Middleware Announcements

[Renee Frost <>]

Internet2, with the generous support of VBrick Systems, Inc., is pleased
to announce the VBrick MPEG-2 videoconferencing loaner equipment program.
VBrick, an Internet2 Corporate Sponsor, is donating ten of their 6200
series MPEG-2 Video Encoder/Decoders to the Internet2 community. The
VBrick 6200 supports NTSC and PAL with composite and S-video inputs. It
provides broadcast quality video and delivers unicast or multicast
streaming content over IP networks. For more information about the VBrick
6200 unit refer to
http://apps.internet2.edu/html/vbrick.html.

Five of these VBrick 6200 units will be available through the Internet2
loaner equipment pool and can be requested by anyone in the Internet2
member community for short-term use at an event or for an
Internet2-related activity. To request a short-term VBrick loaner unit,
refer to
http://apps.internet2.edu/html/request_form.html.

VBrick will also provide five additional 6200 units for long-term loan to
Internet2 member campuses. The selected locations must guarantee broad
exposure and use of this equipment and must propose uses that will
benefit a large audience (or audiences) within their campus community or
beyond. Campus applications for the VBrick could include interactive
videoconferencing with other installations that use VBrick equipment,
multicasting MPEG-2 content to campus client workstations and beyond, or
a combination of videoconferencing/multicasting.

Campuses must also have a high-bandwidth connection to Abilene that can
support MPEG-2 streams at 6-10 Mbps to/from campus and also support
multicast. (If you don't know the speed of your network connection, we
suggest you run an Iperf network performance measurement test to find out
http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/).
Campuses must also provide their own camera(s) and monitor(s).

Selected campuses will be requested to provide feedback on the use and
performance of the VBrick equipment.

If you are interested in applying for one of the VBrick long-term loan
units, complete the form at
http://apps.internet2.edu/html/vbrick-form.html
no later than March 25. Selected sites will be notified the week of April 8.


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