provided by the MICE and EUROBRIDGE projects. In addition, it is vital to have a good shared workspace environment, all components so that they can provide information privacy, and an integrated user interface. It is the objective of this workpackage to ensure the availability of the components - developing them only when they are needed but not otherwise available to us. A second objective is to increase the range of platforms on which the tools can run by porting them to other platforms

Description of work

A3.1 High quality video coding We have considered in the MICE projects the problems associated with distributing a video stream from a source to N destinations, i.e. over a multicast delivery tree. In particular, we developed the software tool IVS based on the H.261 video standard. Our goal in MERCI is to provide better quality video than the current H.261 coding by considering alternate video coding schemes, and by improving the rate adaptation mechanism (which adapts the video transmission to network conditions). The goal is then to adapt the video transmission to the characteristics of the different branches. A promising solution involves using some form of hierarchical coding; we believe that wavelet coding has considerable advantages in methods of including redundancy, computing complexity and robustness.

A3.2 High quality audio delivery In conferencing, the quality of the audio data delivered from a source to its intended destinations is the most important factor in the overall quality of a videoconference. We intend to improve the quality of some of the base components of the audio tool, and to add new components capable of delivering high quality audio both over a variety of networks including the Internet, primary rate ISDN (30 x 64 Kbps) and basic rate ISDN (n x 2 x 64 Kbps). These include the following: using pattern matching techniques to improve silence detection, tying jitter control to video play-out, tying congestion control to error control, and adding error cancellation, automatic gain control and sound localisation

A3.3 Stream synchronisation The emergence of new applications (such as tele-teaching) here has increased the need to synchronise audio and video streams sent over best effort networks such as the Internet. This is essentially because the amount of jitter and loss is such that even the mere delivering of high quality audio and video from a source to N destinations remains an important challenge; the availability of newer, higher speed networks make synchronisation possible, and thus an important issue. We need to resolve which stream synchronisation methods are the most appropriate - and how they can be maintained in the event of mis-ordered or missing packets.

A3.4 Shared workspace support environment From our MICE and other work, we have determined the need for rugged, shared workspace tools in the MICE projects - working in a mode of reliable multicast delivery protocols. We already have many different such tools (e.g. shared White-Boards such as Berkeley's WB and INRIA's Mscrawl tools), shared text editors (e.g. UCL’s NTE tool), and shared drawing tools (an example MultiDraw tool). These must operate well in a lossy multicast environment, important requirements such as reliability and re-ordering. Our intent is to design new multicast delivery algorithms tailored to different applications, and to implement these algorithms in our already existing shared workspace protocols. Our goal is to obtain a generic but easily configurable multicast support environment that can be tailored to specific application needs..

A3.5 User interface The current tools, developed in the MICE and EUROBRIDGE projects, do not have user-friendly interfaces, making them hard to use by typical (i.e. non specialist) users. We will ensure that the different interfaces developed for different tools are consistent with each other, acquire friendly user interfaces for all our multimedia tools; and can be reconfigured easily for the needs of a specific event - to meet the media supplied in the event, while catering for the facilities available to the user.

A3.6 Porting Activities In EUROBRIDGE, most of the tools have operated only on PCs under Windows.; in MICE, they have been operational on several types of UNIX workstations (mainly Sun, Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics and DEC). We will ensure that the tools are made operational, and capable of interworking, on a broad range of platforms including the above. Our initial intention to port to the Macintosh has changed since we have investigated the situation. In view of our limited resources and the poor support from Apple, we have dropped our plans to port the MERCI tools to the Macintosh platform. Apple is developing tools compatible with VIC and VAT, operating above RTP/2; these will interoperate with the MERCI tools. The JAVA-based whiteboard tool, currently under development at RUS, should run on the Mac - though it is unlikely that NTE will work on that machine.

For the PC platform, we are including Windows 95 and, to a lesser extent, Windows NT. We will try to ensure clear lower level transport interfaces, to minimise application dependencies on the operating system and network. In some cases, it will be enough to ensure interoperability between current implementations; in others (e.g. many enhanced audio, shared workspace and media synchronisation), a substantial porting activity is required. We will concentrate on certain common hardware/software combinations - but will update the tools as new hardware and software become available.

Deliverables

The initial software package (D0), included a package of software from A3.1, A3.2 and A3.4; secured versions contributing to D1. A year later, high quality versions of each will contribute to D3 (the unsecured versions being ready a little earlier), with synchronisation (A3.3) and integrated User Interfaces (A3.5). Facilities will be available on additional platforms (A3.6) three months after they are first demonstrated. T his means that the additional platform support will be demonstrated mainly in D2 and D3 - with secured versions with advanced facilities only in D4.

 

3. WP4 Usability and Assessment

1. WP5 Packet/Circuit MM Conference Interworking

Objectives

The videoconferencing services developed within most communications companies work on connection-oriented networks such as ISDN following the H.320 standards - running on PCs under Windows. The computer communications community has developed their systems on Unix workstations using packet-oriented networks such as the Internet, and following IETF standards. Both use H.261, JPEG and MPEG.

The objective of this work package is to ensure the interoperability between the tools developed by the communities; the MICE/Internet tools should interoperate with H.320 systems and H.320 terminals will be able to enter a video-conference running on the Internet.

Brief description of the work

The main issues to be solved to achieve interoperability are: low-level Interoperability (data conversion, Quality of Service negotiation, Common Conference Control, White-Board interoperability) and multi-platform support; each of these items will be studied in a separate activity. The approach to interoperability is to provide a multimedia router (also called MMR) that performs the following: protocol conversion; keeping track of the routing tables and the related information; running Instances of conference control modules. The final configuration, to be realised at the end of the project, will allow workstations attached with IP multicast protocols on LANs or the Internet to interwork with H.320-conformant workstations attached to the MMR via the ISDN in multi-party working.

A5.1 Low-level interoperability In this activity we will assure the interoperability of multipoint videoconferencing specifically designed for packet oriented networks such as Internet and the H.320-conforming systems. The approach chosen by the project will not be limited to specifically designed equipment but will apply to H.320 equipment from a wide range of manufacturers. The use of a multi-media-router, that will act as an intelligent gateway, should be able to support the different types of protocols and terminals currently developed and used by the EUROBRIDGE and MICE projects: H.320/H.221 compliant videoconference terminals, H.320/LAN terminals as defined by IMTC, Internet-based Terminals either attached to a LAN or to a supporting WAN such as MBONE or ATM. This MMR will be integrated - as a separated process - in the Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) as defined in the T.120 series in order to keep the system architecture simple and hence decrease the price of the overall system.

