Rob  Bristow,  NREN  Exchange  Fellow,  TENET  

6th  Nov  2014   Video-conferencing for higher education and research

Introductions    

»  Who  am  I?  ›  On  secondment  from  Jisc  in  the  UK  for  two  years  –  Part  of  Jisc  Futures  division  –  Worked  at  Jisc  on  video-­‐conferencing  projects  

›  What  is  Jisc?  –  UK  NREN  parent  company  –  Janet  is  the  TENET  equivalent  –  runs  national  video-­‐

conferencing  service  –  Jisc  runs  services  and  development  programmes  in  all  

areas  of  technology  and  tertiary  education  

›  What  do  I/Jisc  know  about  video-­‐conferencing  and  education?    –  Quite  a  lot!  

The  problem  

»  Lots  of  people  want  video-­‐conferencing  

›  But  it’s  expensive  and  inflexible  –  multipoint  V-­‐C  needs  heavy  duty  back  end  processing  

›  Doesn’t  cope  well  when  the  network  bandwidth  and  stability  stumbles  

›  Difficult  to  join  people  from  the  desktop  and  mobile  devices  

›  Difficult  to  easily  share  content  

›  Doesn’t  scale  well  for  large  meetings  

›  Etc…    

State  of  play  in  South  Africa  

»  Lots  of  Polycom,  LifeSize,  Avaya,  etc  

›  This  is  what  is  commonly  called  ‘Standards  based’  conferencing  or  H.323/SIP  

»  Requirement  for  communal  bridging  solution  (for  multipoint  conferences)  

»  Some  glue  is  needed  to  tie  it  all  together  

»  Patchy  provision    ›  Big  rich  universities  are  well  set  up  –  but  smaller  institutions  are  struggling  to  meet  

demand  

›  How  to  help  smaller  less  well  supported  bodies  –  AIMS,  for  example  or  Africa  Centre?  

»  How  to  enable  South  African  HE  and  Research  communities  to  collaborate  within  Africa  and  gloablly?  

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What  else  is  going  on  in  the  world?  

»  Three  interesting  examples  ›  CERN  –  20,000  users,    –  over  800  people  using  their  V-­‐C  service  every  day  –  Regular  meetings  of  up  to  30  or  40  participants  

›  SKA  –  Distributed  organisation  –  across  Africa  and  also  Europe,  US,  etc  –  Working  in  places  with  poor  and  unstable  bandwidth  

›  Janet  (UK  NREN)  –  Recently  replaced  their  obsolete  VC  service  with  modern  flexible  platform  

» What  is  the  common  thread  here?  ›  Vidyo  –  www.vidyo.com  

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Why  Vidyo?  

»  “Personal  Telepresence”  

»  All  the  reasons  above,  and:  

›  Scalable  big  time  –  c.f.  CERN  20,000  users  and  distributed  architecture  

›  Full  HD  on  the  desktop  

›  Integrates  with  H.323/SIP  conferencing  systems  

›  Good  desktop  client  (Windows,  MacOS  &  Linux),  iOS,  Android  and  web  access  (guests  can  use  either).    

›  All  participants  can  share  content    

›  Resilient  in  poor  or  unstable  conditions  

›  Record  and  stream  to  up  to  300  +  remote  users  

›  Capable  of  being  multi-­‐tenant,  so  individual  organisations  can  look  after  their  own  users  

›  Individual  organisations  (Tenants)    can  apply  own  branding  

›  Low  cost  and  easy  to  deploy  room  based  end-­‐points  

»  Cloud  pricing  model  

»  “User  Experience  to  drive  mass  adoption”  

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Vidyo  Infrastructure  

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TENET  will  provide      

»  Subject  to  Board  approval  

»  Vidyo  stack,  comprising:  

›  Vidyo  Portal  with  hot  spare  

›  x  2  Vidyo  Routers  (up  to  100  concurrent  users  each)  

›  x  2  Vidyo  Gateways  (for  H.323/SIP)  bridging  

›  Lync/Outlook/Google  Mail  integration  

›  Clients  for  Windows,  MacOS  and  Linux,  and  mobile  

›  Discounted  purchase  of  Vidyo  Room  systems  

›  A  base  level  of  connectivity  for  free    –  still  being  discussed,  with  additional  cost  beyond  that  

›  1st  level  support  in  office  hours,  with  2nd  level  support  in  country,  3rd  level  with  Vidyo  in  US  

»  Possibility  of  collaboration  with  CERN  in  delivering  this  service  

»  Partnership  with  other  African  NRENs?  

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Video-­‐conferencing  for  post  graduate  teaching  

»  Two  networks  in  the  UK  –  MAGIC  and  the  Scottish  equivalent  

›  Teach  many  hours  a  week  in  a  distributed  way  

›  Leverage  expertise  in  a  more  efficient  way    

»  Early  plans  to  do  something  similar  in  South  Africa  

›  Working  with  Loyiso  Nongxa  from  Wits  and  others  

›  One  objective  is  t0  provide  better  opportunities  for  masters  and  doctoral  studies  in  places  where  the  necessary  expertise  may  not  be  available  

»  Challenges  

›  How  to  allow  mathematicians  to  scribble?  

›  Shared  whiteboards  

›  Good  experience  for  all  –  Lighting  &  Audio  –  Getting  people  at  remotes  sites  to  participate  fully  

›  Attention  needs  to  be  paid  to  both  the  technical  set  up  and  ‘production’  and  to  helping  lecturers  to  adapt  the  way  they  teach  to  match  this  environment  

›  UK  Networks  can  help  here  

4th  Nov  2014   TENET   10  

Thank  you  

Rob Bristow r.bristow@tenet.ac.za

079 1818 708 @robbristow