Presence and IntComm WG

[Ben Teitelbaum <>]

This came up on the call today in a discussion of use cases:

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• From: (Dennis Baron)
• To:
• Subject: Script for PIC Demo
• Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 10:33:28 -0400
• List-archive: <https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/rtc-ag>
• List-id: <rtc-ag.internet2.edu>
• Xref: Ben-Teitelbaums-Computer.local mail.inbox:95657

Per this morning's discussion. Dennis

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2005 INTERNET2 SPRING MEMBER MEETING PIC DEMO

The Scene: Curtain opens; "Student" is seen on stage left standing at
a podium with a laptop, which is projected behind on screen 1; at
stage right is "Teaching Assistant", also at a podium with a laptop,
which is projected behind on screen 2. At the center is the emcee.

TECHNICAL NOTE: Emcee will have a lavalier microphone; the actors will
have fixed microphones. Each laptop will have a headset (not
initially worn). Headsets should be muted at this point. Muting will
be done in-line on the headset cord, not through the soft-client UIs,
which would show on the screen.

Emcee:

We would now like to demonstrate for you how presence-enabled
communications might be deployed and used in a campus environment.
For the past two years, the PIC working group has been experimenting
with rich presence and integrated communication based on SIP (the
session initiation protocol) and SIMPLE (an extension of SIP to
support instant messaging and presence). You may have experienced
or participated in the experimental rich presence trials that the
working group has conducted at these member meetings. As the
technology has matured, the focus of the PIC working group has
shifted away from one-off Internet2 trials and towards developing a
stable and functional system that can be deployed in a campus
setting.

With SIP, your campus or enterprise provides real-time
communications services in much the same way that you provide email
services today. By running a few core middleware service and
letting your users use standards-compliant clients of their choice,
you may provide campus voice, IM, video and other real-time
communications. Just as sendmail and bind implement the essential
middleware services that enable email, the essential components of a
campus SIP service may be implemented with open source software.

The PIC working group has extended the open-source SIP Express
Router (or "SER") with presence agent capabilities and has build a
set of relationship with commercial SIP soft-client vendors to push
hard on standards-based interoperability among the clients and
between the clients and the open-source SER server.

The two thespians behind me are (actor1), who is (role) at
(institutional affiliation), and (actor2), who is (role) at
(institutional affiliation). (actor1) and (actor2) are going to
help me with this demonstration of how SIP-based communications
might be used to provide advanced real-time communications to BigU.
(actor1) and (actor2) will each be using a commercially-available
integrated communications client running on a laptop. Each client
is registered with an SER server that we have configured to serve
BigU.

In this first portion of the demo, you will see how instant
messaging and presence might be used in a teaching application (for
example, in a large freshman course) to enhance learning. The
instructor for Physics 101 has decided that teaching assistants can
hold half as many fixed office hours if they log "virtual office
hours" by being present for SIP-based queries from students.

(actor1), on your right, will be using Internet2 corporate member
Wave Three Software's Session client and playing the role of a
student, while (actor2), on your left, will be using XTen Network's
eyeBeam client and playing the role of a teaching assistant.

(actor1), why take it away...

Student:

(reading aloud) "Problem 3: Imagine you are at the bottom of the
Washington Monument Reflecting Pool pointing a laser towards the
surface. At what angle of incidence at the water-air boundary will
total internal reflection occur?" Yikes, this physics problem set
is due tomorrow and I am really, really stumped! I wonder if my TA
is on-line?

Let me bring up Session and check. Hmmm, his presence shows that he
is eating pizza right right now... Oh, there he is, back on-line
now. I'll send him an instant message. (typing and speaking aloud)
"I'm really stuck on problem 3. Could you give me a hint?"

Teaching Assistant:

(eyeBeam IM pops up on TA's screen) Oh, I see that (actor1) is
having trouble with problem 3. (typing and speaking) "Consider
Snell's Law." (switching windows to editor) OK, now back to my
dissertation...

Student:

Snell's Law, eh? Hmmm...

Emcee:

So, what you have seen here is SIMPLE-based instant messaging and
presence interoperability between two mature, commercial-available
SIP client implementations. SIP is a media-neutral communications
signaling protocol, able to broker communications between arbitrary
clients, which themselves negotiate the common set of media types
they support. Let's add some other media types into the
communication session.

Student:

I'm still confused. I really need to talk with the TA. Wow am I
glad I can get help this way. It sure beats trekking to the other
side of campus to line up outside the TA's office. (typing and
speaking) "Still confused. Could we talk?"

Teaching Assistant:

(typing and speaking) Sure.

TECHNICAL NOTE: Both Student and TA don headsets, KEEPING THEM MUTED
to avoid echo and feedback problems.

