MBone Multicast of Carleton University Instructional Television Courses on the Internet

by D. C. Coll, L. Mohamed and S. Shi Department of Systems and Computer Engineering R. F. Dillon Department of Psychology Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6 Tele-Learning Research Lab

INTRODUCTION

During the Summer of 1997, four of Carleton University's Instructional Television (ITV) courses were multicast (broadcast) on an experimental basis on the Internet. The experiment was conducted by the TeleLearning Research Laboratory at Carleton, in cooperation with CANARIE, the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education.. Connection to the Internet used the facilities of Carleton University Television, the TeleLearning Research Laboratory, OCRInet, ONET, and the NTN, the National Test Network, over which the courses were delivered at high rates to provincial research networks across Canada, and to the Internet POP's.

MBone, a set of multimedia communication software tools, was used as the Internet multicast vehicle. The courses were observed throughout the world during the test period (June 9, 1997 to August 1, 1997).

PURPOSE

The purpose of the experiment was to:

investigate the use of the Internet for the broadcast of ITV courses;
explore technical issues related to establishing MBone service;
develop information and resources to assist clients to receive the "broadcasts";
learn to develop appropriate teaching materials for courses in this medium;
determine the market for this type of course distribution;
assess the administrative challenges with respect to providing services to distance students;
to provide broadband multimedia traffic to the NTN; and
to aid in the integration of a diversity of multimedia communications systems.

THE COURSES

Carleton University, located in Ottawa, Ontario offers sections of 60 of its credit courses over the Rogers Cable TV system in the Ottawa area on a regular basis. These Channel 65 ITV courses attract more than 5,000 registrations a year and generate as much as $1.9 million annually in tuition fees. The number of unregistered viewers can only be guessed at. Tape recorded ITV courses are available to on-campus students and distributed throughout the Ottawa Valley, and beyond.

Four ITV courses were chosen for use in the MBone trial. They are all one-term courses, which consist normally of three hours of lectures a week over a twelve week term. The courses that were multicast were chosen on the basis of the interest of their contents to a wide audience, their production values, the extent of electronically accessible support material, and willingness of the instructors to develop web-based support information as part of the experiment. They also had to be recorded in their entireties so that no live sessions, or significant updating, would be required.

The courses multicast were:

Engineering 82.422* "Wood Engineering" for Tuesday and Thursday at 9:05am EDT, (3.0 hours) taught by Prof. J.J. Salinas (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) and Prof. D. Westwood (School of Architecture) Engineering 82.422* "Wood Engineering". A fourth year engineering course providing an introduction to structural design in timber. Taught from the perspective of both the engineer and the architect.

Figure 1. Prof. Juan Salinas and Prof. Don Westwood.

Physics 75.190 " Introduction to Astronomy" for Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9:05am EDT (2.5 hours) is taught by Prof. Robert Dick (Department of Physics). A first year physics course: a survey of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology, giving a descriptive treatment of the known stellar, galactic and extra galactic systems.

Psychology 49.210 " Introduction to Social Psychology" for Tuesday and Thursday at 2:35pm EDT (3.0 hours) is taught by Prof. Warren Thorngate (Psychology Department). A second year psychology course covering research methods, social judgment, group processes and attitude change.

Figure 2. Prof. Warren Thorngate.

Figure 3. Prof. Ann Laubstein.

Linguistics 29.100 "Introduction to Linguistics" for Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 2:35pm EDT (2.5 hours) is taught by Prof. Ann Laubstein (Department of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies). Discussion of elementary principles and methods of descriptive analysis of language including phonetics, phonology, mophology, and syntax.

All of the four courses were offered on ITV itself (Channel 65 in Ottawa) for credit during the summer semester. The registrarial, counseling and evaluation mechanisms were in place for these course. Thus, it would have been possible for Internet viewers to actually register for them. None did, but the capability was there.

TECHNICAL ARRANGEMENTS

While ITV courses are presented live as a normal procedure, they are tape recorded for regularly scheduled re-broadcasts during the week, and for remote distribution ( via "sneakernet").