A5.2 Quality of Service Negotiation Even when the workstations of A5.1 can interwork, they may have different capabilities - with different bandwidth requirements and offering different quality of services (QoS). In A4.2 we will offer solutions for QoS negotiation to make heterogeneous conferences possible, with as little change as possible to the existing systems; this is essential for real interoperability between packet-oriented system and connection oriented systems (H.320 ISDN systems). Two solutions will be investigated: negotiating in the MCU and between end units. The first allows multi-point conferences with mixed equipment - the MMR arranging for the interoperability; the second will ensure that the most powerful terminal will the bandwidth to communicate with H.320 systems. Only the MICE tools have the flexibility to adapt in this way,

A5.3 Common Conference Control To achieve multipoint to multipoint communication over IP and ISDN, a common conference control is a major issue. We will define a conference control level for both a distributed (multicast IP) and centralised (T.120) architecture. The problem once again is that the T.120 series of standard is now being released and allows for very little flexibility, but we expect to implement an original solution based on the MMR of A4.1. All IP terminals in the conference will register at the router, allowing an instance of the GCC to be created for each IP participant, will. At this point, the IP terminals will be seen by the GCC and MCS (two main modules foreseen in the T.120 standard) as H.320-compliant terminals. The instance will manage the communication at the control level between the terminals.

A5.4 White-Board Interoperability The White-Board application is a key factor in the utility of desk-top conferencing. It allows for slides presentation and joint-working within a conference and therefore increase the efficiency of the "virtual meeting". The objective of this task is to study and implement a white-board tool that can be jointly used in a conference by IP and H.320 terminals. The MICE project used WB - a white-board tools that has been designed for conferences over the Internet, H.320 terminals are expected to support the so-called still-image (SI) conferencing as described in the T.126 standard. A5.4 will realise a mapping between the functions of WB and those foreseen in the T.126 standards - taking place either at the terminal-level or in a dedicated process in the MMR. Only one solution will be implemented.

Deliverables

The results of A5.1 will be demonstrated in D2, with the interoperable systems from A5.2 and A5.3 shown in D3. An early version of interoperable whiteboards should be available in D2; better versions of such whiteboards (A5.4) and common control (A5.3) will be shown in D3.

 

2. WP6 Network Support

Objectives

This work-package will ensure that the tools operate using IP over a wide range of underlying technologies including LAN, B-ISDN, SMDS, ATM (including the European ATM pilots to be provided under TEN-34) and N-ISDN, i.e. EuroISDN. In addition, some network technologies will be supported in native mode. Since the performance of multimedia applications depend on the QoS provided by the underlying infrastructure; we will provide the tools to measure the QOS in the distributed system, to identify problems areas and achieve adequate performance.

Brief description of work to be carried out.

Three categories of activity are required to meet our objectives of providing good multimedia services over the concatenation of heterogeneous networks: provision of appropriate network support, measurement activities and development of network and applications management and monitoring tools. Each is considered below.

A6.1 Support for Network Technologies We will provide underlying support for the following wide-area network technologies: N-ISDN (EuroISDN), B-ISDN (ATM), native IP (both over SMDS and point-point circuits),. All these technologies have their separate user focus: B-ISDN should become increasingly available as a wide area bearer service; native IP will continue to dominate in the 128 Kbps to 34 Mbps area; N-ISDN will be increasingly useful for isolated sites, places with low rates of utilisation and local access. Here we address not only the native nodes of pure B-ISDN and N-ISDN but also the Internet Protocol (IP) run on top of these transmission technologies. Thus, for example, we will implement the IP/ATM and IP/ISDN facilities in our workstations and also the ITU M660/ISDN. Another set of activities will be to support the next generation IP (IPNG), as needed. Most of our network support will have to be able to operate in a multicast mode. The work in A6.1 will provide software/hardware facilities for the different networks, but also will deploy them in a seamless and concatenated way for our validation WPs, and provide guidance on when to employ what networks.

CRC will contribute to this activity by providing heterogeneous network support for MERCI connectivity across the Atlantic. Their aim will be to support IP Multicast Networks by interconnecting and integrating CRC into the MERCI/MBONE infrastructure in four phases: first using existing DRENet facilities; second using the ATM NTN facilities of Teleglobe, OCRINet and CANARIE; third using commercial ISDN; and fourth, as time and resources permit, incorporating satellite connections.

A6.2 Network Measurement The MERCI multimedia applications make heavy demands on the underlying network technology; this is exacerbated when the heterogeneous networks of A6.1 are used, and the multicast requirement. To provide such services effectively, it is essential to measure QoS broadly, and provide suitable management facilities. MBONE applications run over the Internet through multi-cast "tunnels", end users are usually connected to their local area network (LAN); hence multicast traffic can be measured from the aggregate Ethernet traffic - filtering out the desired packets off-line. Hence we derive the parameters (such as the average inter-arrival times, packet loss, correlation among packet losses) needed by the multimedia tools of WP3, the network components of WP5 and WP6, and the multimedia server of WP7.

This activity will be supplemented by CRC’s intention to establish a measurement capability, to conduct performance characterisation experiments and to contribute to the collection of long-term performance statistics.

A6.3 Network Monitoring and Traffic Management Monitoring tools are extremely important to assist in fault diagnosis, debugging and performance analysis of the MBONE infrastructure, which is used for the multimedia conferencing service. Existing monitoring tools will be improved and new tools will have to be developed to suit the strong need and ongoing request by project partners and public network operators who are managing MBONE services. Initially some of the tools already in use in the MICE project will be made available for a larger user community which requires improving the user interface, monitoring, set-up and control. At a later date, generic, application-independent monitoring tools based on the IETF Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) will be deployed. In addition the control protocol (RTCP) is designed to provide minimal control and identification functionality, particularly in multicast networks - both being independent of the underlying transport and network layers. Based on these mechanisms, tools for monitoring the network and QoS will be developed.

CRC will establish an initial network monitoring capability that can be used to support operation and maintenance of the infrastructure. They will refine the measurement and monitoring tools and develop new tools as needed to study QoS and network management issues.

Deliverables

The support for the different networks envisaged in A6.1 will be largely available by D1 in at least one platform; multi-platform support and new network interfaces will lead to later improvements - particularly for ATM. The measurements tools of A6.2 will be demonstrated in D2; the measurements themselves will be internal Deliverables. The monitoring facilities of A6.3 will be internal Deliverables in D1 and D2, with external delivery in improved forms in the later demonstrations and to our applications partners.

