[AG-TECH] echo-cancellation on the cheap?

[David E. Bernholdt]

While Gurcharan raises a valid issue, from my point of view it is a
matter of "ease" of deployment.  

We have a single AG node at ORNL right now, and for a combination of
practical and political reasons, its located 10 min walk from my
office (even though I built it), and at least that far from the
majority of prospective users.  That means usage of the AG node
requires conscious intent.

I'd like to be able to have an AG in every conference room in our
Division, and looking further forward, I'd even like to have "personal
AG" capabilities in each office -- maybe not the full AG, but enough
to have reasonable meetings with 1-2 people at each of a couple sites,
or to receive an AG-cast seminar.  I think this level of accessibility
to the facilities would do a lot to promote the Access Grid.

So if each node costs $70k, it is a lot harder to get people to spring
for lots of them.  I don't know exactly where the thresholds are (and
they'll vary by institution), but I would guess that if you could do a
small conference room AG node for say $10-20k, people would happily do
it.  And say at $5k, a personal AG node in every office is not
unreasonable.

Cost is not the only thing inhibiting wider deployment, but it is a
significant one for most organizations.
--
David E. Bernholdt                   |   Email: bernholdtde at ornl.gov 
Oak Ridge National Laboratory        |   Phone: +1 (865) 574 3147    
http://www.csm.ornl.gov/~bernhold/   |   Fax:   +1 (865) 574 0680