The pre-recorded courses were played back in the television studios of Carleton University Television, located in Southam Hall, where they were modulated onto a spare channel on the Carleton University cable TV system. The modulated signals were carried by coaxial cable to the TeleLearning Research Laboratory, located in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering in the Mackenzie Engineering Building.

In the TeleLearning Research Laboratory the signals were demodulated. The demodulated composite signal was presented to a PC-based titling card where appropriate information was inserted into the image. The information included the course title, the origination source, and contact information. The titler was programmed to provide the information periodically, both statically and in a roll-over mode.

The composite output of the titler was presented to the SunVideo card in a SPARCStation 20M, equipped with dual HyperSPARC processors. The MBone software was run on the SPARCStation, which is connected to the Systems and Computer Engineering LAN (.sce). The IP multicast packets on .sce were tunneled back through the SPARCStation FORE Systems ATM card, to a Newbridge 36150 ATM switch, which comprises the TeleLearning Research Laboratory's dual DS3 fibre optic connection to OCRInet.

An IP tunnel was provided through one of the OCRInet switches to the CANARIE National Test Network (NTN), through which they were distributed to the provincial research networks across Canada, and to international Internet gateways.

Although the OCRInet-NTN connection allowed us to use the full 500 kbps allowance for IP multicasting, the courses were multicast at a rate of 128 kbps to make sure that local or regional bandwidth capacity was not exceeded. Thus, a 128-kilobit per second video stream (typically 1- 4 frames per second) was used.

MBONE

Video-conferencing has become very popular within the academic and professional community. It provides the ability to send audio, video, text over a network and allows people to share ideas while being in different geographical locations. Multimedia conferencing is done over our computer networks and can utilize a significant amount of bandwidth. Frequently in video conferencing there are multiple recipients of the data feeds, multiple participants.

Multicast is used because it provides one-to-many and many-to-many network delivery services for applications such as video-conferencing and audio that need to communicate with several other hosts simultaneously. MBone is currently used for hosting public events, workshops, seminars, classroom courses, IETF meetings, private meetings that span multiple continents and organizations, news, and entertainment events.

The MBone is a technology that enables distribution of, and access to, real-time

interactive multimedia on the Internet. "MBone" stands for the IP-multicast Backbone on the Internet. MBone uses the IP-multicast routing schemes to achieve fast, real-time, multiparty communication in an efficient manner. Originally, a set of UNIX-based software tools were implemented to study applications which could be used over the Internet, primarily between workstations. More recently, the tools have been developed for use on personal computer terminals.

Before one can use MBone, a multicast session must be started by using the session directory tool, sdr. sdr allows a session to be advertised, and provides information about it. The video tool, vic, provides live MBone video. It is accessed though sdr. The audio tool, vat, provides live audio It provides viewers with a list of all of the participants in the session. vat also identifies who is speaking at any given time by highlighting their listing. The whiteboard tool, wb, is a clipboard-like document-sharing application that allows one or more sites to share documents in real time. MPOLL is an opinion polling and rating collection tool. It allows viewers to submit their respond to short yes-no questions in real time.

Figure 4 sdr and Session Information tools

Figure 5 vic tool and expanded video image

Figure 6 vat (Visual Audio Tool) and MPOLL tool

Figure 7 MBone tools - usual screen display

For more details about the MBone, please refer to the book called MBone: Interactive Multimedia On The Internet by Vinay Kumar. (www.MBone.com/MBone/references.html)

CANARIE and the National Test Network

CANARIE (Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and

Education) is a nonprofit corporation established on March 5, 1993. It evolved from the efforts of more than 200 people from 56 organizations representing Canada's research, university, business and government communities. Their efforts, over a four year period, developed a seven year multi-phase Business Plan which defined a program to improve Canada's overall competitiveness in the Information Age. CANARIE has over 140 private and public sector, fee-paying members. It has a twenty-one member Board with ten members representing the private sector and ten representing institutions, with the twenty-first being jointly appointed.

The mission of CANARIE is to facilitate the development of critical aspects of the communications infrastructure of a knowledge-based society and economy in Canada, and in so doing to contribute to Canadian competitiveness in all sectors of the economy, to wealth and job creation and to our quality of life.

