12 August 1997

1. Project Summary

This proposal is for a five months project to provide a shrink-wrapped set of programmes to support multicast, multimedia conferencing over the Internet. During the first month we will survey the field of available software, and recommend a set of programmes for Audio, Video, Shared Editing and Shared Drawing which should be shrink-wrapped for use under UNIX and Microsoft Environments. After agreement with the UKERNA Project Officer, we will shrink-wrap the selected individual tools with installation scripts and user documentation for Windows’95, NT, LINUX and Sun Workstations running Solaris. We cannot guarantee that shrink-wrapped versions will run on other UNIX platforms, but the tools themselves will be known to run on other UNIX platforms. In addition, we will package a set of audio, video and shared workspace tools into a simple-to-use conferencing package for up to 4 or up to 8 video streams for PCs and Suns. The package is aimed at novice users, it will be straightforward to install and accompanied by an introductory user guide and pared-down documentation.

 

Although the total project is envisaged to extend over five months, near-final versions of the package and the documentation will be provided after 15 weeks. The further extension is to allow for Review by UKERNA, the Christmas vacations and subsequent amendment by UCL.

2. The Project Work

1. Background

 

The JANET Videoconferencing Strategy, as approved by the ACN and JISC [1], recognises that there is a need to provide IP-based videoconferencing packaging improvements to provide user friendly, easily installable, well documented software to end users. This activity is a prerequisite to Piloting activities to understand potential issues which will be encountered in running a large scale IP videoconferencing service with emphasis on network congestion and user perception of the service.

 

This proposal is a response to the resulting call [2]. The Call recognises that there are a number of IP-based videoconferencing software tools in the "public domain". At the same time, for these tools to gain widespread acceptance, they need to be packaged to a standard that is acceptable to the non-expert user - i.e. the tools need to be "shrink-wrapped". A shrink-wrapped tool set is required for use as the basis of a stable platform for the IP videoconferencing piloting activities as outlined above. This project aims to address this need by providing packaged software solutions.

 

The funding available for this project is not sufficient to make major improvements in any of the individual tools. In fact, it would be uneconomic to bid for his project unless the bidder needed the tools for reasons of his own. The Call envisages a very short time scale for the effort; it would be impractical to bid unless the bidder had excellent knowledge of at least some of the tools and already had experienced people in place to do the work. The Multimedia Group in the Department of Computer Science, University College London is one of the few UK groups in a position to make a credible response because of their previous involvement in the MICE National Support Centre [3] and ReLaTe [4] projects, and their current Direction of the MERCI project [5]. Moreover they need the tools in a packaged way, because of their proposed lead of the MECCANO project [6] from the beginning of 1998.

2. Aims of Project

The aims of the SHRIMP project are exactly those stated in the call, i.e.:

• Improvement of the tools on common platforms (e.g. on PCs & Workstations, under the three Operating Systems of UNIX, Windows’95 and Windows NT.
• Easy to install software tools for the PC and UNIX platforms that can be installed by a non-technical user.
• A high standard of user documentation on how to install, configure and use the tools.

1. Activities

1. Available Tool Evaluation

There are a number of possible families of tools which could be used. The most common set is based on the ITU-T T.120 protocol suite [7]. There are variants of this proposed for use over the Internet; for this purpose the H.320 transport protocol has been modified to H.323 [8], and tools are expected shortly. This protocol suite will not be considered in this project - mainly because very few products exist for use over the Internet, and we do not think that these were meant by the Call.

Another commonly used tool is CU-SeeMe [9]. This is already commercially distributed in the US; its facilities are too limited to be of use to the UK academic communicty. It will therefore not be considered in this proposal.

We will consider only the multi-media tools in widespread use over the Mbone. We have extensive experience of these tools, think those were the ones meant in the Call, and will address these exclusively. Here we must consider separately the audio, video and shared workspace aspects. There are many variants, and we discuss these below. If others are suggested or encountered during the short period of this study - i.e. during the first three weeks of September, they will be considered if possible. It is possible to consider only those tools which are demonstrated to be available by September 1, 1997.

With the limited time and effort available, we can consider only tools which either run already on both Microsoft PCs and UNIX systems, which we have a strong reason to believe are easily ported from one to the other with negligible effort; if a tool operates only on one of those two platforms, it can be considered only if it is inter-operable with another tool of similar functionality on the other platform. For brevity we use the words "on PCs" where we really means "on PCs under Microsoft Operating Systems"; where we mean a PC UNIX variant like LINUX or FreeBSD, we say so explicitly.

The main criteria we will adopt in the tools we are considering are the following: functionality, stability, relative absence of bugs, support on broad ranges of platforms, availability of interfaces to allow either simpler use or the addition of a further interface to be superposed, feasibility of deployment without excessive cost, availability of technical feedback to repair deficiencies or bugs.

