News for and about the Internet2 community

["Lauren B. Kallens" <>]

Real-Time HDTV Broadcast from USA to Japan Enabled by Advanced Networks 

Japan’s JGN2 Symposium 2005 Features Keynote Speaker Larry Smarr of UCSD
Broadcast Live from Seattle over Advanced Optical Networks 
 
January 18, 2005 -- Dignitaries and researchers attending the JGN2 Symposium
2005 in Osaka, Japan listened and watched as Internet visionary Larry Smarr
gave the keynote presentation on a large screen above the podium. Unlike
traditional keynote talks, however, Smarr was 5,000 miles away in Seattle,
Washington. 

Advances in transmitting live, uncompressed high-definition television
(HDTV) signals over optical networks are enabling true telepresence, in
which participants feel they are together in the same room. The Internet
HDTV broadcast system used for this event was developed by the University of
Washington for ResearchChannel. A server in Seattle transmitted
high-definition digital video and digital audio at very high quality and
very low latency to a client system in Osaka. Professor Smarr’s presentation
originated on the University of Washington campus and was transmitted at 1.5
Gbps to the Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP), then across a 10 Gigabits per
second (Gbps) transpacific link from Seattle to Tokyo, and then via the JGN2
to Osaka. The transpacific link was provided by the Internet Educational
Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF), which is managed by the PNGWG in Seattle
and the WIDE project in Japan. 

Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and
Information Technology [Cal-(IT)²] and principal investigator of the
National Science Foundation-funded OptIPuter project, talked about the
emergence of a new cyberinfrastructure based on network parallelism, in
which distributed clusters and instruments are tightly coupled using
multiple wavelengths of light, or ‘lambdas,’ on single optical fibers. The
ability to stream several gigabits of data in parallel, like in this HDTV
transmission, is enabling new modes of communication and communication. “The
clear crisp images and sounds that HDTV affords make for better dialogue and
interaction with colleagues over distances,” said Smarr, who is also a
professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of
Engineering. “The goal is to make these sorts of communication technologies
persistent, so that far-away colleagues appear to be just beyond the
‘Looking Glass’.” 

In his talk, Smarr noted that Cal-(IT)² is incorporating advanced
video-over-fiber networking technologies into its two new buildings at UCSD
and UC Irvine. Facilities are slated to include a digital cinema and HDTV
production facility, as well as dedicated meeting and public spaces with
large-format displays to support telepresence and collaboration. Said Smarr:
“Every type of research will benefit if we can tear down walls and let
scientists and engineers talk and work together in real time as if they were
in the same room -- even if they’re thousands of miles away.” 

Tomonori Aoyama, a professor of Information and Communication Engineering at
the University of Tokyo, chair of the JGN2 management committee, and chair
of the Symposium’s keynote session, expressed his sincere gratitude to all
who contributed to its success. “The goal of the Symposium was to present
the research and development activities taking place using Japan’s JGN2,
operated by the National Institute of Information and Communications
Technology (NiCT),” said Aoyama. “I am very pleased that we used JGN2 and
IEEAF broadband network technologies during the featured remote presentation
by Dr. Smarr to explain the needs and applications for these technologies.” 

JGN2, an advanced network testbed for research and development, is both a
national and international testbed. It supports high-speed networking
technologies and application advancements. Nationally, JGN2 is a 20 Gbps
backbone network that has access points in all Japanese prefectures.
Internationally, JGN2 connects Tokyo via a 10 Gbps link to the StarLight
facility in Chicago, where it peers with the USA’s National LambdaRail,
Abilene and other advanced international, national, and regional research
and education networks. 

“This is a milestone,” explained Ron Johnson, Vice President of Computing &
Communications at University of Washington, “We are using dedicated
lightpaths to carry uncompressed HDTV while at the same time supporting
scientific research such as the Huygens Titan probe with a network
infrastructure that links Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America.  We
are working with colleagues at JGN2, WIDE, IEEAF, PNWGP, StarLight and other
like-minded entities worldwide to create ‘deterministic’ networks using
multiple lambdas over optical fibers, to guarantee the bandwidth speeds and
latency in order to do real-time HDTV transmission. We will continue to
pursue this, to make high-quality HDTV transmission both persistent and
ubiquitous.”