CANARIE's National Test Network (NTN) is the world's largest high speed test network spanning 6,000 km from St. John's, Newfoundland to Vancouver, British Columbia, interconnecting 11 smaller high speed test networks across Canada. The NTN provides both high speed DS3/OC3 (45 Mbps/155 Mbps) Internet (TCP/IP) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) connectivity. In addition, the NTN has high speed connectivity to Europe provided by Teleglobe and ATM satellite connectivity provided by Telesat Canada. Connections to the United States are presently being deployed by Unitel to similar test bed initiatives across the country.

The NTN is intended to support CANARIE's mandate to accelerate the development of advanced networking applications in Canada and was built in partnership with Canada's major telecommunications carriers Bell Canada, a member of the Stentor Alliance, and Unitel.

The NTN is available to researchers and developers in areas such as business, education and health care to test and develop new high speed broadband applications. These applications can range from pre-competitive research and development to commercial trials of new business applications. Furthermore, the NTN is available to carriers and their customers to test and evaluate high speed broadband applications and connectivity as an enhancement to their commercial broadband offerings. Typical tests and applications include multimedia distance education trials, medical imaging and advanced video conferencing solutions. Businesses and universities are using the NTN to test new and advanced Internet applications such as virtual reality, high speed World Wide Web services and real time audio and video.

OCRInet

OCRInet (Ottawa Carleton Research Institute Network) Inc. is a federally incorporated

not-for-profit organization which has developed from an initiative of the Ottawa Carleton

Research Institute (OCRI). It was formed on November 17, 1993 and commenced regular

network operations on January 23, 1994. It is a partnership between industry, government and post-secondary institutions, and includes service and equipment providers as well as the user community.

The founding partner groups of OCRInet Inc. are:

Bell Canada
Bell-Northern Research and Northern Telecom (now known as Nortel)
Newbridge Networks
Telesat Canada
Stentor Resource Centre
Mitel Corporation
Gandalf Technologies
Communications Research Centre of Canada
National Research Council of Canada
Carleton University
University of Ottawa
Algonquin College
Telecommunication Research Institute of Ontario
Ottawa Carleton Research Institute

The mission of the OCRInet is

To maintain the National Capital Region at the forefront of information highway technology development, and to promote the telecommunications infrastructure as an enabler in transforming the economy and social development of the National Capital Region, the Province of Ontario and, in turn, Canada.
To provide its partners with a visionary network which will interconnect research nodes by high speed data communication links for the development and demonstration of new and innovative network technology, services and applications.
To improve the understanding of the design, management, costing and use of ATM broadband networks
To manage and administer the OCRInet broadband network for the purpose of assisting the research community in developing related technology and products
To act as facilitators in bringing together partners to focus on applications which are of interest to several organizations and which are identified as a market opportunity or to have a social benefit
To promote, encourage, coordinate and stimulate cooperation among industry, Canada institutions of higher learning and governments.

OCRInet provides a DS3-based fibre optic ATM network connecting several of the partners as shown in the Figure on the previous page. It is in the planning process of expansion to OC3 service, with an TCP/IP interface.

RESULTS

Viewers Who Joined The Session

Viewers from Japan, Honk Kong, France, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Korea, the United States, and Canada joined the session.

These are viewers from June 2/97 to August 1/97.

June 2/97 Trent MacDougall (Dalhousie)

June 6/97 Andrew Patrick (via CANARIE)

June 12/97 Bill St. Arnaud

June 13/97 Tim Clinton (Culture Net) email: clinton@Cnet.ffa.ucalgary

June 16/97 Bill St. Arnaud

June 17/97 Bill St. Arnaud

Hiroaki Ikeda (Chiba University)

Stefan Lundberg (GD Data Centre)

Academic Users Support (University of Oregon)

Yves Lepage (McGill University)

Marc Hasson (Mentat) email:marc@mentat.com

Hans Kuhn (email:hak@raven.uoregon.edu)

June 18/97 Rob Murray (email:rdm@unb.ca)

Loris Marchetti (CSELT) email: loris.marchetti@cselt.it

Bill St. Arnaud

Nicole Carter (email: nmc@unb.ca)

Hartmuth Heldt

Rimen Wong (Honk Kong Star Internet Ltd.)