• Video tools: Two which have been in wide use will not be considered: these are NV [10] from Xerox and IVS [11] from INRIA. Neither is available on PCs and both are obsolete. VIC [12] from LBL is a clear front-runner; we know it well, it runs on the different platforms, and the source code is available. Rendez-Vous [13] from INRIA is another candidate; at present it is not available on PCs. It will eventually be commercialised by Dassault, but is probably not yet in a suitable form to be used. The possible dark horse is the version of the video tool VIC from the MASH project [14] from Steve McCanne in UCB. Steve was heavily involved in VIC development, and is producing a version with a scaleable coding tool; a Release has been promised for many months, and is now slated for August. It may be interesting, but may arrive too late.
• Audio tools: NEVOT [15] from Xerox is now obsolete and will not be considered. RAT [16] from UCL and VAT [17] from LBL are the most likely candidates. RAT from UCL is well known to us, and we have full control of the package. We have an integration with VIC under way, and have produced unified interfaces for ReLaTe in the past. VAT is an excellent package, but is not as available in source form; nevertheless, its functionality must be compared with RAT. Freephone [18] is in the same situation as Rendez-Vous above.
• Shared Workspace: The shared editor NTE [19] from UCL is comparatively unique, and is a clear candidate. For drawing tools, the best known, WB [20] does not run on PCs - and never will. There is a recent variant WBD [21] from LUT, which looks promising. Another tool from RUS, TeleCanvas [22] is also a possible candidate, as is the whiteboard in mDesk [23] from Lulea U. Again, a shared drawing tool from the MASH project [14], MediaBoard, is promised for August, but is not yet available.
• Session Announcement: There are several Session Announcements tools, which are invaluable for easy session start-up. Although SD [24] from LBL is the best known, it has become obsolete since the release of SDR [25] from UCL. We know of no other reasonable candidates.

Although we have mentioned a number of possible versions of each system, we believe that only VIC, RAT, NTE and SDR will meet all the conditions. It is possible that WB on UNIX systems and WBD on PCs, or even WBD on both, could meet most of the criteria as well; however WBD has only just been released and there is still little experience of it. Nevertheless, we would verify during the evaluation phase whether we felt any of the other systems were possible candidates for shrink-wrapping.

1. Tool Packaging

As part of the packaging, we will undertake the following tasks

• Choose one each of the video, audio, shared editor, shared workspace and announcement tools of Section 2.3.1.
• For each tool, ensure that they work well on each of the four environments - Windows’95 PC, Windows NT PC, LINUX PC and Solaris Sun Workstation. By "Windows NT" we mean NT 4.0 - but this may have changed by September.
• Construct scripts to allow the tools to be started simply for each environment - assuming that the network supported is Ethernet, connected to an Mbone-enabled LAN. We are not proposing to provide any network software in our Releases, but we will list Ethernet cards which are known to work correctly.
• Construct a User Interface similar to the ReLaTe/COLLABONE I/F [4]. It will allow control of video and audio, and the ability to toggle between either a shared editor or a drawing tool (provided the latter was supplied). There should be minimal options for the novice user; the U/I will be set up in only two modes – (1) conferences up to 4 simultaneous users; and (2) conferences between 4 and 8. Additional users can join and participate via audio and shared workspace.
• Package a release for each environment in binary and source form (where the source is available).

Note that whilst we expect to document bugs in the tools, we will not be able to do extensive bug fixing on the tools themselves within the short timescale of this project. The expected willingness to obtain bug fixes will be one of our criteria in the choice of tools. The user interface will be written in Tcl/Tk.

1. Documentation

The documentation must cover of a number of different areas:

• Hardware descriptions: Here, for each environment, we must describe the minimum size and power of system and give a set of permissible peripheral cards. We should indicate which Drivers are required. We believe that particularly with PCs, there are enough idiosyncrasies of the way interrupts work on particular machines, and certain peripherals like audio are installed, that it may still be necessary to have local system expertise on the type of system available.
• Network Environment: The Mbone tools require use of the Mbone, which implies availability of an Mbone-aware router. We will suggest certain routers - probably CISCO and NETD under Solaris of particular releases. We will also suggest what features in these routers must be enabled. We could mention that other facilities like ISDN can be supported, and refer to the MERCI documentation; it would be much too complex to describe all the components required for the ISDN, because this needs also gateways.
• Tool Installation: The documentation will give full details on the tool installation for each environment. On the whole the installation should be self-documenting with on-line prompts; nevertheless, the meaning of failure messages will need to be explained.
• Session Initiation: The documentation will describe how the sessions must be initiated. This is expected to be from SDR in most instances, but manual start-up must also be permitted.
• Tool Operation: There will be instructions on how the system must be operated. Again, most of the tools operations should be self-documenting - to the extent that the full potential of the tools is hidden from the Users. We will also provide somewhat better documentation on the tools themselves than is provided b the Developers.
• Error Conditions: We expect to give extensive information on potential error conditions, and what remedial action can be suggested.
• Bug Reports: We will list known bugs in the system; these may be basic to the environment or the tools, and may be beyond our control - even if the time and effort available were not so limited.
• General Guide: A general guide to the tools will be provided for the novice user.

