Previous Featured Projects
Global Visualcasting - December 2008At the 3rd annual CineGrid International Workshop, December 7-10, 2008, NTT Network Innovation Laboratories and Keio University's Institute for Digital Media and Content (DMC) organized a demonstration in collaboration with the UCSD division of Calit2 and University of Illinois at Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) to showcase three-way 4K and 2K teleconferencing. While "2K" is HDTV resolution, "4K" is four times that, also referred to as super-high-definition. The meeting was held on the UCSD campus in the Calit2 building.
Two 4K cameras were located at DMC in Tokyo and at Calit2 in San Diego; a 2K camera was located at EVL in Chicago. This demonstration showcased a future distributed collaboration environment that uses 4K/ 2K video technologies and global high-speed networks. Images sent to Calit2 were projected in 4K on a large screen, enabling the CineGrid audience to participate in this collaborative session, and to see the details of facial expressions and body motions made possible by the very high resolution.
To implement, NTT researchers used several new techniques: (1) a 4K/2K hierarchical encoding scheme that uses JPEG2000 to compress a 4K image, encoding lower-frequency images into 2K components and higher- frequency images into 4K components; (2) Flexcast technology, which realizes multicast over non IP multicast capable networks; and, (3) video-sync signal distribution technology that reduces packet loss, thereby greatly improving image transfer synchronization over the networks. DMC handled high-quality 4K/2K image production and organized the networking configurations used. In addition, DMC did extensive network performance measurements, which they are currently analyzing.
For more on the CINEGRID workshop, see CineGrid Workshops 2008 CineGrid International Workshop (3rd Annual).
Pacific Rim health officials tackle pandemic influenza - May 2008Faced by concerns that the current bird flu epidemic could become the next global human flu pandemic, Univeristy of Washington researchers joined public health officials from 16 Pacific Rim economies May 29, 2008 for a real-time virtual video conference to tackle the challenge of pandemic influenza preparedness and response. The focus: public/private cooperation in sustaining critical infrastructure during a pandemic.
From Peru to Australia, from China to Mexico, the 16 member countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Emerging Infections Network (APEC EINet) were able to convene in a third-floor room of the UW's Odegaard Library -- while, at the same time, remaining in their respective countries -- thanks to real-time video conferencing made possible by Access Grid and polycom multipoint technology.
This software technology takes advantage of high-speed research and education networks, allowing for connection to multiple sites with computer screen sharing and video conferencing.
For more information see the University of Washington article.
Real-time e-VLBI data correlation - August 2007
The e-VLBI community is using facilities of Pacific Wave and several different Pacific Wave participants to conduct real-time e-VLBI (electronic very long based inferometry)correlations from international telescopes. An example of this was the recent EXPReS project (Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service) which conducted the first successful real-time correlation of e-VLBI data from Chinese and Australian telescopes, from Chinese and European telescopes, and from Australian and European telescopes. The observation was demonstrated before advanced networking experts at the 24th APAN (Asia-Pacific Advanced Network) Meeting in Xi'An, China.
For more information see First e-VLBI data from China-Australia, China-Europe, Australia-Europe
Caltech's High Energy Physics Group - December 2006
Caltech's High Energy Physics Group is one of the major participants in the CMS collaboration at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). They are participating in the GLORIAD link bandwidth challenge sponsored by Ultralight partner KISTI. Through the use of Pacific Wave, Caltech intends to demonstrate high speed transfers of physics data sets between Caltech to KISTI in Korea. During the challenge they aim to maximize the utilization of the Pacific Wave connection to and from the Caltech CACR data center. End hosts involve a pair of quad AMD Opteron Newisys systems and Neterion 10G NICs. The traffic consists of a realistic mixture of streams: those due to the transfer of the TeraByte event datasets, and a set of background flows of varied character absorbing the remaining capacity. The intention is to simulate the environment in which distributed physics analysis will be carried out at the CERN LHC. Preliminary tests in February 2006 showed sustained usage of 6.67 gigabits per second over the Pacific Wave connection.
GEMNet2/NTT Labs - December 2005What do massive earth-hammering equipment in underground copper mines and high-precision, remote mountaintop astronomical telescopes in Chile have in common? Both were remotely operated by GEMNet2/NTT Labs staff in Tokyo at a December 2005 NTT Group Communications Expo. Through their participation in Pacific Wave, GEMNet2/NTT Labs researchers were able to use a 17,100km network path from two sites near Santiago, Chile to conduct their operations. Both the mountaintop astronomical site at Cerro Calan and the Andina underground mine near Los Andes were connected to University of Chile and the Reuna node in Santiago. From here, the path used RedClara, CENIC, Pacific Wave, and then the trans-Pacific GEMNet2 circuit to reach Tokyo.
Chile is the farthest country from Japan on the globe. The round trip time between the locations, using this Pacific-centric network path, was roughly 240ms. Total bandwidth utilization was roughly 20-30Mbps. In addition to the applications that operated the remote equipment, each site also used video conferencing to support real-time communications with the event goers in Tokyo.