STI: A Next Generation Integrated Environment for Collaborative Work Across Advanced Networks

California Institute Of Technology, Pasadena CA

Investigators

Abstract

The developing, building and deploying of VRVS2, a unique, globally scalable next-generation system for real-time collaboration by small workgroups, medium and large teams engaged in research, education and outreach, over an ensemble of national and international networks is proposed. The collaboration system builds on the existing limited-scale prototype-production system serving the high energy and nuclear physics (HENP) community and some other data-intensive science and engineering sectors. The primary goals of this proposal are to extend the VRVS technology to provide the software infrastructure and Web-enabled user interfaces required to meet the research and education needs of many fields. VRVS2 will be global in scope, covering the full range of existing and emerging protocols and client devices for daily collaboration, from mobile devices to desktops to installations in large auditoria. It will be integrated with the Grid-enabled Analysis Environment (GAE) now under development at Caltech in partnership with the GriPhyN, iVDGL and PPDG projects in the US, and the DataGrid, DataTAG, Cross Grid projects in Europe. The current VRVS system has been chosen by the Internet2 Digital Video (I2-DV) Initiative as a preferred foundation for the development of advanced video, audio and multimedia collaborative applications by the Internet2 community of US Research and Education schools and labs. The VRVS2 project will create a "testbed video network" and develop the necessary middleware to support a set of new and essential requirements for rapid data exchange, and a high level of interactivity in large-scale scientific collaborations including support for emerging standards. The new design, based on a pure peer-to-peer architecture, will facilitate the monitoring functions as well as provide a high degree of reliability and scalability. Each VRVS network server, which handles the real-time traffic, will be independent, self-managed by internal monitoring agents, and will interact only with its peer reflector nodes. The architecture will be fully redundant, with automatic re-routing of packet streams in case one reflector fails, including automatic bandwidth and QoS monitoring (latency, packet loss, and jitter) between reflectors, in order to assure the best possible connectivity for real time communication. A modular and scalable architecture based on web services to provide advanced monitoring and tracking tools that support a very large number of conferences and users will be used. Networking agents that run on the desktop or at the computer center will allow any videoconferencing client from a protected site with a firewall and/or NAT to communicate with any other client in a public or private remote location. Authentication and optional encryption will be added to maintain confidentiality of inter-personal communications. NSF is funding this in the belief that the VRVS2 project may have a profound impact on education, as well as research.