IMTC SuperOp! 2010 – Interoperability. Evolving

And so another busy week became a history. IMTC SuperOp!, annual industry flagship interoperability testing event, brought together more than 50 engineers from 14 companies from around the world in a small town of Jesi in Italy, to continue enhancing interoperability of multimedia communications products.

SuperOp Testings

Of course you can not drive forward by constantly looking into a rearview mirror. Not looking in to that mirror at all is also dangerous ( especially for those who likes to drive fast :) ).
Reflecting on the past, it is easy to see how much the level of interoperability improved and evolved. Decade ago, an hour long testing time slot was spent on properly registering with the server, and then may be making one successful simple call (or not). Video did look decent on a small screen ( with huge piece of hardware behind it to make it work).
The term “HD Video” was not even coined yes. And the term “telepresence” was unheard of, at least in the practical terms. SuperConnect, a culmination point of a week-long testing, which was connecting all devices passed the preliminary testing, would take more than half a day to achieve.
Fast forward 10 years. To cut the chase as anyone in the industry can figure out the particulars, the SuperConnect 2010, consisting of about 35 endpoints and servers, including a 3-screen telepresence system, took about 37 minutes from start to finish, with brilliant High Definition Video shining all over the room.

Inter-operable Indeed!

Can we now gleefully rest on laurels and declare “mission accomplished”? You guessed it right, the simple two letter answer is “no”. Video communication is only starting to become personal and getting into homes. Mobile video communication is still largely non-existent, and both personal and mobile communication being extremely clustered (read: uninteroperable) as the very least. We are starting (only now) to define telepresence standards which will later on lead to the interoperable implementations. The work just started in various IMTC Activity Groups on other important communication technologies, such as VoLTE and Live Streaming over HTTP. All in all, there is a lot of exciting work ahead of us on making the world better connected (and, therefore, smaller) place – so come on over and will see you all next year at IMTC SuperOp! 2011!
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About the writer: Anatoli Levine

Open To ALL – Telepresence AG Workshop at IMTC SuperOp!

A quick reminder that our Telepresence Workshop is Today, at 8:00 Eastern;  14:00 CET.  Even if you were not able to attend in person, you are invited to dial in and participate.

Where: SCOPIA Desktop (http://tryscopia.com)

You have been invited to attend a SCOPIA Meeting.   At the time of the meeting, please choose an access method described below:

Desktop Link:

To connect from your desktop, go to http://www.tryscopia.com/scopia?ID=51876&autojoin

For other options (including connecting with presentation only or watching the webcast), go to http://www.tryscopia.com/scopia?ID=51876

We recommend you install the desktop client beforehand. To install the client, go to http://www.tryscopia.com/scopia?client

H.323 dial-in:

To connect from a video-conferencing device, dial 65.51.241.196

Phone dial-in:

1 (201) 773-7100  / Meeting ID: 51876

The workshop will provide an overview of systems that are currently available and what the future might hold.  We will discuss the challenge of creating interoperability between multi-screen systems, and how the IMTC is working to meet that challenge in the Telepresense Activity Group.  We will also provide a technical overview of Cisco’s Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP), and learn how traffic emulation tools can help with interoperability and product testing for this very high bandwidth application. If you are interested in learning more about this exciting new class of products, then this half-day workshop is for you.

This workshop will be led by the IMTC Telepresence AG chairs (Stephen Botzko and Allyn Romanow), and will include presentations from Cisco, Polycom, Shenick and Vidyo.

Agenda ~ Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Overview of Telepresence AG

Stephen Botzko, Polycom

Present Day Telepresence Solutions

Patrick Luthi, Tandberg

The Future of Telepresence

Alex Eleftheriadis, Vidyo

Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP)

Allyn Romanow, Cisco

Interoperability from a Service Provider Perspective

Sumit Kuma, AT&T

Use of Traffic Emulation in Interoperability Testing

Mark Lambe, Shenick

You are cordially invited to join us for this workshop.

Regards, Paul

IMTC Executive Director

About the writer: IMTC

IMTC SuperOp! 2010 – Continuing Advancing Interoperability

So the time is finally on. Long-planned and even postponed (thanks to the Iceland volcano with the unpronounceable name), IMTC SuperOp! 2010 is taking place in a small town of Jesi, near Ancona in Italy, June 14-18. Big Thank You to our hosts RADVISION Italy, Aethra.Net and Telecom Italia, as well as our sponsors Tandberg, Polycom, Cisco and Vidyo!

What is behind the name “SuperOp”, which sounds both big and cryptic at the same time? SuperOp!, a.k.a. “major interoperability event” is an annual gathering of IMTC member companies, getting together to conduct interoperability testing of IP Multimedia Communications solutions over one big network setting. Our First SuperOp!, took place in 1997, and then continued annually. SuperOp!’s goal is to help engineers to advance the level of interoperability of their companies’ products. Latest and greatest solutions, quite often include simply unreleased [yet] versions of software and hardware, that are tested for interoperability with each other. One can truly look at the SuperOp! as a giant development lab, where experts from the competing (sic!) companies work together to improve their products.

