News for and about the Internet2 community

["Greg Wood" <>]

LARGE GIFT FROM CISCO SYSTEMS, INC. TO HELP UO COMPUTING CENTER PUSH
FRONTIERS OF INTERNET VIDEO

EUGENE, Oregon--Network equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems, Inc. has given
$257,300 to the University of Oregon (UO) Computing Center, the first
installment of a nearly half-million dollar gift to bolster the UO's
advanced networked computing efforts. The Computing Center plans to use the
gift to expand its work in the area of IP multicast technology, an efficient
way to distribute broadcast-quality multimedia programming over the
Internet.

"IP multicast uses Internet bandwidth more efficiently than traditional
streaming media solutions," says Joanne Hugi, director of the UO Computing
Center. In the case of traditional streaming media technology, if five
viewers watch a particular video, five video streams are required; if 500
viewers are watching, 500 streams are needed. But with IP multicast, five,
500 or 500,000 viewers all can share a single copy of the content that is
being sent.

"Cisco is providing to us the resources needed to continue building on the
work we've already completed in the area of multicast development," Hugi
explains.

Specifically, she says, her staff will use the gift to explore a new
refinement of multicast called Source Specific Multicast, or SSM, which
changes the way IP multicast sessions are advertised and accessed.
Previously, IP multicast sessions were advertised and accessed via a session
directory that integrated poorly with today's web-centric Internet. SSM now
allows IP multicast sessions to be launched with the click of a mouse on a
web page-just like any other type of multimedia content.

"SSM also raises the level of security during multicast sessions, making it
more difficult for hackers or crackers to hijack a multicast session," Hugi
says.

In addition, the gift will help the UO build a content library of materials
that can be multicast as well as to purchase the storage media on which
these materials will reside.

"We are grateful to Cisco for this gift which will allow us to send some of
our networking staff to important technical events such as the Internet
Engineering Task Force meetings, Internet2 meetings, and the annual
Supercomputing meetings. Our team will use our mobile IP multicast
capabilities to make the content of those meetings available to a broader
audience. In the process of doing this the networking staff will fine tune
and troubleshoot our use of this important and rapidly advancing
technology."

The Internet access point to UO IP multicast activities is
<http://videolab.uoregon.edu/>. Information about Cisco's IP Multicast
solutions can be accessed at <http://www.cisco.com/go/ipmulticast/>.

Joanne R. Hugi
Director, Computing Center
1225 Kincaid Street
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1212
541.346.1702 (voice)
541.346.4397 (FAX)
541.953.7104 (Cell)
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~hugi/


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