CRC will provide trans-Atlantic ATM-IP multicast infrastructure and initial performance characterisation results to D2 at month 12. They will provide additional network measurement results to D3 and D4 at months 18 and 24 and demonstrate a prototype integrated performance monitoring platform to D4 at month 24.

 

3. WP7 Multimedia Server Support

The main objectives of the Multimedia Server are to:

1. WP 8 Conference Control and Management

Objectives

The aim of this workpackage is to develop tools for booking conferences, controlling bandwidth usage, set-up and control of multiplexors and transcoders and diagnosis of problems occurring.

Brief Description of the work

The activity is divided into four activities: Booking and Set-up of Conferences, Conference Relay Set-up, Conference Control of Active Conferences and Fault Diagnosis.

A8.1 Booking and Set-up of Conferences Conference booking has many aspects in a distributed heterogeneous environment. We will adapt the IETF RSVP WG bandwidth reservation mechanisms as they become available and integrate them into our conference set-up mechanisms and tools; still a little way off yet, it will inevitably be deployed in a piecemeal fashion. The session description protocol used by SDR, developed under the MICE project, is now in the early stages of the standardisation process in the IETF Multi-party Multimedia Session Control (MMUSIC) working group and we envisage this process continuing under MERCI. Booking, in the context of a set of linked conference rooms, is also a requirement, but is more problematic. We will investigate whether existing protocols such as SNMP can satisfy the requirement for standardisation and distributed implementation; we will specify a protocol, and will try to introduce it both in the IETF and in our own institutions.

 

A8.2 Conference Relay Set-up The "session directory" protocol allowing the set-up, advertisement and start-up of multicast conferences, needs a number of enhancements to allow flexibility and to ensure reliable start-up of transcoders and multiplexors; we shall participate within the IETF in its update and standardisation. One mechanism for the distribution of encryption keys needed for secure conferencing is to propagate these advertisements only to valid participants, whilst still participating in the enhanced MBONE booking scheme described above. The automatic set-up of transcoders and multiplexors at appropriate places in the network is a requirement as we distribute the multiplexing functionality. For multiplexors where the recipients are Internet-reachable before conference set-up, this should be done using the same mechanisms as for participants not requiring the services of the multiplex. It is not yet clear whether this can be achieved for systems such as ISDN video phones, which are not on the Internet - though this may be possible when the ITU T.120 conference control functionality is finalised and implemented.

 

A8.3 Conference Control of Active Conferences The MICE Conference Control Channel Protocol is being standardised in the IETF MMUSIC WG - under its co-chair Mark Handley of UCL. Continued feedback from the MERCI project will shape the standards for multimedia multi-party conference control on the Internet. The enhancement of CCCP should also allow relevant conference control information to be made available to multiplexors and transcoders as required. One intended extension is the dynamic control of a fixed bandwidth allocation amongst the participants of a multicast conference.

The ITU T.120 multi-party conference control standard is now finalised for the control of centralised circuit switched conferences, although not widely deployed. Its centralised approach is at odds with the more distributed approach in the IETF, and is not appropriate for multicast based conferences. Interoperability schemes will be developed in A5.3 to allow the emerging IETF standards for conference control to interoperate with T.120/H.320 based multimedia conferences. Since the MMUSIC group is still considering distributed conference control, we will influence this process in A8.3 to ease inter-operability.

 

A8.4 Fault Diagnosis The MICE tools to enable fault diagnosis have proved sufficiently useful to the MBONE community, that such features are being added to the next generation of multicast routers and to the RTP transport protocol. We will continue to extend the tools, and interact with the relevant IETF WGs.

 

Deliverables

The booking system of A8.1 will be demonstrated in D1, with the extended functionality of A8.2 being part of D2, the interoperability of conference control of A8.3 shown in D3. The fault diagnosis of A8.4 is a continuous process, and some will be demonstrated at each Deliverable.

 

2. WP9 Conference Room Support

Specific objectives

The bulk of multimedia conferencing work has been on workstation-based conferencing. There are specific problems which must be resolved in the context of conference and large lecture rooms - as has been evident in the current MICE installations. These include the provision of higher quality video and audio, different integration of multimedia servers, integration of electronic White-Boards, and much more attention to space/related variables like echo cancelling.

Brief description of work

We will upgrade at least one existing conference or lecture room in each of KTH, UCL and UiO to include flexible facilities for conferencing. The conference rooms will be demonstrated by being used both for the MERCI seminars and in the weekly project meetings. We expect that some of these rooms will be deliberately over-provisioned to ensure that we are able to institute a good review on how to ensure high quality presentations.

The conference room is a physical space equipped so that groups of users with little or no training can communicate comfortably through audio and visually as well as through a shared workspace tool integrated in a suitable way into the conference room, i.e. as an electronic White-Board. The design of the conference room and how the components are arranged in the room and relatively to the users are crucial to the success of the conference room and will be addressed by the Work Package result in a conference room specification.

This Work Package will be based on results from others for high quality audio and video coding, shared workspace tools, multimedia servers and basic conference control and monitoring. It will integrate those results into the conference room, partly by providing suitable user interfaces to the software. The conference room will be centred around a single workstation which is used for audio and video coding, shared workspace, conference set-up and control, and which may also be used for conference monitoring. The conference room is able to participate fully in conferences with workstations and vice versa.

Since high quality audio is desired, usage of echo-cancellers as well as an automatic microphone mixer in each conference room is a requirement. Microphones and speakers will be integrated into the conference room so as to make usage by the desired number of users possible without the users having to be concerned about their relation to the microphones.

High quality video may require usage of hardware codecs, preferably integrated onto a card in the conference room workstation, though it is no longer clear that hardware codecs will continue to provide much better performance that high quality video boards in workstations. One or more cameras, possibly with automatic camera switching will be used, with the decoded picture shown on large monitors or through video-projectors.

The electronic White-Board consists both of a software component as well as a hardware part. The software will be an adapted version of one of the shared workspace tools of WP3, while the hardware part will be addressed by this Work Package. The Electronic White-Board has much in common with the Xerox LiveBoard in that it is based on a back-projected workstation screen and that a pen is used by the users interacting on the White-Board.

Deliverables

As part of D2, we will demonstrate a completely working medium performance conference room; the high performance one, with all its functionality, will be available as part of D3.

