# Presentation: 883320

## RCWG Update

- Sheila Cisko, Chair,
- Fermilab

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## Topics

- Description and Membership
- Recent activities
- Observations
- ECS 2005 Workshop Recommendations
- Conclusion
- Contact Information

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## RCWG Description

- Remote Collaboration Working Group is representative of DOE sites and universities which use ESnet Collaboration Service (ECS)
- Purpose is to interact between DOE collaboration community and ESnet Collaboration Services (ECS) staff

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## RCWG Membership

- 	Sheila Cisko,
- 	Chair  	Fermilab
- 	Alan Sill 	Texas Tech University
- 	Andy
- 	Kromphardt	University of Iowa
- 	Art Bray 	SLACCarl Scimeca  	Princeton Plasma 			Physics Lab
- 	Christian Helft   IN2P3-LAL
- 	Clint
- 	Wadsworth	ESnet Brooks Collins   	SLAC
- 	Deb Agarwal     	LBNL
-    	Ed Ritenour      	LBNL
- 	Hans Frese 	DESYGheni Abla	General Atomics
- 	Janine Jensen 	Pacific Northwest National 		Lab
- 	Jim Berry 	Sandia National Lab
- 	Joao Fernandes	CERN/VRVS.org
- 	Josh Stillerman 	MIT
- 	Karl Pommer 	Los Alamos National Lab

- 	Kars Ohrenberg 	     DESYK. Estelle Dodson    NASA Ames Research Center
-      Sabah Salih  	     University of Manchester
- 	Stan Kluz 	     ESnet
- 	Lori Abry 	     ANLMarcy Santana 	     ESnetMartin Jara 	     LBNLChris Masullo 	     Brookhaven National Lab
- 	Mike Pihlman 	     ESnetPhilippe Galvez 	     Caltech/VRVS.org
- 	Steven Goldfarb      University of Michigan
- 	Thomas Baron 	     CERN
- 	Thomas Uram 	     ANL/Access Grid
- 	Terry Schalk	     University of California – 			     Santa Cruz

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## Recent RCWG activities 

- Widened membership - new
- Continued interaction with VRVS/EVO and Hermes (CERN/IN2P3/CNRS/INSERM) for interoperability and R&D efforts
- Forming alliances with Polycom and Codian
- Requesting desktop H323 PVX ported to Linux & Mac
- Codian is very responsive to ECS and community needs
- Interacted with OpenSource developers for ECS interoperability with Linux and Mac H323 clients

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

**Notes:**
Bullet #3: Dialogue between RCWG reps at national labs and new Polycom federal rep
stressed to Polycom the importance for H323 desktop solutions to Linux and Mac in the scientific and education communities. 

## Recent RCWG activities 

- Provided outreach to:
- DOE Televideo Service HQ – two ECS-registered H323 rooms
- New LHC and ILC/GDE users
- Physics Advisory Committee – used ECS H323 service to meet
- Participated in ECS Workshop 2005
- Four members remotely presented at SURA/ViDe Conference (http://vide.net/conferences/spr2006/program_early.shtml)

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

**Notes:**
After 27+ years meeting face to face the Physics Advisory Committee used the ESnet Ad-Hoc 
Service

## Observations – the Good News

- ESnet Collaboration Service
- H323
- ~1400 registered endpoints
- More _registered_ desktops than room-based systems
- but room-based collaboration still important
- do not know utilization differences between desktops and rooms
- Average of ~6000 hrs/month of H323 MCU time in 2006
- or ~ 300 meeting hours/week day
- 2 Terabytes of video/month
- ECS would be in the top 100 data flows for ESnet
- Increase of ~1000 average ports hours each year
- Voice/Data
- ~500 registered users
- Average of 2000 hr/month of Voice MCU time
- Average of 200 hrs/month of Data Collaboration time

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## Observations-the Good News (cont’d)

- Internet2 Commons H323 services charge $2K per 300 port hours
- Cost for 2005 $480,000
- 6000 port hours/month
- Costs if commercial services were used instead of ECS
- H323
- High Utilization		Low Utilization
- $1,341,540       	   	$2,683,080
- $1,799,520	   	$3,599,040
- Audio/data
- $293,955.90
- $293,624.40

- ECS is FREE
- to the users

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## Observations-the Good News (cont’d) 

- Fermi Site Office ISDN connections to DOE/HQ

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## Observations – the Bad News

- ECS Audio/data collaboration
- operating with four year old code
- no future technical development for T120 data collaboration
- can’t be updated to level of technical usefulness without funding for hardware upgrades and the latest software
- ECS infrastructure needs to be maintained and updated
- Users are finding solutions through outside services that:
- do not interoperate with each other ECS/VRVS/et al
- are costly to DOE
- are no longer centralized to provide unified communication tools for all DOE/Office of Science projects

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## ECS Workshop 05 

- Program was divided into three parts
- Presentations from vendors
- Keynote was the Chairman of Codian
- Updates from VRVS/EVO, Access Grid and ViDe
- Reports from European collaborations
- CERN and IN2P3
- Attendees asking: What is the future of ECS in this era of tight budgets?
- Continued reliability, robustness, interoperability and flexible methods to connect are desirable and required
- Centralized collaboration services provide unified tools for scientists to interact and communicate.