We expect not only to provide the separate documents, but also to present them as an integrated set of web-based documents. This has already been done successfully in a web-based tutorial for SDR and RAT.

1. Testing

We plan to do testing at several parts of the project. During the first month, there will be extensive testing of all the packages mentioned Section 2.3.1 which pass our initial screening on other grounds. During this period we will discover specific problems in the tools which we will use in the packaging phase of have Section 2.3.2. We will either try to fix these, work round them, or ask the tool providers to assist.

Clearly the implementers will do a considerable amount of testing. When they declare the systems finished, we will pass them to the team from the earlier MICE National Support Centre. These will perform three types of testing: installation, stability and verification of the main functionality.

Eventually, we will pass them to some more naïve users either in the context of the ReLaTe trials, or in that of normal MERCI/MECCANO videoconferences. It is doubtful, however, whether the tight UKERNA time-scales will allow this stage of testing to have been reached by the time that the tools have to be passed to UKERNA. However we hope that UKERNA will nominate guinea pig users, who can do this testing outside the normal contract. The testing will cover all the phases of the packages: installation, session initiation and operation.

1. Project Plan

The Deliverables are outlined in Section 4. Assuming that the project starts on September 1, it is intended to complete D1 by the end of September.

 

A version of D2 for each platform is expected to be completed by the end of November. However, we expect to make improvements as a result of both internal testing and of the expected feedback from outside users throughout December. In view of the disruption caused by Christmas vacation, we prefer to make a final Deliverable of D2 by January 15. We cannot yet say whether any specific components of D2 - for example the Solaris or LINUX versions - could be delivered earlier than the end of November.

 

First versions of D3 and D4 will be delivered by December 5. We expect to make modifications and improvements as a result both of internal comments and those of UKERNA, and would prefer to make a final Deliverable of D3 and D4 by January 31, 1998.

 

The above end dates assume that we are incorporating comments from the Project Manager by that end date. We could meet the dates stated in [2], but think that would impact the finished product. The College closes between December 19 and January 5, so to meet the deadlines we would have to have provided the accepted Deliverables by December 19. In view of the fact that the Editorial Board need comment on documentation only by December 19, we do not really understand how any of their comments could be included. These dates are open to negotiation; we fear that their retention will impact the quality of the Deliverables.

2. Deliverables and Milestones

1. The Deliverables

In the word "tools" we restrict ourselves to Mbone tools which allow interactive video, audio and shared workspace activity. Each written Deliverable will be provided in Paper, RTF, Postscript and HTML. Both the deliverables and the software will be made available on the UCL WWW Server and as a package that can be inserted onto the UKERNA WWW Server.

The following Deliverables are proposed:

1. Assessment of the currently available versions of the software tools for use on UNIX systems on Sun hardware and on PC, in order to find the most appropriate version of the tools, on which to base the packaged products. This assessment will address also the availability of the tools on Digital, Silicon Graphics and HP platforms, but will not undertake any experimentation on potential problems in their implementations on those platforms. It will address the availability of the tools, including identifying the most appropriate version, for PC systems running Windows 95 and Windows NT. The criteria for this will include stability, functionality, availability in a common form under the different operating systems, availability to the research community and interworking ability.

 

1. Packaging of a set of tools to form a single easy-to-install package for a UNIX system running under Solaris 2 on Sun workstations and for LINUX, Windows’95 and Windows NT running on PCs. Each system package will integrate video, audio and shared workspace.

 

1. Documentation of the software products produced in D2, including how to install, configure and use the software tools. The documentation will be validated by person(s) not working on the implementation or documentation for technical accuracy and readability by a non-technical user.

 

1. A general guide to the tools and their operation aimed at a novice user. The document will have a technical bias but will also be readable by an interested lay person.

1. Proposed Milestones

By September 19 we should have decided which tools we recommend for packaging. By the end of that month, we should have completed D1, and got agreement on packaging specific tools.

