News for and about the Internet2 community

[Lauren Rotman <>]

Internet2 and Members Provide Advanced Networking Resources for Online  
Viewing of Obama Inauguration

Northwestern University To Provide Live Multicast For C-SPAN Full  
Inauguration Coverage

January 19, 2009 – The inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama on  
January 20, 2009 is expected to be one of the most widely viewed  
events in history both on televised networks and on the Internet.  The  
Internet2 community is working to provide special services and support  
to enable institutions connected to the Internet2 Network the ability  
to view the inauguration festivities in the highest quality possible.

Since 2000 Northwestern University, in partnership with Video Furnace,  
has been providing live multicast streams of C-SPAN content to the  
Internet2 community.  The Metropolitan Research and Education Network  
(MREN) provides Northwestern with multicast connectivity to the  
Internet2 backbone, where any multicast-enabled institution should be  
able to receive the streams via its regional network connector.  C- 
SPAN will provide live coverage of the inauguration beginning at 6 am  
Eastern Time on Tuesday, January 20.

The Northwestern C-SPAN streams are available for Mac OS X, Linux,  
Windows,and Intel Solaris clients at <http://www.i2-multicast.northwestern.edu/ 
>.Technical information and answers to frequently asked questions are  
available at that site.

A large majority of advanced regional and campus networks connected to  
the Internet2 Network are today multicast-enabled.  IP multicasting  
allows content providers like C-SPAN to simultaneously broadcast a  
single stream of data to any number of end users. Under the  
traditional unicast model, each end user host would need to create  
individual connections to a content server to receive the data. For a  
highly publicized broadcast event like the inauguration, this could  
mean the generation of hundreds of thousands of simultaneous  
connections, which would cause much higher latency, greatly degrade  
the viewer experience and significantly impact performance of the  
Internet. Because live video content requires high quality of service  
and consumes a significant amount of bandwidth, multicasting is a far  
more efficient means of delivering this content.

To determine if your institution is connected to the Internet2 Network  
and able to receive multicast streams – please visit the Internet2  
Detective: http://detective.internet2.edu/.

In addition, through its Commercial Peering Service, the Internet2  
Network peers with a number of commercial service and content  
providers.  In doing so, the Internet2 Network will be able to provide  
high capacity transport for various other unicast and multicast  
streams of the inauguration originating from these sources. Internet2  
is encouraging members who have questions about their multicast  
streams to contact their regional connector - http://www.internet2.edu/pubs/networkmap-connectors-participants.pdf

The Internet2 Network Operations Center (NOC) will make any questions  
or issues related to the inauguration coverage a priority and will  
work with regional connectors as necessary to ensure streams are  
operational.

Media Contact: Lauren Rotman, Internet2,