 

3. WP10 Security Support

Specific objectives

The objective of the security provision is to allow access to conferences and document stores only by authorised parties, and to ensure that the contents of the audio, video, shared White-Board and document store are is available only to authorised recipients. It will be necessary also to ensure that participants of the conference are aware exactly who is participating at any time.

Brief description of work.

Where confidentiality is required in exchanges, for the current purposes, it is adequate to encrypt with DES. We will define facilities to allow the interchanges to be encrypted; we will use here the same specifications as have already been provided in the MICE project. We address here the security architecture, end-end security, participant authentication and encryption gateways.

A10.1 Security architecture for conferences No security technology will be developed in this project, but we will incorporate technology developed under previous projects and the concurrent ICE-TEL project. We have an agreement with the ICE-TEL project that suitable tools and infrastructure will be provided to MERCI from that project. We will, therefore, review the security architecture developed in the MICE project (including any APIs) to assess whether any changes are indicated as a result of current requirements, the standardisation activities of the ITU-T groups, or the basic security tools that will be provided to MERCI. We will investigate how secure working can be provided also between the packet-switched and circuit-switched worlds.

A10.2 End-to-end security End-to-end security comprises security measures taken directly by the applications at the user ends. It includes end-to-end encryption and requires applications which are compatible in terms of security functions. The multimedia components of A3.1 are being prepared in such a way that they can be secured by the use of suitable security tools; these will be provided by the previous projects, or the ICE-TEL tools. We will ensure that the key management mechanisms work in such a way that it is possible to change encryption keys dynamically for the video, audio and shared whiteboard components. It should not be a particular problem to ensure secure interworking between the circuit and packet switched worlds on a point-point basis, but may be much more difficult if there are MCUs in the system.

A10.3 Conference participant authentication We envisage two environments: in one there is a general announcement of the conferences - but only authorised conferees can join a conference and access the encryption keys; in the second, the information about the conference is sent only to specific parties. For either method, a list of session encryption keys may be provided; these will either be sent out as part of the session announcement (with MOSS or sdr) in the session announcement ensuring that only authorised recipients can participate), or will be held in a directory - for which strong authentication will be required for access..

A10.4 Encryption gateways In some environments it is impractical to use security-aware applications. A viable alternative is to use an encryption gateway, in which all the security technology is concentrated. The trusted component should be small enough, and provided in source form, so that any user can inspect and verify its functions. This clearly separates the user's choice of an application from the trusted components. The use of an encryption gateway does not impact the problem of key management; the mechanisms of A10.3 can still be used to affect the key distribution mechanisms.

Deliverables.

The architecture of A10.1 will be published as part of D1, and its first embodiment, the results of A10.2, will be demonstrated in D2. At least one key management system from A10.3 will be shown at the same time, though it will be expanded in D3. Encryption gateways, from A10.4 will be introduced in D3 also. The earlier internal deliveries of secure systems will use merely software solutions. From D2 onwards, some smart cards will be included in the demonstrations.

 

4. WP11 The Seminar Work-Package

There are several objective of the seminar workpackage:

1. WP12 The Surgical Workshop Work-Package

Objectives

The objective of this work-package is to stress those aspects of the system which are particularly appropriate to the surgical workshops in a demanding application: high quality multimedia tools, multimedia servers, security and conference control.

Brief Description of the Work

UCL has already held one, two day, surgical workshop in which live operations were carried out in London, but two others were brought in from Gothenburg and San Francisco. All the participants were impressed by that event, but have recognised that substantial improvements are required for the further development of this application. Most of these developments will be carried out in the Health Care and Training sectors - both inside the Telematics Programme and elsewhere.

In the annual workshop, we will ensure that operations carried out in the Middlesex Hospital as part of the annual Urology workshop (or some such similar event if that series is changed in the next few years) is broadcast to a number of other sites in Europe and North America. We will bring in also operations from other sites to be part of the workshop event. The operations will be part of a training workshop, so that both an oral presentation of the procedure, a visual demonstration, and an interactive discussion are integral parts of the event. We have assurance of five hospitals already (in Germany, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US) that they will wish to participate; of these four participated already in the 1994 workshop.

The highest quality audio and video available under MERCI will be provided - in a conference room environment. Moreover, the inclusion of real-time instrument data - usually X-ray and Ultrasonic scans is essential - with quality superior to that shown in the early demonstration in 1994. Using the results of WP10 will ensure not only that confidentiality of the transmission is maintained, but also that only approved users are receiving the transmissions.

Evaluations of the interactive surgery teaching workshop will be much more revealing than those of the seminars. Now we are addressing a set of people in quite a different field; the operating surgeons have little previous knowledge of, and no development experience of. remote teaching - though they have very good knowledge of the presentation of their subject to local audiences. At each participating hospital, there will be similar surgeons; thus we get excellent feedback on how experts view the facilities they are being offered - in very stressful conditions. The audiences often have experience of local workshops of this type - and even video tape presentations which are prepared at very great cost; most will not have any experience of distance demonstration of such operations. The evaluations of both the audiences and the surgeons will be invaluable in guiding the project staff on what facilities require improvement.

CRC will participate in this activity by providing facilities for surgeons to view the workshops, if this can be arranged with the organiser of the workshop.

Deliverables

The Deliverables will be the annual workshop

 

2. WP13 Commercial Testbeds

The objective here is to apply the conferencing tools in at least one commercial testbed, where it will be evaluated according to real commercial criteria. The application will be sufficiently demanding that the multimedia tools will be applied in the workstation environment, and will use the type of equipment, network and security procedures required by the end user.

2. PROJECT MANAGEMENT
1. Project Internal Management

1. The Project Management Structure

• The Co-ordinating Partner will appoint both a Project Director (PD) and a Project Manager.- who will be members of that Partner’s staff The Project Director and the Project Manager work as a team; the former is responsible for many of the Executive management decisions; the second for the administrative ones; both posts are part-time.
• Each partner paid by the EU will appoint a Technical Manager (TM).
• Each .Sponsoring Partner will appoint a Technical Contact (TC).
• It has been stated in this Technical Annex which organisation is responsible for which work-package; it is the responsibility of that organisation to appoint a Work-Package Leader (WPL).
• The role of the PD is to represent the project from a policy perspective in the following respects:

1. Project servers

MERCI will produce substantial amounts of documents and software which have to be distributed to partners, individual users and user groups, and other interested parties. The Co-ordinating Partner Contractor will maintain a document and ftp server containing general project documents such as minutes, management reports, technical reports and publications, and a directory of National Support Centres (NSCs), their contact points, and MERCI software. Partners releasing software are responsible for making this available to NSCs in an agreed fashion, and updating entries in the general project server. At present the project server is held as a World Wide Web (WWW) server. In view of potential sensitivity of some of the information, some of the WWW pages will be available for all outside bodies, some will be restricted to the project members.