By November 14, the packages should be ready for testing by our internal testing group - at least on one Microsoft and one UNIX environment. The completion of the transfer to the other two environments will be carried out in parallel with remedying faults found by the testing team. The packages should all be ready for delivery to UKERNA by the end of November - together with a draft of the relevant documentation.

A further cleaned up version of both the software and the documentation will be delivered by December 19 - but we still expect to make further modifications during January on the lines described in Section 3.

The project should be completed by the end of January, as long as this is acceptable to UKERNA.

The final product will be integrated sets of tools, each including video, audio, a shared Editor and hopefully a Shared Drawing tool, which run on PCs under LINUX, Windows’95 and Windows NT, and on Solaris workstations. It is probable that the same toolset will be used on each platform, but this depends partly on the outcome of D1; in any case the tools will be interoperable. There must still be some question on the Shared Drawing tool, since we have not yet tested any such system which operates on both PCs and UNIX systems - though we know several claimed to be available.

The package should be easy to install in each environment; sessions should be simple to start, and the tools should be easy to drive for the Standard purposes. There should be good documentation both for the knowledgeable and naïve user.

1. JANET Video Conferencing Strategy

URL http://www.tech.ukerna.ac.uk/video/videopap.html

2. UKERNA: IP Based Video Conferencing - Packaging Improvements,

URL http://www.ja.net/video/cfp/IP_packaging.html

3. MICE National Support Centre: User Documentation.

URL http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mice/mice-nsc/tools

4. Buckett, J; Campbell, I; Watson, T; Sasse M A; Hardman, V J; Watson, A : ReLaTe: Remote Language Teaching over SuperJANET, Proc. NetWorkshop23, pp 209-214, March 1995.
5. Kirstein, PT et al: Recent Activities in the MERCI Conferencing Project, Proc JENC8, 1997
6. MECCANO : Multimedia Education and Conferencing Collaboration over ATM Networks and Others. A project in the Telematics Programme of the EU proposed to start December 1, 1997.

URL http://www-meccano.cs.ucl.ac.uk/meccano/

7. Recommendation T.120 (07/96) - Data protocols for multimedia conferencing

URL http://www.itu.ch/itudoc/itu-t/rec/t/t120_35511.html

8. Recommendation H.323 (11/96) - Visual telephone systems and equipment for local area networks which provide a non-guaranteed quality of service

URL http://www.itu.ch/itudoc/itu-t/rec/h/h323_39297.html

 

9. White Pine Software : Product Info CU-SeeMe Version 3.0

URL http://www.cuseeme.com/cu30-win.html

10. Frederick, R et al : NV : X11 videoconferencing tool, manual pages, Xerox PARC, March 1993
11. IVS Turletti, T. : The INRIA Videoconferencing System (IVS), ConneXions - The Interoperability Report, 1994. 8, 10, 20-24.
12. McCanne, S; Jacobson, V : "vic: a flexible framework for packet video", Proc. ACM Multimedia’95, 1995.
13. Lyonnet, F : Rendez Vous video tool, INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, France, part of MERCI project deliverable D1, August 1996.

URL http://www.inria.fr/rodeo/rendez_vous/

14. The MASH Project, University of California, Berkeley

URL http://www-mash.cs.berkeley.edu/mash/

15. Schulzrinne, H : Guide to NeVoT 3.34

URL http://www.fokus.gmd.de/step/employees/hgs/nevot/

16. RAT Hardman V J et al : Robust Audio Tool (RAT)

URL http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mice/rat/

17. Jacobson, V : Visual Audio Tool (VAT), manual pages, Lawrence Berkeley Labs (LBL), February, 1993.
18. Vega-García, A et al : FreePhone audio tool, INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, France, part of MERCI project deliverable D1, August 1996.

URL http://zenon.inria.fr/rodeo/fphone/

19. Handley, M J : Network Text Editor (NTE), manual pages, University College London (UCL), 1995.

URL ftp://cs.ucl.ac.uk/mice/videoconference/nte/

20. Jacobson, V : Whiteboard (WB), README file, Lawrence Berkeley Labs (LBL), August, 1993.
21. Highfield, J C : WBD: A WB compatible Whiteboard, Loughborough University

URL http://bashful.lboro.ac.uk/ROPA/wbd.html

22. Rozek, A : TeleCanvas, a prototype platform-independent multicast-capable shared whiteboard application, Stuttgart University Computer Center (RUS), 1997.

URL http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/PROJ/MERCI/TeleDraw/TeleCanvas.html

23. mDesk : a multicast collaboration tool

URL http://mates.cdt.luth.se/software/mDesk/

24. Jacobson, V : Session Directory (SD), README file, Lawrence Berkeley Labs (LBL), March, 1993.
25. Handley, M J : "Session Description Rendezvous", README file, University College London (UCL), 1996.