OK, I'll just right click on (actor1)'s name in my buddy list, and
select "Place a call".

Student:

Hi (actor2).

Teaching Assistant:

Hi (actor1). Still confused? What can I help you with?

Student:

I looked up Snell's Law and I still don't get it.

Teaching Assistant:

Think about when solving the Snell equation for theta r equal to 90
degrees.

Student:

Theta r? You mean the angle of refraction?

Teaching Assistant:

Right.

Student:

I just don't see why I should care about this stuff. I'm going to
be majoring in computer networking. Like, what do reflecting pools
and total internal reflection have to do with my future career?!

Teaching Assistant:

Everything. Total internal reflection through a fiber optic cable
in the campus backbone network is what's making this conversation
possible.

Student:

Really?!

Teaching Assistant:

Yeah. It's actually very cool to see. Be sure to come to the
lecture tomorrow. We are actually going to demonstrate how because
of total internal reflection a laser beam will follow a stream of
falling water.

Student:

Cool! Thanks. Bye now.

Teaching Assistant:

Bye. (conversation is terminated) I really need to get back to my
dissertation. I am going to mark my presence as busy and do some
uninterrupted writing now. (TA clicks on eyeBeam's status pull-down
menu and selects "Busy") (removes headset)

Student:

(removes headset) Hmmm, I see that (actor2) is busy now. I guess
I'll have to figure out the rest of this problem set on my own or
I could see if anyone in my virtual study group is available...

(A study group member (off-stage in the audience) changes presence to
"available'.)

Oh look, (insert random name here) is now available!

TECHNICAL NOTE: Off-stage, someone should place a PSTN call to Henning
at this point to confirm that he is standing by; during the following
monologue, (actor1) should launch Powerpoint and bring up Hennning's
talk on screen 1.

Emcee:

(ToDo: Candace suggests shortening this section)

So, you can see how SIP can be used to provide rich, standards-based
communications in a campus environment. To some extent, of course,
this is already happening on your campus today through proprietary,
consumer-oriented services like AIM, Yahoo! IM, and Skype. The PIC
Working Group believes, however, that there are distinct advantages
to deploying these types of services as campus services based on
open standards. By providing a few cost-effective core middleware
services like identity management, presence management, call
routing, and messaging, you empower users to experiment with a
variety of SIP-based communications clients until they find one that
meets their needs.

What we have shown here today are soft-clients, but there is an
increasing variety of SIP-based appliances and devices available,
including desk-top devices, PDAs, and dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular
phones. We believe that there are literally countless ways that
this type of general-purpose communications could be used in a
campus setting to improve the effectiveness and productivity of
faculty, staff, and students. To encourage campus-based trials of
these technologies, we the PIC WG is issuing a CFP, seeking to
identify a limited number of campuses to conduct campus-based
trials, which the PIC working group will support. You'll hear more
about that later from Candace.

One of the things you might have noticed in the demo is that SIP
allows parties to be called at URLs that look a lot like email
addresses. (actor1) and (actor2) called each other at
sip:(actor1)@bigu.edu and sip:(actor2)@bigu.edu. It is important to
note that, while the emphasis of the demo you just saw was on a
campus service, there is a strong interdomain story here as well.

The SIP.edu initiative, is working to scale up this style of
addressing and is providing a number of resources to help campus'
scale up SIP.edu deployments. Already, nearly 200,000 Internet2
users are SIP-reachable at 12 institutions. The SIP.edu Working
Group is also focusing on some of the important inter-domain issues
that arise such as call authentication and SIP spam prevention.

We will now segue to our next speaker, Henning Schulzrinne, by
placing an interdomain call to Columbia University, where Henning's
SIP client is registered with Columbia's SIP proxy. We will call
Henning, of course, at his email address.

(actor2), could you call out to Henning now?

TECHNICAL NOTE: This the riskiest portion of the demo, since feedback
or echo might result from the unmuting of (actor2)'s microphone.

Teaching Assistant:

Sure. (dons headset and unmutes microphone) Henning is not on my
buddy list, but I'll just call out to him by pressing on this little
green button and typing in his email address. (speaking and typing)
"sip:"
(TBD: confirm whether we are calling
Henning through the CS department's SIPQuest proxy or Alan's
columbia.edu SER server.)

(ring, ring)

Hi Henning.

Henning:

Hi. How's everything in DC? (sic.)

TECHNICAL NOTE: eyeBeam video settings should be pre-set to be as
large as possible

Teaching Assistant:

Great. Let's add video to our conversation. (opens eyeBeam video
drawer) OK, there you are. Let me just point my camera at the
audience. There we are. You may begin your presentation now.
(actor2 mutes microphone)

Henning:

...



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-- 
Ben Teitelbaum   http://people.internet2.edu/~ben/