The WWW server will be run on a Server using a 180 GB Jukebox as the main document store, though there is also substantial asic memory for indexing data. A commercial database search engine (WAIS) will ensure that it is straightforward to search for arbitrary text strings in the project database - easing the location of project information. As in the MICE project, the existence of shared editing tools eases the shared preparation of documents.

 

 

2. The Organisation of Meetings and the Management Structure

1. User Meetings

We will hold periodic meetings of the users of the MERCI tools to ensure that we have a realistic view of their requirements - probably two such meetings per year will be adequate. The sponsoring partners and representatives of the MANICORAL and other user projects will be invited to the meetings. At the meetings we will review the comments on MERCI tools received from MERCI users and from those in MANICORAL and such other projects as may be added by mutual consent. Users’ comments and the Project’s resultant actions will be formally minuted and these minutes appended to the PMRs. This subject is developed further in WP2.

2. The Management Plan and Quality Assurance Procedures

Most of the MERCI partners have worked together before, and realise that this type of project is complex and needs careful management. A Project Manager (PM) will be appointed (cf. Section 4.1.1) responsible for ensuring that tight control of the project is maintained. With tight deadlines for demonstrations and delivery schedules to be met, partners need to be in regular contact. Project Management Meetings (PMMs) will take place every 2-3 months - normally at one of the partners’ sites. These will be supplemented by project meetings held over the Internet or any improved network facilities being put in for CEU Telematics projects. The combination of frequent on-line progress meetings, regular face-to-face meetings and monthly progress reports will give both the PM and the partners a clear view of the. current progress. The on-line meetings will keep the both the PM and partners fully aware of the success of the tools currently deployed.

Several other aids to project management will be employed. We have as one of the Validation Tasks a fortnightly set of MERCI Seminars; these will show only too graphically if there are problems either in the tools deployed or in the networks. We will try to introduce various tools regularly into the weekly meetings and seminars, to provide realistic tests of our progress.

A second important tool is the Multimedia Server, which we are introducing to hold all Project documentation.. This server is described in greater detail in Section 4.1.2. In addition to all project documentation (held for internal project purposes), it also will hold publicly available information. This will help greatly to ease the burden of technology dissemination - which is so vital to this project.

3. The Experience of the Project Director

1. Work Package Leaders

For each Work Package (WP), there will be a work-package leader (WPL), who will be responsible for planning and over-seeing the progress of the WP. It is the WPL’s responsibility to report on progress at the PMMs, and to PTMs for the WP. He/she is also responsible for progressing Deliverables for the WP. Normally the WP leader will be chosen from the organisation having the largest effort in the WP. WPLs will be expected to attend PTMs and the bi-weekly project meetings; if they are not members of the PMM, they are expected to brief the PMM member of their organisation or the Project Manager for each PMM meeting.

2. Deliverables

Deliverables may be divided into Internal, Project and Public of which only the latter two are deliverable to the Commission. Deliverables in this project, whether Internal, Project or Public, are one of three types and the responsibility for their preparation is allocated as follows:

Specific - related to a single work-package. These will be the responsibility of the WPL.

Conglomerate - containing parts from many work-packages. Preparation of the components is the responsibility of the WPLs. The responsibility for integrating the Deliverables will be either on the Project Manager or someone else appointed by the PMC - possibly on the recommendation of the PTC.

Management. Preparation of the Management Deliverables is the responsibility of the PM - though WPLs and TMs are expected to provide their input in a timely fashion.

 

3. Confidentiality and IPR

1. Contract Management

1. THE PARTNERSHIP (CONSORTIUM)

1. The Roles and Responsibilities of the Partners

1. The Profile of the Consortium

Though superficially the consortium seems dominated by research organisations, on a closer look it is much broader. Not only is TELES a progressive manufacturer, but also it provides a good link between the traditional communications interests and the computer ones. Hewlett-Packard’s training division is a particular good sponsor; they have strong interests in applying the technology broadly in their organisation. UKERNA represents the research networks; it operates one of the most progressive such networks, and is an important user and sponsor organisation. GMD and INRIA are both research organisations; however their strong links both with National industry and their PNOs make them particularly important members. UiO, KTH and UCL are universities; however again their strong links with their PNOs and local industry are one important feature, and their commitment to distance learning is also very important. The inclusion of CRC in the consortium provides us with a research partner with specific useful skills in the field and with excellent research contacts in both Canada and Europe. From other links being established with DARPA, it should also be possible to extend applications sites to the US.

2. The Balance of the Consortium

All the main partners except TELES and CRC have had a several years collaboration on the MICE project, and represent complete knowledge of all the relevant technology. TELES brings in their equivalent familiarity with the ITU approach, and their extensive experience of ISDN products and services. There is an excellent geographic balance; France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK are all involved and, with the inclusion of CRC, North America. Each will have high quality access to their research networks, their National pilots, and their ISDN networks. RUS brings in directly supercomputer centre; we expect this to make unique demands on the MERCI technology. KTH has first hand experience with both mobile and gigabit networks; they are invaluable in this respect. The INRIA skills in video and audio coding are a vital part of the project. The University of Oslo projects with distributed classrooms will provide a unique feedback on the project’s needs in this area. The UCL broad network activities provide the latest technology in flow control and reservation techniques. INRIA, KTH and UCL all have very strong links with the US - an important ingredient for ensuring international interoperability, now further enhanced by our Canadian partner. Huitema of INRIA is Chair of the Internet Activities Board; Handley of UCL is Chair of the IETF and Kirstein of the International Collaboration Board; Pehrson is planning to link US, Swedish and British universities together. Hewlett-Packard is both a provider of relevant hardware, and a large scale user of the technology. UKERNA is responsible for operating a network - but also for funding relevant advanced applications.

