AG Scheduling and Questions...

[Rick Stevens]

There has been some confusion about AG scheduling for the SC99... I'll try 
to shed some light on some related
issues..

I Believe that a number of groups are planning on using the AG to transmit 
a variety of activities going on in booths and to connect one or more 
remote sites to AG events that are happening in Booths..

I think there will be 4 or 5 booths on the show floor with full AG 
capabilities (fully AG compliant nodes), with
perhaps a few dozen groups with less than AG compliant nodes).. One of the 
key points for the AG nodes
that are compliant is they should be able to support a richer software 
capability than those that are not, and with higher quality (audio in 
particular)...

Argonne has been rushing to develop some new software for the AG that will 
support multiple AG sessions simultaneously on different "channels".. This 
concept we call "Virtual Venues". Further announcements about how to get 
the software and access to the web site for it use will be made later today 
and over the next few days (it is in alpha type release, but it relies on 
the node being fully AG capable).. in a nutshell we have developed a 
virtual collection of linked meeting rooms that can be used to host a 
particular AG session.. you can sign up to reserve them by name of the 
location and time slot. Then either automatically or manually (depending on 
how well the new software is working) You will be allocated the mcast and 
related resources to support the scheduled session and automatically 
"teleported to the reserved venue".  This means that two or more unrelated 
events can be going on the AG at the same time each using a disjoint set of 
AG nodes.  It also means that other sites that want to participate in a 
particular AG event can look on the schedule and see which Virtual Venue is 
being used for each event and wether they are open for additional 
participation.  All of this means the following..

EACH AG node needs to have TWO TYPES of SCHEDULES.. one schedule is the 
event to virtual venue mapping, and the other schedule is which virtual 
venue a node will be at at a particular time, indicating a which particular 
AG node is participating in which venue at a given time.  We will be 
posting the ANL booth AG schedule on the AG website and welcome others to 
sign up to participate in those events and also to generate your own 
events.  I know that PACS has already scheduled some events, and we would 
like to get these posted on the Virtual Venue schedule ASAP.  Other events 
are welcome to.  One such set of Demos is the QoS demos that we are 
planning between ANL Booth, NCSA Booth (we hope), LBNL Booth etc.)

We are posting on the AG web site the Virtual Venue schedule which needs to 
be filled in by the various groups that are sponsoring AG events that they 
want to advertise to the AG universe.. Each booth and other AG sites needs 
to figure out which specific events (and which virtual venue) they will 
tune in to at what time and which they are originating/hosting and which 
they are just participating in..

Sorry for so much dense text.. I think that an AG session on Thursday this 
week would be a good time to
try out this new Virtual Venue capabilities and help refine the schedules..

--Rick