Real-Time Audio and Video Transmission of IEEE Globecom'96 over the Internet
7 May 1997
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I was part of a team responsible for transmitting the proceedings of
the IEEE Globecom'96 conference, held in London in the week of 17-22
November 1996, live over the Mbone. Two papers, published in the
IEEE Communications Magazine and presented at the
IEEE Engineer's Conference at Networld+Interop in May 1997 describe
how this was done.
Live video and audio of all the events in the Churchill Auditorium of
the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre were captured and transmitted,
in real time, as well as stored and transmitted later, for remote
participants in three continents, over the Internet.
Two independent systems were used simultaneously, one supplied by
researchers from NTT Laboratories in Japan and the other by ourselves.
The former system is based on a server model of distribution, while
our system was based on the use of IP multicast. Both systems used
compression algorithms, so the network capacity requirement in each
case was on the order of 100 kbps to 200 kbps total, enabling remote
participants without very high-end network connectivity to take
part. Receivers only need software for a PC running most popular
versions of Windows or a Unix workstation to be able to receive either
type of transmission.
The multimedia transmission was carried over carefully engineered links
that traversed many different subnet technologies, including point-to-point
circuits, SMDS networks, ATM networks, and fast Ethernet switches. This
was both to give a high level of assurance that the traffic would not
experience too much interference from other traffic at the site and
elsewhere, and to ensure very low packet store and forward delays The
system ran for four days continuously, and was generally very
successful. In the future, it should be possible to have remote paying
attendees.