The GMD, INRIA and UCL organisations have also had successful partnerships over many years in other areas - directories (THORN and PARADISE), security (PASSWORD) and high speed networks (HIPPARCH, PREPARE). UCL has acted some years ago as a test site for the TELES EUROBRIDGE technology. Thus it is clear that the partnership has been chosen because we all know we work well together, and do not expect the problems endemic in many European projects. It is significant that there were 11 partners in the original MICE project; while all contributed well in the MICE context, and several other remain our partners in other activities, only six remain in the MERCI consortium.

3. The Mechanisms for involving the Users

The users will be involved both directly in the internal project demonstrators and indirectly via the other projects which will be using the MICE and MERCI technology. We are now introducing the use of the MICE tools into many of our research programmes as a working practice; this brings a broad range of users into direct contact with the technology. In many projects the Validation Projects are well down stream of the project; we expect to start the MERCI seminars at the beginning of the project, and hold our first surgical workshop within the first few months; thus user will be directly involved from the beginning. While the National Support Centres Project is not being funded on a European basis, many are receiving National support; we will involve a wide range of users via these national centres, and they will hold user meetings from early in their project; moreover we expect to maintain the flow of information to our users through the Project Servers of Section 4.1.2. We expect to set up a User Committee to advise us of user needs; this committee will include expected participants in validation work-packages (WP11, WP12 and WP13), and the related projects. The inclusion of CRC will provide additional strength in the evaluation and feedback work of WP4.

There will be a careful monitoring of the success of the validation activities, and the users’ comments from the early exercises will be fully taken into account in further developments - as has already been emphasised in WP2, WP3 and WP4. We have made very early delivery of the MICE software to MANICORAL (D0), and of MERCI software (D1) more recently; the feedback from the user projects will factor crucially into our later activity.

We fully collaborate with the SCIMITAR project in its more global mechanisms for involving users.

4. The Contractors

1. GMD

The Organisation

GMD, the German National Research Centre for Information Technology, conducts research aiming at the development of innovative methods and applications. It co-operates closely with industry and users, thereby increasing the competitiveness of the German and European economies. It has four main research areas: System Design Technology, Communication and Co-operation Systems, Intelligent Multimedia Systems, Parallel Computing.

GMD’s headquarters and four of its eight institutes are located at Schloss Birlinghoven in Sankt Augustin, near Bonn. Two institutes each are located in Berlin and Darmstadt, and there is a liaison office in Tokyo. GMD has a staff of 1200 (Bonn: 800, Berlin: 200, Darmstadt: 200). Most institute directors are also university professors. The total annual budget of GMD is DM 170 million. A basic funding of DM 130 million is provided by the Federal Ministry for Education, Science, Research and Technology (90%) and by the Federal States of Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, and Berlin; an additional 40 million comes from project funds and industrial co-operation.

GMD presents its results and research activities at conferences, in scientific publications, on the World Wide Web, and in its magazine, the GMD Spiegel. These results benefit GMD’s co-operation partners in business, science, public administration, and the media, as well as the end-users of the resultant products.

The GMD institute in the MERCI partnership is the Institute for Tele-co-operation Technology (TKT), located in Darmstadt. GMD-TKT has been working in the area of computer networking since the early seventies, in IT security since 1982 and in multimedia conferencing since 1992. We are a regular contractor of the Deutsche Telekom in the areas of telecommunication technology and security technology. Through an interdisciplinary project on electronic communication in jurisdiction, supported by the Federal Ministry of Research and Technology, we have established an expertise in applying innovative communication tools and electronic signatures to end-user scenarios, running testbeds, and evaluating them together with non-technical experts. GMD-TKT has been an active partner in several international projects, including MICE (ESPRIT), CIO (RACE), PASSWORD (VALUE) and SAMSON (RACE).

The contribution to the Project

GMD’s main contributions will be on the subject of Security Support (WP 10) and on Commercial Testbeds (WP13). In addition, GMD will contribute to WP4 (Usability) by covering user interface aspects of security functions and to WP6 (Cross Platform Activity) by working on common conference control between distributed and centralised architectures.

The Team leader

Knut Bahr studied Electrical Engineering (Dipl.-Ing., Dr.-Ing.) at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, FRG. Since 1974 he has been working in informatics at the Deutsches Rechenzentrum as a scientist with GMD. He has extensive experience in Communication protocol issues, data communication in ISDN, corporate network planning, ISPBXs, and packet switching technology, network and supplementary services, co-operative support of people in telecommunication, and applications of security techniques. He has been responsible for the development of a high-integration peripheral packet handler for the ISDN system Hicom (a co-operation project with Siemens), the design of an architecture for computer integrated telephony (co-operation project with a medium sized manufacturer) and Multimedia Conferencing (EU projects MICE and CIO). He has participated in studies on CSCW tools and on the integration of multimedia modules in the CORBA architecture (co-operation projects with Deutsche Telekom).

The role and service offered by sub-contractors

In the context of Commercial Testbeds, GMD will involve industrial partners (still unnamed). The objective is to test secure conferencing in a realistic business environment with "real users" and to gather feedback from those users. Evaluation, validation and dissemination of project results are expected to benefit from such an approach. It is expected that the participating organisations will meet their own expenses.

2. INRIA

INRIA (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) is a French public-sector scientific and technological institute under the responsibility of the Ministry for Research and the Ministry of Industry. Headquartered at Rocquencourt near Versailles in France, INRIA has five research centres at Grenoble, Nancy-Metz, Rennes, Rocquencourt, and Sophia-Antipolis (near Nice). INRIA’ s missions are: basic and applied research, design of experimental systems, technology transfer, knowledge transfer, international scientific exchanges, contribution to international co-operation programs, scientific assessments, contribution to standardisation.

1. KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HÖGSKOLAN (KTH)

The Organisation

Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal Institute of Technology), KTH, is the main university covering technology in Sweden. It is a modern institute of technology with first class education and research. Altogether KTH has about 8000 students, 900 active postgraduate students and a staff of almost 2500. The department of Teleinformatics is part of the faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. The department is still growing and has about 30 staff members and 40 graduate students. The academic staff includes 7 chairs covering different aspects of systems, including computer systems and communications, telecommunication, teletraffic and radio communication systems, distributed systems and software engineering.

KTH recently started a long-term strategic research centre on Computing & Communication with participating research groups from SICS, KTH departments and three departments from other Swedish Universities. The strategic research program of the C&C Centre, and an associated graduate school, is focused on real-time distributed multimedia services, mobile access and high-performance communication networks. The centre has a strong participation from media-, computer- and telecommunications industry. Several staff members are involved in standardisation work, both via the IETF and via ITU-channels. KTH hosted the IETF international workshop in July, 1995.

