Input requested on behalf of the Real Time communications advisory group

["Walt Magnussen" <>]

Working group members,

   The Internet2 organization has chartered a Real Time Communications 
Advisory Group that is an umberalla group over real time activities (VoIP WG, 
Sip.edu, PIC WG and others).  The purpose is to make sure that we are as a 
group covering all areas that need to be covered and that we are not 
duplicating efforts.  

   As a VoIP WG member I am soliciting information on behalf of the RTCAG I 
am asking for input in the following areas:

1. What kind of RTC projects or initiatives would you like to see Internet2 
support in the next 12 months? In the next 36 months?
2. What kinds of RTC services or functionalities would you like to see 
available in the next 12 to 36 months (some of these might be middleware 
development activities that should be started up in the near term)?
3. What RTC-related problems need special attention at the current time? Are 
there especially difficult, important, or strategic issues that need to be 
addressed?

   The VoIP WG has been chartered as an Incubator WG that is to begin 
projects that can spin off into their own WGs.  Currently the Disaster 
Recovery project is the only one in the works.  

   In addition to the WG we have the VoIP Internet2 Technology Evaluation 
Center which is now finishing its first year.  I am attaching a summary of 
the first years ITEC activities for your review.  It is attached in both Text 
and Word formats.  

   Please respond to either me or the VoIP WG mail list on any ideas that you 
may have.  Keep in mind that you will most likely be asked to help on any 
ideas that you come up with.  The TAMU ITEC is willing to provide support on 
any projects that members feel important.

  I need to have the results to the RTCAG by the 7th of Feb so please respond 
to me no later than the 5th.  The plan is to provide an RTCAG update at the 
spring members meeting.  

  Thanks for a good year and let's make this one even better.

Walt



Walt Magnussen Ph.D.
Director for Telecommunications, Texas A&M University
phone 979-845-5588
cell 979-777-0999
fax  979-847-1111
email 


TAMU ITEC
Year in Review ? 2005

Texas A&M University?s Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center (ITEC) has 
concluded its first full year of operation.  The center?s year began with the 
ribbon cutting ceremony in  February, 2005 followed by months of activity.   
Highlighted below are some of the research areas pursued by the ITEC 
throughout its first year. 

* Wireless WiFi VoIP to GSM handoff ? This project involved one of the 
undergraduate senior project groups and Veirsign working on a seamless 
handoff from VoIP to GSM and GSM to VoIP.  While the project did not result 
in a successful demonstration of the concept it did highlight the areas where 
we still need to make progress.  These areas include, battery conservation 
techniques for putting the WiFi radio into sleep mode, better signaling and 
WiFi Qos provisioning in support of VoIP services.  The students demonstrated 
a successful building of a WiFi design that eliminated in-building false 
handoffs.  A White Paper will be available online in February, 2006. 
* Satellite delivery of VoIP services and Hurricane relief? This project is 
underway and it involves both the American Distance Education Consortium 
(ADEC) and Tachyon Satellite.  There has been little satellite VoIP delivery 
in the past due to latency, jitter and packet loss.  ADEC has been working on 
a QoS implementation strategy that has proven itself with MOS scores of 3.7 
plus in lab experiments.  We plan to move the trials from the lab to the 
field within the next few months.  With the advent of the hurricanes in 
Louisiana and Texas we moved all of the lab systems from the ITEC to 
hurricane sites in September and October.  While the ITEC provided a support 
role, much of the work was accomplished by the A&M Agriculture Extension 
Office, the Indiana Higher Education network (IHETS) and the Ohio ITEC.
* NG911 ? This is a $1.3 Million initiative that is supported by the U.S. 
Department of Commerce, NENA, Columbia University, the State Emergency 
offices for the states of Texas and Virginia, Cisco, Nortel and others.  The 
mission of this project is to deploy a next generation IP enabled PSAP 
(Emergency 911 call center) and to test it against the NENA NG911 
requirements documents.  The project involved a demonstration at the annual 
NENA conference as well as demonstration at the National Press Club in 
Washington DC.  At this time the demonstration systems are developed and are 
scheduled to be moved to the three functional PSAPs within the next two 
weeks.  Our second annual meeting of the entire project group is to be held 
in College Station on February 8th.
* SIP.edu workshop at Vancouver Joint Techs meeting.  The ITEC supported the 
hardware and software requirements for Dennis Barron?s successful SIP.edu 
workshop in Vancouver.  
* HOPI deployment.  The TAMU ITEC has been working with the other three 
ITECs, under the leadership of John Moore (NC ITEC) in the deployment of MPLS 
based HOPI services.  This capability should make resources available at any 
of the ITECs available to the other ITECs.
* VoIP services in Mexico ? The ITEC has been working with both CISESE (the 
organization that supports Mexico?s NSF network) and UNAM (the National 
University of Mexico located in Mexico City) on VoIP peering with Internet2 
institutions in Mexico.
* Disaster Recovery ? the ITEC has been working with Verisign on a possible 
DR VoIP based service along with two of TAMU?s hurricane susceptible sister 
campuses Texas A&M University Corpus Christi and Texas A&M University 
Galveston.  More detail on this project will be made available as the work 
progresses.
*  The ITEC has been supporting the recently formed Real Time Communications 
Advisory Group (an Internet2 group) in the establishment of RTC guidelines.  
This draft document should be out sometime mid 2006.  
* Vendor relationships established or expanded-
o 3Com lab donation ? 3Com donated a full system to be used for 
interoperability and other testing.
o NetD remote office system ? NetD provided a donation of a system that will 
provide remote office access to include routing, voice switching and security 
management.
o Brix network monitoring ? Brix provided two of their network management 
appliances that will be used in the Satellite field tests.
o Apparentnetworks network diagnostic system ? This system allows a user to 
determine the characteristics of a network, determine the feasibility that 
RTP traffic will work and diagnose problems if it will not.  This system is 
used on most research projects.
o Sipera VoIP security device ? This system addresses VoIP specific 
vulnerabilities and will be used on the NG911 project.  

Discussions are underway with several other VoIP centric firms, including 
service providers.

Chris Norton continues to do a great job of managing the ITEC?s staff.  
Currently, Vijay Kanan, EE Ph.D. candidate, Goubin Hee, CS Ph.D candidate, 
and Brian Jett, Engineering Technology undergraduate make up the ITEC?s 
technical staff.  Karthik Kannan, a graduate student formerly of the ITEC, 
recently accepted an offer from Intel.  Karthik?s presence at the ITEC will 
be missed.   The ITEC supported one senior team project during 2005 and plans 
to collaborate with two more in the fall of 2006.  

From the administrative side, Willis Marti was added as the Co-Director of 
the ITEC.  He has been active with the Academy for Advanced 
Telecommunications and Learning Technologies for several years.  Two new 
faculty members were added to the faculty advisory group, Dr. Walter 
Daugherity from Computer Science and Dr. Narasimha?  Reddy from the 
Electrical Engineering department.  Patti Urbina was promoted to Associate 
Director of the Academy and continues to do a superb job supporting all ITEC 
functions, especially the NG911 project. 

I would like to once again add a special thank you to Ben Teitelbaum from 
Internet2.  The ITEC would not exist without his vision and support.

Attachment: TAMU ITEC 2005 update.doc
Description: MS-Word document