Charles Ray (CEWES)

John Dundas (Caltech)

Frank Troy

Andrew Patrick (via CANARIE)

Russel Doyen (Sailor Project)

Rob Ballantyne (SFU)

June 19/97 Rene

Bill St. Arnaud

Marty Hoag (NDSU ITS) email:hoag@plains.nodak.edu

Service D'Enseignement a Distance (CNAM)

Particular (Particular) email:dediego@lsi17.etsiig.uniovi.es

Malcolm Toms (Faculty of Arts-SFU )

June 20/97 Francisco Cruz (uc3M, Madrid)

Hermann Kuhn (GKSS Research) email:kuhn@gkss.de

Letournel (CCETT)

Martha Harden (email:mharden@cisco.com)

Rimen Wong (Honk Kong Star Internet Ltd.)

email:rimenwon@rimen.starpaging.com

Regis Bossut (ISEN Lille, France) email:bossut@isen.fr

Lucy Lynch (University of Oregon) email:llynch@darkwing.uoregon.edu

Sam Segler (Fermilab)

Jens Tanneberger (email:tanne@merkur.hrz.tu-freiberg.de)

Carl Gyllenhammer

Irene Greif (Lotus Development) email:igreif@lotus.com

Christian Asam (email:Christian.Asam@heim8.tu.clausthal.de)

JY Luke

Vinay

Lotus (Lotus) email:philip-ritari@lotus.com

Dave Wright

Kim Dimick (Precept Software, inc)

June 23/97 Phil Dax (ENST) email:dax@inf.enst.fr

Bruce Hudson (email:hudson@bhudson-pc.ucis.dal.ca)

June 24/97 Bill St. Arnaud

Bruce Hudson (email:Bruce.Hudson@Dal.ca)

July 7/97 CRC-BADLAB-sgi

July 8/97 Bill St. Arnaud

July 11/97 A. Rosselet (email: rosselet@banks.scar)

Allan Rosselet (U of T as Scarborough) email:Rossolet@scar.utoronto.ca

Propulsed

July 17/97 Mark Allman (NASA LeRC)

Ed May (ANL-HEP) email:may@anl.gov

Frank Troy

Edward Sommer (internet & New Media)

Stuart Levy (Geometry Centre, Uminn)

July 18/97 Davy Chan (CSD- HKUST) email:chandave@cs.ust.hk

C. Gondrand (email:chris@isnIos5.in2p3.fr)

Louise Clark

CRC-BADLAB-sgi

July 21/97

Hiroaki Ikeda (email:ikeda@hike.te.chiba-u.ac.jp)

romosan

Angela Schuett (UCB)

Unknown@152.78.114.240

July 22/97 Russ Miller (ORNL)

Ed May (ANL-HEP) email:may@anl.gov

Christopher Hudnall

July 23/97 Roy Turner (Umaine, USA)

R.P.C Rodgers (U.S Nat.Lib.Of.Med)

Romosan

U. gerlach (email:gerlach@math.ohio-state.edu)

July 25/97 Frederic Bouchy (Dyade)

July 28/97 Phil Pishioneri (Cornell Theory Center) email:pgp@tc.cornell.edu

Thomas Nogales

Simon Leinen (Switch) email:simon@switch.ch

Andy

Mipsan (email:ywko@ultima.hufs.ac.kr)

root@203.253.70.24

C Gondrand (email:chris@isnios5.in2p3.fr)

Saizo Hirose (email:hirose@te.miyazaki-u.ac.jp)

July 30/97 Ed Golden (SAIC) email:golden@time.saic.com

Rafael Cabeza (UPNA)

bill

July 31/97 Olivier DURANT (Ipnhe) email:durant@lpnp12.in2p3.fr

John Horton (email:john@dante.org.uk)

Mark Leber (CEWES) email:mleber@wes.army.mil)

Mat Berkemeier (Boston University) email:mattewb@bu.edu

Claudio Catania (Hawlett Packard Laboratory) email:cld@192.6.10.29

August 1/97 Alan Rosselet (U of T at Scarborough)

Observations

Reception quality varied. Some viewers reported that they could not receive the audio, but that they could get the video clearly. Others said that they could receive both audio and video clearly.