KTH, in co-operation with the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, initiated the MultiG program in 1990 in which the Stockholm Gigabit Network (SGN) was conceived. SGN is a dark fibre infrastructure covering the Greater Stockholm area allowing pilot networking and field tests both regarding new end-user services and new switching and transmission techniques. SGN is being connected to the Pan-European PNO ATM testbed and offered as a national host for EU-projects. Discussions are under way to connect SGN to other gigabit testbeds into a global gigabit testbed. KTH also runs the Network Operations Centre of the Swedish University Network (SUNET), the Nordic infrastructure (NORDUNET) and also has a long experience from Pan-European networking operating the EBONE.

KTH participates in several EU-projects and networks related to the current proposals, e.g. MICE (ESPRIT 7606), BETEUS, and SONAH (RACE). KTH has close co-operation with centres of excellence in computer and telecommunications throughout the world. Among the partners outside Europe, the co-operation is particularly intensive with Stanford and Penn (US), NACSIS (Japan), UTS (Aus)

Contribution to the Project

KTH will lead the workpackages on network support (WP6) and multimedia servers (WP7). it will contribute to those on conference rooms (WP9), conference management (WP8), security (WP10). It will play an important role in the validation seminars (WP11) and the surgical teaching (WP12).

The Team Leader

Bjorn Pehrson has been a professor in Telecommunications and chairman of the department of Teleinformatics since its formation in 1992. His main areas of teaching and research at KTH is in distributed multimedia systems, focusing on protocol design. Before that he was an adjunct professor at KTH for six years as laboratory manager at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS) which he co-founded supported by industry in 1985 while an associate professor at Uppsala University. He was one of the initiators of the MultiG program (1990-1993) a research program on distributed multimedia applications in high-speed networks leaving as one of its results, the Stockholm Gigabit Network. He also pioneered the establishment of SUNET and NORDUNET (1980) and participated in the creation of three spin-off companies exploiting research results from his research groups.

2. University of Oslo

The Organisation

Universitetet i Oslo (University of Oslo) is Norway’s largest university with 30 000 students and a staff of over 4 500. The Centre for Information Technology Services (USIT) provide services for all parts of the university and has close to 100 employees. The Research and Development unit of USIT has played a key role in establishing the national and Nordic academic networks and is today focusing on development and application of multimedia and network technology for new services to support teaching and research. This work is at the university, national and international levels. The university is connected to the Supernett, a national high speed network for experimental services which is currently under upgrade to ATM-technology, directly connected to the national node for the European MOU ATM-pilot and host for the 8 mbit/s international connection for the national academic network.

USIT participated in the ESPRIT MICE-project and will continue the National Support Centre established as part of that project - now funded by the national academic network operator (UNINETT A/S). USIT is participating in a project on delivery of video over ATM funded by the Norwegian Research Council. In 1992 USIT developed a distributed electronic classroom system (MUNIN) for teaching, meetings and seminars using audio, video and shared workspace technology over the Internet which is compatible with the MICE-technology. High quality audio and video is used by this system and much work has been put into user-aspects. Currently three electronic classrooms have been built with an additional four more being planned. This will lead to at least one electronic classroom at each of the Norwegian universities. Based on the electronic classroom system a scaled down system for conference room videoconferencing has been developed (KOMPAKT). This system has been specifically aimed for usage over the Internet and ISDN between distributed campuses of the 26 regional colleges in Norway and has now been deployed at five sites with an additional 10 to 15 sites expected before the end of 1995. USIT is working with industry to commercialise results from these projects.

The Contribution to the project

The University of Oslo will participate in most workpackages and as leader of the Conference Room Work Package. UiO will bring with it into the project an existing conference room, a multimedia server (40 GB optical jukebox) as well as a number of multimedia workstations. Through the MUNIN and KOMPAKT systems we bring with us a considerable base of users. USIT expects, in parallel with the MERCI project, to carry out other technically related activities both contributing to the project and exploiting results from the project. An example is the MA001 project developing a multimedia server based distance education system incorporating MICE technology.

The Team Leader

Geir Pedersen has been responsible for a number of technical development projects at USIT over the last few years. He has been project leader for the MUNIN and KOMPAKT projects and will continue to lead those projects as well as the MA001-project. He has been leading a number of other projects and efforts, like USIT’s participation in the MICE-project, the deployment of X.500 within the academic community in Norway, development of access to X.400-based electronic mail from Macintosh and piloting of usage of smart-card technology as a campus multi service card. He has also been responsible for the technical design and implementation of the ISO 10163/10164 standards for networked database access in the Nordic SR-Nett project. He has for several years been part of a core technical reference group for the national academic network operator.

3. The RECHENZENTRUM UNIVERSITAT STUTTGART (RUS)

Organisation

The Stuttgart University Supercomputing Centre (RUS) has recently been selected to become the first German national supercomputing centre and will be visible in this role at an European scale. In addition to serving users from Academia, RUS also maintains close co-operation with industry. RUS comprises both a service and a scientific branch. In addition, the RUS director is also head of the Institute for Computer Applications. The total staff of RUS is about 100. RUS has a record both in supercomputing, visualisation - and networking and information services.

RUS has initiated and manages the State science network ‘BelWue’, the German science Internet and its international connections. RUS also leads the upgrade of BelWue into a 155 Mbps ATM network, which will be closely integrated in the forthcoming national and international ATM and other high-speed infrastructures. RUS is actively participating (ESPRIT and RACE) in, and preparing for, new projects in the 4^th Framework Programme. In the ESPRIT MICE context, RUS acts as National support centre for Germany. As a supercomputing centre, an industry partner and a member of Stuttgart University, RUS develops and applies multimedia techniques for collaboration, teaching and support at large scale. In the next few years, the planned improvement in European high-speed networking infrastructures will help to extend this role to embrace a European dimension.

Contribution to the Project

RUS will play a major role in the Cross-platform support (WP3) - particularly in the development of a new shared whiteboard tool that runs on all platforms foreseen in the project and in the ATM activity of WP6. RUS is currently the Leader of WP 11, the MERCI Seminars, and will collaborate fully in WP12, the Surgical Workshop activity.

