UB Develops High-Quality IP-Based Videoconferencing System

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Information-technology specialists at the University at Buffalo have developed a revolutionary production-grade, PC-based, high-performance, video-conferencing system that is portable and available at a much lower price than was previously possible.

Faculty members at UB have been involved in the first successful use of the system, which allows one instructor to team-teach a course -- in real-time -- with a colleague at Stanford University, and another to teach a course to students at UB, Clarkson University and Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute simultaneously while on sabbatical in California.

The new system was developed, integrated and tested by James Whitlock, associate director of computing services, and Peter Jorgensen, senior applications analyst for academic services, both in the Office of Computing and Information Technology at UB. Jorgensen will be the third UB instructor to employ the new videoconferencing technology later this month when he plans to teach a UB library-science class while in the Netherlands.

Whitlock says this development marks the dawn of a new era of Internet capabilities.

The system combines existing technology in new ways. "Off-the-shelf" PC components are blended with OEM (original equipment manufacture) hardware to produce video with the high quality that has, until now, been available only using ISDN (telephone) connections.

Specifically, the UB system uses standard Internet Protocol, or IP, with a 384Kbps H.323 connection -- recently approved for non-commercial use -- to support a high-quality, high-performance videoconferencing connection that is transported over Internet 2.

Unlike the crowded Internet that most people use, Internet 2 is not a public network, but one shared by universities. It has a greater bandwidth and a transmission capability six times that of the original Internet, a fact that enhances video quality tremendously.

Hinrich Martens, UB associate vice president for computing technology, says that in simple terms, what the UB team has done is take the video signal originating at one site and convert it to an IP data signal that can be transported over Internet 2 without the interference of other Internet traffic.

Long-term, the developers say, the new system is expected to reduce distance-learning and videoconferencing costs substantially while opening the door to new kinds of connections.

Lisa Stephens, associate director for distance-learning operations for UB's Millard Fillmore College, which administers distance-learning programs at UB, notes that until now, two videoconferencing sites could not communicate effectively unless both were equipped with highly specialized equipment.

"Since videoconferencing systems have been proprietary, equipment at both sites has had to conform to the same precise and consistent set of technical specifications, which vary among the systems used by institutions," she says.

"Until now, reliable and high-quality videoconferencing could only be made available over telephone lines. Because so much data has to be transmitted, however, each site required three or four ISDN lines just to accommodate the data transfer. Besides that, installation costs and monthly charges for access and use of the lines adds up rapidly," she says.

"If a venture should require 'bridging' multiple sites over the course of a semester," Stephens says, "the connection and use charges really start to add up. Then there is the ongoing cost of staff support to make sure the end points continue to talk to one another."

Martens says most schools can't afford the cost.

"We needed to find a new way to make real-time distance learning available," he says, adding that information technologists all over the country have been searching for just such a process -- something cheaper, more convenient and adaptable that didn't sacrifice video quality.

Until now, the only viable alternative to the ISDN-linked distance-learning sites has been videoconferencing over Internet 1 through standard IP without the high-quality H.323-connection support.

"IP is cheap and convenient" says Whitlock, "but the Internet is crowded with millions of users, so IP connections have been much less reliable than ISDN connections. The likelihood of a crash, coupled with and poor video quality at the receiving end, has discouraged IP use."

Stephens says faculty, particularly research faculty, hesitate to use these systems if they're not reliable. But reliability and flexibility often were not found in the same appliances -- until now.

The new videoconferencing system employs cheap IP connections over long-distance lines and can use standard classrooms on each end, a cost-saving in itself. And since nearly all university classrooms already have an IP port in place, the system holds out the promise of ubiquitous connections through IP interactive videoconferencing.

Whitlock says the UB development effort -- dubbed "UB Skunkworks" after the famous Lockheed Martin development effort team of the same name -- centered on the careful testing and integration of the hardware components. This is necessary to achieve high levels of stability that would support regular classroom, telemedicine and administrative applications.

UB Skunkworks had successes over the past year with IP ad hoc conference events sponsored by the UB School of Nursing. But on Feb. 10, a semester-long graduate seminar in the UB Department of Comparative Literature co-taught by instructors at UB and Stanford University was launched and put the new processes to the test.

In the course, "Bodyworks: Medicine, Technology and the Body in the Late 20th Century," instructors Timothy Lenoir of Stanford and Bernadette Wegenstein of UB share several teaching tools -- a Web page, locally projected images and videoclips -- that are projected onto a large screen in both classrooms. They reserve the videoconference link for discussion and spontaneous student interaction.

The "Bodyworks" effort paved the way for a second course, "Turbulence for the New Millennium," in which instruction originating from the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) at the University of California at Santa Barbara is transmitted to students at UB, Clarkson and RPI. The instructor is William George, UB professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who is conducting research at ITP while on sabbatical.

Stephens says George had planned to teach the course as a simple ISDN-videoconferenced class, but the plan nearly fell apart when testing determined that UCSB was on a proprietary ISDN network, creating compatibility problems with other learning sites.

"We could have resolved the incompatibility problems, but the solutions were all very expensive, involving the use of commercial gateway services. What we did instead was to apply the same IP videoconferencing technology we were testing with Stanford to see if we could find solution for Bill's "Turbulence" class. A successful connection was made using a new H.323 Polycom unit, literally out of the box at the Santa Barbara end.

In this case, Stephens says, the IP link was brought into a dedicated distance-learning classroom, then sent to RPI and Clarkson through the ISDN bridge at Binghamton University, a solution that saved thousands of dollars in gateway fees.

"It took a couple of classes to get the bugs worked out," she says, "but students and co-instructors at RPI and Clarkson were patient and good-humored in dealing with this exciting new technology."

Millard Fillmore College worked to keep faculty and technical support coordinated and arranged for all of the required ancillary support required to make these classes a reality.