Herman Kuhn from Denmark wrote that "the quality of audio and video signals was quite good and completely sufficient to perceive the content of the lecture". Loris Marchetti from Italy wrote "the video quality was very good. I don't receive any audio". The latter comment was made before the IP Time To Live was set to 127 from 63.

MBone multicast of lectures that have been designed for television broadcast leaves a lot to be desired. The MBone images are small; they have low spatial resolution, and low frame rates. They are also compressed for transmission, and constant throughput is never guaranteed. So, the MBone image sizes, compression fidelity, frame rates, together with the marginal quality of service demand that special attention be paid to the preparation of graphical material even if careful attention has been paid to the graphics from a television point-of-view. Since some of the information may be lost during transmission, high quality of the original material is required. Lecturers should make sure to make slides, overheads, and blackboard writing carefully, with large font sizes.

CONCLUSION

The multicast of itv courses was carried out successfully. The multicasts reached viewers around the world, demonstrating the capability of the National Test Network to carry reasonably high speed across the country and beyond. Once the equipment was assembled, appropriate circuits were arranged, and a routine was established, the experiment proceeded without too much trouble.

Some of the disadvantages for the use of MBone are:

only 500 kbps worth of the Internet backbone is allocated for transmission of the MBone multimedia at any given time.
MBone video today is not quite real-time, and therefore might not be able to compete against what is available on cable TV, where frame rates of 5-10 fps are the norm. In contrast to video, MBone audio is near real-time.
People may not be able to get access to MBone due to difficult of meeting its requirement

However, the advantages for the use of MBone are:

It provides people with distance education in their own towns or locations, wherever they have an Internet connection; cable television service is not required.
It avoids travel costs for students
It make lectures more widely accessible to the public
It generates money for the University in terms of tuition fees
It provides two-way communications between lecturer and remote student
It is compatible with all forms of computer-based course and student support services
It may be integrated with any or all of the information accessible through Internet and the World Wide Web.
It is a cheaper way to communicate.

Even though there are some disadvantages to using MBone, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. It is believed that this new technology will expand and improve in the future, that it will replace or compete with the use of television.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This experiment, brief as it was, represents the integration of the efforts of many persons. That it was possible at all is a demonstration of the breadth and depth of the available content and facilities, and the effort and goodwill of a very large number of people. In thanks, the authors would like to acknowledge the dedicated effort of some of the persons responsible.

First of all, the authors would like to acknowledge the initiative, foresight and ability "to get things done" of David Sutherland, who was the Director of Computing and Communications Services at Carleton University at the time the experiment was originated. He, together with Bill St. Arnaud of CANARIE, were responsible for Carleton's participation in the NTN program.

The experiment was carried out under a research contract from CANARIE. It also received support from Project 6.1.4 (Workplace Training over Broadband Networks) of the TeleLearning Research Network, a federal Network of Centres of Excellence. The use of the facilities of the TeleLearning Research Laboratory of the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, especially their video-equipped workstations, and membership in OCRInet, were essential parts of the experiment. The use of OCRInet to provide broadband ATM connection to the National Test Network was also a vital part of the experiment.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of those who provided the content for the multicasts. They include the instructors in the courses that were multicast: Juan Salinas and Don Westwood, Warren Thorngate, Robert Dick, and Ann Laubstein who made their courses available for the experiment; the "impresario" of ITV, Robin Allardyce, who single-handedly arranges for the ITV courses and instructors, and administers the ITV program; the Director of Carleton University Television, Ross Mutton, who arranged for the courses to be transmitted on schedule across the campus to the TeleLearning Laboratory; and Prof. Tim Pychyl of the Department of Psychology, who co-ordinated the supporting web page developments.

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