Is SuperOp! still relevant? It seems that interoperability is a key word, coming from every corner of the communications industry. From newly formed alliance, UCIF, which promises to focus on interoperability of unified communications, to the just announced Apple’s iPhone 4, which will provide video communications based on open standards, interoperability is a key topic for the whole industry. And interoperability is the major area where IMTC made the difference from day one – iNow profile and H.323 Forum Certification Program, numerous improvements in mobile video streaming standards and technologies, adapted by 3GPP, 3G-324M interoperability testing plans used by GCF as a foundation for certification program for mobile video telephony, MONA standardization in ITU-T, SIP Parity (video control enhancements over SIP)  definitions which are now making it into IETF, and latest efforts in the GSMA VoLTE and Telepresence multi-streaming and TIP – these are IMTC contributions into making technologies better in the practical hands-on terms.

So what will be happening at the SuperOp! 2010? First of all, there will be a lot of interoperability testing done in all of the Activity Groups – video conferencing using both SIP and H.323 (thanks to the year long hard work of the SIP Parity activity group, SIP-based video communication is becoming a reality), IP video streaming in PSS Activity Group, mobile video conferencing using 3G-324M. Then there will be a traditional SuperConnect – all-participants with all the video conferencing devices, always done on the last day of the event. In addition to this traditional activities, this year IMTC will also conduct Telepresence Workshop, where industry leaders from Cisco, Polycom, Vidyo, AT&T and others will present current state of affairs in the Telepresence Interoperability and lay out the plans to make Telepresence ubiquitously interoperable (audience poll: who thinks it is achievable, raise your hands J). All in all, we are looking at a busy week, a lot of work and a lot of fun! IMTC is open for every company interested in improving interoperability of their products (and enjoying the process at the same time!), so … c’mon over!

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About the writer: IMTC

The Technology Behind iPhone 4 FaceTime Protocol – Standards & Apple

Apple announcement of FaceTime, their new video telephony solution, included various standards: H.264, AAC, SIP, STUN, TURN, ICE, RTP, and SRTP. If this is the case, it would offer great start for interoperability, as the very same standards are widely used by the modern video communications solutions by majority of the vendors.

Here’s a short explanation on the role of each standard:

H.264 – one of most prominent video compression standards in use today. Used by every major and minor video communications solution today, from the mobile video to desktop to room system to Telepresence system. Has AVC (advanced video coding) and SVC (scalable video coding) profiles – AVC profile is what is widely used and interoperable today, while SVC profile holds great promise once interoperability will be established. Already used on the iPhone and other i-devices.
AAC – advanced audio coding standard. Widely used today in audio and video communications and has established interoperability. Used by iPhone and other i-devices.
SIP – Session Initiation Protocol – de-facto standard of IP Communications solutions, including both Voice and Video communications. Used by majority of video conferencing vendors, such as Cisco, Tandberg, Polycom, RADVISION and more. Also one of the core standards in 3GPP IMS ( IP Multimedia Subsystems) communications.. Highly interoperable, however, lacking dedicated definitions for IP Video Call Control – IMTC SIP Parity Activity group developed set of best common practices and use cases to improve interoperability of SIP –based video communications.
STUN, TURN and ICE – typically used together to support Firewall and NAT traversal functionality. STUN ( Session Traversal Utilities for NAT) allows to map internal IP addressed behind the NAT to the external IP addresses. TURN (Traversal Using Relay NAT) is used in rare cases where STUN doesn’t provide a solution. ICE (Interactive Connectivity Establishment) is used as an umbrella standard utilizing STUN, TURN, uPnP and others in order to find possible way to transfer the NAT and Firewall.
RTP, which stands for Real-time Transport Protocol, is used in Voice and Video over IP implementations to carry over real-time media and collecting of the statistics, such as jitter and latency, which in turn allows to implement better quality solutions. Today used by absolute majority IP voice and video vendors.
SRTP – Secure RTP, profile for secure RTP communication which supports encryption, message authentication and integrity. Widely used in both IP Video and Voice implementations.

We are looking froward for further implementations of this new technology. Things are getting very interesting in visual communication products.


More about Facetime:

  • Facetime Technical Analysis on packetstan.com - Part 1(TCP, UDP, AKAMI, STUN, SIP), Part 2 (Sip & Data Streams), Part 3 (Call Connection Initialization).
About the writer: Anatoli Levine

Announcing the Creation of IMTC Telepresence Multi-Streaming Activity Group

installation view, Burlesques Contemporains, J...
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It gives me great pleasure to announce the formation of a Telepresence Multi-Streaming Activity Group at IMTC. Telepresence is becoming widely deployed as companies seek a premium user experience while working together across different locations. Several IMTC members, including Cisco, Polycom, Radvision, Lifesize, Tandberg and AT&T have expressed interest in a Telepresence Activity Group and will be actively participating in the AG. The AG will be co-chaired by Allyn Romanow of Cisco and a representative from Polycom.

The charter of the AG will be to define the requirements and use cases to drive standardization efforts by the SDOs (Standards Development Organizations) in the Telepresence Multi-Streaming area. The AG will work closely with its peers in IETF and ITU-T. The kickoff meeting will be during SuperOp in April at Ancona, during the Telepresence Workshop.

The Board of Directors would like to invite all members to actively participate in the kickoff and the AG, as IMTC leads the way in standardizing another emerging technology area.

Shantanu Sarkar
Working Group Chair, Unified Communications
IMTC

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About the writer: Shantanu Sarkar