|
REAL-TIME HDTV BROADCAST FROM USA
TO JAPAN ENABLED BY ADVANCED NETWORKS
Japan’s JGN2 Symposium 2005 Features Keynote Speaker Larry
Smarr of UCSD Broadcast Live from Seattle over Advanced Optical
Networks
January 18, 2005 -- Dignitaries
and researchers attending the JGN2 Symposium 2005 in Osaka,
Japan today listened and watched as Internet visionary Larry
Smarr gave the keynote presentation on a large HDTV screen above
the podium. Unlike traditional keynote talks, however, Smarr
was 5,000 miles away in Seattle, Washington. And unlike traditional
in-person talks, the quality, size and resolution was so great
that the audience could see every detail of the speaker's face.
Advances in transmitting live,
uncompressed high-definition television (HDTV) signals over
optical networks are enabling true tele-presence, in which participants
feel they are together in the same room. The Internet HDTV broadcast
system used for this event was developed by the University of
Washington for the ResearchChannel. A server in Seattle transmitted
uncompressed, real-time, high-definition digital video and digital
audio at very high quality and low latency to a client system
in Osaka. Professor Smarr’s presentation originated on
the University of Washington campus in Seattle and was transmitted
without using any compression at 1.5 Gbps to the Pacific Northwest
GigaPoP (PNWGP), then across a 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps)
transpacific link from Seattle to Tokyo, and then via the JGN2
to Osaka. The transpacific link was provided by the Internet
Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF), and is managed
by the PNWGP in Seattle and the WIDE project in Japan.
Smarr, director of the California
Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
(Calit2) and principal investigator of the National Science
Foundation-funded OptIPuter project, talked about the emergence
of a new cyberinfrastructure based on dedicated optical paths,
in which distributed clusters and instruments are tightly coupled
using wavelengths of light, or ‘lambdas,’ on single
optical fibers. The ability to stream video at gigabits per
second, like in this HDTV transmission, is enabling new modes
of communication and collaboration. “The clear crisp images
and sounds that HDTV affords make for better dialogue and interaction
with colleagues over distances,” said Smarr, who is also
a professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
Jacobs School of Engineering. “The goal is to make these
sorts of communication technologies persistent, so that far-away
colleagues appear to be just beyond the ‘Looking Glass’.”
In his talk, Smarr noted that Calit2
is incorporating advanced video-over-fiber networking technologies
into its two new buildings at UCSD and UC Irvine. Facilities
are slated to include a digital cinema and HDTV production facility,
as well as dedicated meeting and public spaces with large-format
displays to support tele-presence and collaboration. Said Smarr:
“Every type of research will benefit if we can tear down
walls and let scientists and engineers talk and work together
in real time as if they were in the same room -- even if they’re
thousands of miles away.”
Tomonori Aoyama, a professor of
Information and Communication Engineering at the University
of Tokyo, chair of the JGN2 management committee, and chair
of the Symposium’s keynote session, expressed his sincere
gratitude to all who contributed to its success. “The
goal of the Symposium was to present the research and development
activities taking place using Japan’s JGN2, operated by
the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
(NiCT),” said Aoyama. “I am very pleased that we
used JGN2 and IEEAF broadband network technologies during the
featured remote presentation by Dr. Smarr to explain the needs
and applications for these technologies.”
JGN2, an advanced network testbed
for research and development, is both a national and international
testbed. It supports high-speed networking technologies and
application advancements. Nationally, JGN2 is a 20 Gbps backbone
network that has access points in all Japanese prefectures.
Internationally, JGN2 connects Tokyo via a 10 Gbps link to the
StarLight facility in Chicago, where it peers with the USA’s
National LambdaRail, Abilene and other advanced international,
national, and regional research and education networks.
“This is a milestone both
in the use of technology and the establishment of a new high-water
mark in extraordinarily close international collaborations,”
explained Ron Johnson, Vice President for Computing & Communications
at University of Washington. “We are collectively managing
dedicated lightpaths to carry uncompressed HDTV while at the
same time supporting scientific research such as the Huygens
Titan probe with a lambda-based network infrastructure that
links Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Colleagues
at JGN2, WIDE, IEEAF, PNWGP, StarLight, the University of Washington,
the ResearchChannel and other like-minded entities worldwide
are working together to create ‘deterministic’ networks
using multiple lambdas over optical fibers, to guarantee the
bandwidth speeds and latency in order to do things like real-time
HDTV transmission and remote steering of scientific instruments.
