The VRVS was introduced in early 1997, to provide a low cost,
bandwidth-efficient, extensible tool for videoconferencing and
collaborative work over networks within the High Energy and Nuclear Physics
(HENP) communities, and to some extent, research and education at large.
Since it went into production, deployment of the Web-based system has
expanded to include hundreds of registered hosts running the VRVS software
in more than 28 countries. There are currently 19 "reflectors" that create
the interconnections and manage the traffic flow, at HENP labs and
universities in the US and Europe. A reflector was installed at DOE
Headquarters in Washington, DC in June 1998.
Virtual Room videoconferencing is now regularly employed as part of ATLAS
and CMS, and increasingly for other DOE-supported programs. The system is
managed by the Caltech L3/CMS group working in collaboration with the CERN
IT Division, under a joint project approved by the LHC Computing Board
(LCB) in July 1997. Future plans for the system include deployment of
additional reflectors to Asia, among others, and the spawning of other sets
of "Virtual Rooms" in Russia.
As an outgrowth of this work, CERN recently began collaborating with
scientists and engineers in geology, biology, civil engineering,
architecture and other fields who wish to use the VRVS technology. The
clear benefit of this collaboration to HENP researchers is valuable
experience in the use of network-shared applications, and shared VRML
worlds and virtual spaces. This is an important part of our near-term plans
for the development of more effective means of remote collaboration,
through the use of collaborative environments.
Development and use of the VRVS system for international meetings has
relied on the use of a minor part of the bandwidth on the Trans-Atlantic
link, which is managed by the CERN group. For US-wide tests of new modes of
collaboration and new applications requiring a higher range of bandwidth,
CALREN-2 (2.5 Gbps regional network), will be used together with the vBNS
and Internet2, before deploying the new systems on an upgraded
Trans-Atlantic link.
Collaborators
CERN, Switzerland; Caltech, USA
Contact
Christian Isnard
CERN
Christian.Isnard@cern.ch
http://www.vrvs.org/