[AG-TECH] AG reliability in an intranet situation, and hi-res streams

Osland, CD (Chris) C.D.Osland at rl.ac.uk
Mon Aug 9 10:39:43 CDT 2004


I hope this doesn't raise any hackles.  Here goes...

I had a request for information today about Access Grid in the
context of what might be termed a mission-critical application:
realtime surgical advice in hospitals.  Not a rehearsal! Live body
on the slab under the knife, surgeon wanting extra opinions in
realtime.

AG is functionally highly suitable in many ways: multiple
simultaneously displayed video streams; no voice-switching;
multiple audio feeds working simultaneously.

There were two sticking points.  The first was reliability,
and the second was high resolution, also realtime, video
streams.  There was also a question about security, but I
felt it was reasonable to indicate that this is well
addressed by encryption and certificates: I hope this is true.

Q1:  Does anyone who uses AG technology over an INTRANET
have any comment on how reliable it (and you might need
to specify which AG version 'it' refers to) has proved?

Q2:  What is the current status of 640x480, 786x576 and 
1024x768 video stream capture and display under AG2.x.x?
[This must be realtime video - VNC is not suitable.]

Let me repeat - this is NOT for teaching, where a bit of
outage can be tolerated, but for real operations.  As I
understand it, it is likely to be covered by a single
intranet, but I have no idea which hospital trust was
interested as it was a supplier who was asking me the
question.

My reason for stressing the single intranet aspect is that
it appears, as a user and configurator of AG systems, that
most of the problems occur between sites and many (most?)
are caused by differing interpretation of the overly
slack definition of multicast.  Hopefully within even
a large LAN these problems are minimized.

Many thanks in advance for any comments or opinions.

Cheers

Chris

____________________________________________________________________
Chris Osland                         Office tel: +44 (0) 1235 446565
Digital Media and Access Grid      Medialab tel: +44 (0) 1235 446459
BIT Department             Access Grid room tel: +44 (0) 1235 445666
e-mail:   C.D.Osland at rl.ac.uk               Fax: +44 (0) 1235 445597

CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (Bldg. R18)
Chilton, DIDCOT, Oxon OX11 0QX, UK

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