About ResearchChannel 

ResearchChannel is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a voice
for research through video and Internet channels while exploring new
technologies for communication. (www.researchchannel.org)


About JGN2

JGN2 is a new Japanese ultra-high-speed open testbed network for R&D
collaboration between industry, academia, and government, operated by the
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT) of
Japan. JGN2 was established in April 2004 with the aim of promoting a broad
spectrum of research and development projects, ranging from fundamental core
research and development to advanced experimental testing, in areas
including the advancement of next generation technologies for networking and
diverse network-based applications. JGN2 provides nationwide Japanese IP
networks, optical wavelength networks, and R&D environments for optical
testbeds. JGN2 was extended internationally in August 2004 with the addition
of a 10 Gbps transpacific link between Japan (Tokyo) and the USA (Chicago).
(http://www.jgn.nict.go.jp/e/)


About Cal-(IT)² 

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
[Cal-(IT)²] is one of four institutes funded through the California
Institutes for Science and Innovation initiative to ensure that the state
maintain its leadership in cutting-edge technologies. Cal-(IT)² is a
collaboration between UC San Diego and UC Irvine. Its mission is to extend
the reach of the current information infrastructure throughout the physical
world -- enabling anywhere/anytime access to the Internet. More than 200
faculty members from the two campuses are collaborating on interdisciplinary
projects, with support from more than 130 industry partners.
(http://www.calit2.net)


About the University of Washington

Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is a public research
university with over 41,000 students on campuses in Seattle, Tacoma and
Bothell, Washington.  (http://www.washington.edu)


About Pacific Northwest Gigapop

The Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNW Gigapop) is a not-for-profit corporation
serving leading edge organizations and Research and Education networks
throughout the Pacific Rim. PNW Gigapop provides robust, highest-speed
access to current state of the art Internet; Next Generation Internet
services and technology; and the exclusive R&D testbeds where tomorrow’s
Internet technologies are being developed. The PNW Gigapop is built to be
the highest caliber Research and Education networking services hub in the
world.  The PNW Gigapop also is the steward for IEEAF Pacific link in
Seattle. (www.pnw-gigapop.net)


About IEEAF

The Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF) is a non-profit
organization whose mission is to obtain donations of telecommunications
capacity and equipment and make them available for use by the global
research and education community. The IEEAF TransPacific Link is the second
10 Gbps transoceanic link provided by IEEAF through a five-year IRU donated
by Tyco Telecom; the first, the IEEAF TransAtlantic Link, connects New York
and Groningen, The Netherlands, and has been operational since 2002. IEEAF
donations currently span 17 time zones. (http://www.ieeaf.org/)


About WIDE

WIDE, a research consortium working on practical research and development of
Internet-related technologies, was launched in 1988. The project has made a
significant contribution to development of the Internet by collaborating
with many other bodies -- including 133 companies and 11 universities to
carry out research in a wide range of fields, and by operating
M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, one of the DNS root servers, since 1997. WIDE Project
also operates T-LEX (www.t-lex.net/) as an effort of stewardship for the
IEEAF TransPacific Link in Tokyo. (http://www.wide.ad.jp)

 
Participating Organizations 

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT)
NiCT/JGN II, NiCT/APAN
KDDI
NTT Group
WIDE Project
University of California San Diego/Calit2
University of Washington
Pacific Northwest Gigapop
Pacific Wave
ResearchChannel
Pacific Interface, Inc.
StarLight
(Argonne National Lab, Northwestern University, University of Illinois at
Chicago)
Indiana University
Intel


Circuits

JGN II, WIDE, KDDI, NTT Group
IEEAF, NLR (National Lambda Rail)


Contact: 
ResearchChannel
Sephora DeRoest

877-616-7265