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## ECS 05 Workshop Recommendations

**Recommendation 1**
**We recommend that the ECS current H323 voice and video services be integrated:**
**with state-of-the-art web conferencing solutions**
**with complementary existing tools such as VRVS/EVO and other MCU services.**
**Recommendation 2**
**We recommend** **expanding gateway access as need arises for conventional telephone access to videoconferencing facilities.**

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

**Notes:**
Rec #1: 
	Bullet #1 – existing audio/data conference services does not provide cross platform connectivity as requested by the user community. Technical development on the T120 not likely to be continued
 	Bullet #2: The ECS services should interoperate with other MCU services at CERN, KEK, DESY, ViDe or others and develop seamless methods to interconnect

Rec #2:
The ECS should provide sufficient telephone accessibility to video services for those users not able to join meetings using Internet or web technologies.

## Workshop Recommendations (cont’d)

**Recommendation 3**
**We recommend that ECS offer:**
**agenda services to include a meeting management tool**
**a user directory service**** **
**a community-wide videoconferencing facilities directory service.**
**Recommendation 4**
**We recommend that ECS implement:**** **
**resources for unattended endpoint and end-to-end validation**
**diagnostics of on-going meetings **
**metrics about infrastructure utilization.****	**

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

**Notes:**
Rec # 3 
	1st bullet – management tool provides to users useful information such as meeting venue, schedule, agenda, list of participants and reminders. 
	3rd bullet- directories allow users to find who has room or desk based systems at which location and when they are available. 

Rec #4:
	Bullet #1- users request access to diagnostic information to troubleshoot on-going meetings and endpoints
	Bullet #2- users should have access to meeting information that includes information such as which sites and the number of sites
        Bullet #3 users should be able to retrieve metrics and statistics about ECS resource utilization (limited statistics available now)

## Workshop Recommendations (cont’d)

**Recommendation 5**
**We recommend that ECS enhance user communication by providing:**
**online documentation **
**typical endpoint setting examples **exists now
**generic room installation recommendations **
**remote meeting attendee etiquette**
**outreach to new experiments and users, notably LHC and ILC experiments.**
**Recommendation 6**
**We recommend ECS expand the current helpdesk support to 24/7.**
-  24/7 support  provided now by ECS staff and volunteers from ECS technical community

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

**Notes:**
REc #5
	Online information about conference room equipment and desktop endpoints will allow users to more quickly understand and utilize the technologies thereby facilitating communication.

Due to the globally dispersed ECS community the ECS Helpdesk should be expanded to provide support 24/7. Support is
nearly 24/7 from ECS and volunteers, due to time zone differences.

## Workshop Recommendations (cont’d)

**Recommendation 7**
**We recommend that ECS offer:**
**a conference data repository service to record meetings **
**a long term archiving facility, preferably the same as conference data repository.**
**Recommendation 8**
**We recommend that ECS: **
**be provided with the resources and materials to investigate, test and assess the impact on the user experience of emerging technologies.**

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

**Notes:**
Rec #7 – 1st bullet:  a repository service such as Indico allows users to access documents before, during and after a meeting
                     2nd bullet: archiving facility allows all experiment- or group- related meeting information to be searched and retrieved 
Rec #8: 
Emerging technologies include, but are not limited to, cross platform remote presentation-quality graphics; VoIP;Instant Messaging; presence detection based remote conference scheduling; and High Definition audio/video

## Workshop Recommendations (cont’d)

- Each previous recommendation requires _*support and funding*_ for the preservation, expansion and enhancement of current ECS services in order to face the increasing demand from scientists and technology changes.

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## Conclusion

- ECS currently provides reliable and robust services, such as ad-hoc multipoint conferencing, that are on the forefront of collaboration technology.
- Collaboration technologies are rapidly changing and* ECS should be provided with the resources to remain on the forefront* *and* *be provided with the resources to develop and test new technologies.*

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006

## Contact Information

- Contact Sheila Cisko _[scisko@fnal.gov](mailto:scisko@fnal.gov)_
- 	for connection information
- 	to join RCWG Meetings
- Mondays 11amCDT
-  or to join mail list
- _[RCWG@ES.net](mailto:RCWG@ES.net)_

- S. Cisko - RCWG Update ESCC

- July 20, 2006