All things related to multicast

[Ted Hanss <>]

This week we are going to post a list of regional sites that are willing to 
host people.

This is some info I've sent out regarding technical details/thoughts. 
Comments and suggestions on any of this are very welcome. Most of this is 
still being planned and so up in the air, but I wanted to share current 
thinking:

- On Tuesday October the 2nd we will present the plenary sessions that had 
been spread over Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in Austin. Those included 
any Abilene announcements, middleware announcements, a presentation by 
Aubrey Bush (NSF), and hopefully Ian Foster's keynote on grid computing. 
This will run from approximately 11:00 to 4:00 EDT. We will create a 
primary studio in Ann Arbor, accepting remote feeds from a limited number 
of external sites (hopefully with MPEG-2 streaming to maximize the quality 
of the source). (A commercial video house is handling lighting, cameras, 
mixing, etc.) We will encode the outgoing stream to H.323, Access Grid, 
VRVS, IP/TV, and Real. We'd also like to feed an MPEG-2 stream to the 
ResearchChannel over-the-air service if we can get permission to do that. 
We will include audio-only delivery as well. The backchannel interaction 
will come via as many of the above technologies as we can support along 
with text. We are using good sized audio and video mixers to maximize the 
n-ways interconnections. Audio might be the only means to build a full mesh 
of connections. (For example, we need to evaluate the image quality of 
grabbing an AG/H.261-encoded video of a remote questioner and mixing that 
in to the netcast.) We also want to put each session up as VoD as soon as 
we can. Anyone have recommendations based on experience with commercial web 
conferencing services such as WebEx, Placeware, Astound, etc. for pushing 
out the PowerPoint slides and providing feedback channels?

- On Wednesday the Megaconference continues essentially as is. As we aren't 
holding plenaries on Wednesday, this opens up slots to perhaps fit in more 
megaconference sessions. Bob Dixon remains the man-in-charge here.

- On Thursday and perhaps Friday we are offering H.323, VRVS, and maybe 
Real and/or QT-enabled streaming services for track sessions. If groups 
want to use the Access Grid we'll publish that schedule as well.

- If presenters don't feel they need to re-schedule presentations or 
working group meetings within that week, they are scheduling for later 
either virtually or in person. In person options include, for example, the 
End to End Performance Initiative sessions likely moving to the 
campus-focused workshop in Pittsburgh on October 22nd-24th 
<http://www.internet2.edu/activities/html/campuswksp-pitt.html>. One option 
for an in-person location is the NLANR/Internet2 Joint Techs Meeting in 
Tempe (Arizona State) the week of January 28th. I have proposed that we 
add, for the first time, an applications track to that meeting. That is, 
not to turn it into a full-blown Internet2 Member Meeting but provide a 
location for applications people to get together to hold in-person working 
group sessions. (The next Internet2 Member Meeting is the week of May the 
6th in Washington, DC.)