[AG-TECH] Microsoft Research Access Grid node up on one box

[Jay Beavers]

Just thought I'd let you know that I'm now running an Access Grid node
on a single ~$4500 computer (not counting displays, microphones,
cameras) successfully.  I've seen 35 QCIF & 3 CIF video streams work
great spread across multiple monitors.  Some details:

* Hardware

	Dell Precision 330 Workstation (Pentium IV/1.4 GHz @ ~70% CPU
utilization, 512 MB RAM w/ 155 MB in use)
	Primary display adapter NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS
	Secondary display adapter Matrox G200 MMS Quad (four analog
video outs)
	2x Dell LCD panels @ 1600x1200
	3x Compaq MP2800 Projectors @ 1024x768
	Integrated full duplex audio on motherboard
	Integrated 100BaseT Ethernet on motherboard
	Osprey-200 Audio/Video capture card
	3x free PCI slots (2x PCI, 1x AGP in use)
	El-cheapo microphone
	Sony S-Video camera

* Software

	Windows 2000 Professional, Service Pack 1 & Windows Updates
applied
	Osprey-200 drivers v1.52
	Access Grid Virtual Venue 2000-1219 software
	Stock VIC v2.8ucl-1.1.3-win32 (necessary to enable send &
receive on one machine, AG VIC has send disabled)
	Stock RAT v4.2.13
	Multicast Beacon v0.63

* Changes from standard Access Grid 2000-1219 installation

	Added stock VIC & RAT to add video send & audio send/receive to
one box
	Moved all services to one Windows 2000 computer
	Applied Internet Explorer MIME associations for AG components
(previously sent to this list)
	Modified start-beacon.bat to use "jview ..." instead of "java
..." to work with MS VM native to Windows 2000

* Issues uncovered during testing

	Pre-Beta 2 Windows XP (next release of Windows 2000)
incompatible with RAT send (RAT receives just fine)

* Work moving forward

	Investigating interoperable, more efficient Windows client
applications based on DirectShow and TAPI functionality included in
Windows 2000 & Windows XP
	Investigating improving video quality & system efficiency using
different codecs like MPEG-4, MSVideo, & MSAudio
	Investigating improved CPU efficiency with new Pentium-IV
optimized codecs
	Investigating software echo cancellation (part of upcoming
Windows XP release)
	Investigating fault tolerant multicast RTP video transport
	Future integration work pending discussions with AG team @ ANL


FYI, I'll be out of office next week and not very responsive to
questions about this setup while offsite.

 - jcb