Team Leader

The RUS effort would be led by Paul Christ. Paul got his masters degree in Mathematics and Physics from Tuebingen University in 1968. At present he is head of the department ‘Communications Systems and BelWue-Development’ (CS-BD) of RUS. CS-BD has pioneered high-speed networking both locally, nationally and internationally. In 1987, Paul based the technical initiator of BelWue, the science network of the State of Baden- Wuerttemberg; he is now in charge of the BelWue-upgrade towards 155 Mbps ATM - including the corresponding transitions into the national and international ATM projects. Paul’s department is involved in four European projects such as RACE 2031, 2060 and ESPRIT 9033 and 7602.

Role and services of Subcontractors

Most of the RUS activities will be carried out directly by RUS. However, the medical seminars will be carried out in conjunction with other German Hospitals, and some of this work will be subcontracted out.

4. TELES

TELES was founded in 1983 as a high-tech research and development company, particularly in the areas of telecommunications and security technologies. With currently 90 employees, the company has kept a typical SME structure in order to not only perform rapid prototyping but has also developed advanced quality assurance techniques in many areas e.g. SGML, MHS, N-ISDN, B-ISDN, CGM, TELEX, FAX, VIDEOTEX, EDIFACT, STEP/PDES/IGES, ETSI/ITU); it is developing ready-to-use products for them. TELES provides its services to a variety of large enterprises in several European countries such as DBP (Deutsche Bundespost), the CEC, the BVD (Bundesverband Druck) and companies such as Dornier, IBM, ICL, Nixdorf, PKI, Siemens, Telenorma etc. is one of the leaders on the European ISDN market, offering a whole range of hardware/software products including standard-conforming (H.320/T.120) videoconferencing equipment. In addition to this, TELES is also present on the market of digital PABX, with several low-cost ISDN switching boards.

1. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

University College London (UCL) is one of the premier universities in the United Kingdom, with a strong emphasis on research. Its income in 1994 was £185M with an expenditure of £179M. It has some 5000 staff, 7000 undergraduate and 2000 postgraduate students covering all areas including Science, Engineering and Medicine. A set of five hospitals is linked to UCL; its strong audio-video department is sited in one of the hospitals, and is linked particularly to medical teaching. It has recently set up a Language teaching centre, and is just establishing a distant learning centre. UCL has been running a video teaching network between a number of sites for some years; it is also one of the first sites on both the British SuperJANET SMDS and ATM networks.

1. Communications Research Centre of Industry Canada

CRC is the primary federal government laboratory for research in advanced telecommunications and information technologies. The roles of CRC are to conduct research that contributes to the orderly evolution of the Canadian communications infrastructure and to the development of new communication services and to support industry through the transfer of knowledge and technology generated by research. CRC is located west of Ottawa, along the Ottawa River, on a campus that is shared with the Canadian Space Agency and the Defence Research Establishment.

1. The Contributions of the Sponsoring Partners

1. UKERNA - The UK Education and Research Networking Association

The JNT Association, a not for profit company limited by guarantee, has been set up by the Higher Education Funding Councils. The company began trading as UKERNA (UK Education and Research Networking Association) on 1 April 1994.

1. HEWLETT-PACKARD

1. SHELL RESEARCH

The Organisation

Shell undertakes research and development at fifteen research centres world-wide. Two of the main centres are Thornton near Chester, UK, which is the main Oil Products laboratory and is primarily focused on research into fuels and lubricants, and Amsterdam in The Netherlands, which supports the Chemicals business and focuses on process R&D. Both laboratories employ staff from many disciplines, including Chemists, Physicists, Engineers, Mathematicians and Materials Scientists. Substantial research effort is also carried out for Shell by Extra-Mural Research (EMR) partners at UK and European Universities.

 

Shell's objectives in the development and use of MERCI technology are to investigate the feasibility of improving the effectiveness of such EMR arrangements in support of Shell's business, with a view to enabling greater use of EMR. Secondary objectives address the desire to exploit such technology within the Company to improve communication and access to scarce skills across the globe. We plan to introduce MERCI technology to staff working on EMR projects, and to evaluate the results.

 

Contribution to the Project

Shell's contribution to MERCI is intended to offer access to specific business-oriented research team activities where the teams are distributed between two Shell laboratories (Thornton and Amsterdam) and specific EMR partners. By these means it is anticipated that Shell will assist the project to expand the effective application of the technology to the business world. Specifically, it is hoped that Shell will be able to assist the MERCI project in developing tools that are of direct value to research scientists working in a business environment. User aspects, such as usability, training, and effectiveness of specific software tools, and technical issues, such as effect of degradation of communications, security, logging, and the storing and retrieval of information, etc. will be able to be evaluated. In addition, the actions necessary to brief senior management about the availability of such tools and their effective use will be tested.

Team Leader

The Shell team leader will be Eur. Ing. Stuart Gillies who is located at the Thornton laboratory.

2. Multimedia National Support Centre, Austria

The Organisation

The NSC in Austria is run by the Zentraler Informatik Dienst of the Kunsthochschule in Linz.

 

Contribution to the Project

The NSC will work with the MERCI toolsets, feeding back information on their robustness and usability. It will participate in pan European events using the JAMES network. These will include the MERCI seminar series and other ad-hoc events. They will contribute to the testing and evaluation of both the high speed network and the tools.

 

Team Leader

Dr. Schahram Dustdar (Schahram Dustdar (dustdar@khsa.khs-linz.ac.at).

3. Multimedia National Support Centre, Belgium

The Organisation

The NSC in Begium is run by ULB, formerly a partner in the Esprit MICE project. ULB runs the EuroDemo site in Brussels.

 

Contribution to the Project

The NSC will work with the MERCI toolsets, feeding back information on their robustness and usability. It will participate in pan European events using the JAMES network. These will include the MERCI seminar series and other ad-hoc events. They will contribute to the testing and evaluation of both the high speed network and the tools.

 

Team Leader

Frederic Huygens (mice-nsc@helios.iihe.rtt.be).

4. Multimedia National Support Centre, Italy

The Organisation

The NSC in Italy is run by CNAF, the National Networking Center of INFN in Bologna.

 

Contribution to the Project

The NSC will work with the MERCI toolsets, feeding back information on their robustness and usability. It will participate in pan European events using the JAMES network. These will include the MERCI seminar series and other ad-hoc events. They will contribute to the testing and evaluation of both the high speed network and the tools.

 

Team Leader

Tiziana Ferrari (mice-nsc@infn.it).

5. Multimedia National Support Centre, Portugal

1. RELEVANT REFERENCES

Note that the Deliverables of WP3 - WP10 will be combined into a major demonstrations with supporting documentation at months 9, 15, 21 and 24.