We will continue to pursue this, to make applications like high-quality
HDTV transmission both persistent and ubiquitous.”
ABOUT ResearchChannel
ResearchChannel is a non-profit consortium of leading research
universities and labs dedicated to creating a voice for research
through both tradition broadcast, satellite and cable TV coverage,
as well as via advanced on-demand video and Internet 'channels',
while exploring new technologies for communication and collaboration.
www.researchchannel.org
ABOUT JGN2
JGN2 is a new Japanese ultra-high-speed open testbed network
for R&D collaboration between industry, academia, and government,
operated by the National Institute of Information and Communications
Technology (NiCT) of Japan. JGN2 was established in April 2004
with the aim of promoting a broad spectrum of research and development
projects, ranging from fundamental core research and development
to advanced experimental testing, in areas including the advancement
of next-generation technologies for networking and diverse network-based
applications. JGN2 provides nationwide Japanese IP networks,
optical wavelength networks, and R&D environments for optical
testbeds. JGN2 was extended internationally in August 2004 with
the addition of a 10 Gbps transpacific link between Japan (Tokyo)
and the USA (Chicago). http://www.jgn.nict.go.jp/e/
ABOUT CALIT2
The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information
Technology (Calit2) is one of four institutes funded through
the California Institutes for Science and Innovation initiative
to ensure that the state maintains its leadership in cutting-edge
technologies. Calit2 is a collaboration between UC San Diego
and UC Irvine. Its mission is to extend the reach of the current
information infrastructure throughout the physical world --
enabling anywhere/anytime access to the Internet. More than
200 faculty members from the two campuses are collaborating
on interdisciplinary projects, with support from more than 130
industry partners. http://www.calit2.net
ABOUT UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is a top research
university with over 41,000 students on campuses in Seattle,
Tacoma and Bothell, Washington. http://www.washington.edu
ABOUT PACIFIC NORTHWEST GIGAPOP
The Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP) is a not-for-profit corporation
serving leading-edge organizations and Research and Education
networks throughout the Pacific Rim. PNWGP provides robust,
highest-speed access to current state-of-the-art Internet; Next
Generation Internet services and technology; and the exclusive
R&D testbeds where tomorrow’s Internet technologies
are being developed. PNWGP is built to be the highest caliber
Research and Education networking services hub in the world
and is the operator of the Pacific Wave distributed west coast
international peering and exchange point with integrated PoPs
in Seattle and Los Angeles. PNWGP is also the steward for the
Seattle end of the IEEAF Pacific link. www.pnw-gigapop.net
ABOUT IEEAF
The Internet Educational Equal Access Foundation (IEEAF) is
a non-profit organization whose mission is to obtain donations
of telecommunications capacity and equipment and make them available
for use by the global research and education community. The
IEEAF TransPacific Link is the second 10 Gbps transoceanic link
provided by IEEAF through a five-year IRU donated by Tyco Telecom;
the first, the IEEAF TransAtlantic Link, connects New York and
Groningen, The Netherlands, and has been operational since 2002.
IEEAF donations currently span 17 time zones. http://www.ieeaf.org/
ABOUT WIDE
WIDE, a research consortium working on practical research and
development of Internet-related technologies, was launched in
1988. The project has made a significant contribution to development
of the Internet by collaborating with many other bodies -- including
133 companies and 11 universities to carry out research in a
wide range of fields, and by operating M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, one
of the DNS root servers, since 1997. WIDE Project also operates
T-LEX (www.t-lex.net/) as an effort of stewardship for the IEEAF
TransPacific Link in Tokyo. http://www.wide.ad.jp/
PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
(NiCT)
NiCT/JGN II, NiCT/APAN
KDDI
NTT Group
WIDE Project
University of California San Diego/Calit2
University of Washington
Pacific Northwest GigaPoP
Pacific Wave
ResearchChannel
Pacific Interface, Inc.
StarLight (Argonne National Lab, Northwestern University, University
of Illinois at Chicago)
Indiana University
Intel
CIRCUITS
JGN II, WIDE, KDDI, NTT Group
IEEAF, NLR (National Lambda Rail)
NOTE TO EDITORS:
1) A high-resolution photo of UCSD
professor Larry Smarr can be downloaded from: http://www.calit2.net/gallery/lsmarr/images/highres/Smarr-06.jpg
2) A diagram of the “HD-over-IP" network can be downloaded
from: http://www.pnw-gigapop.net/news/index.html
|