NJEDge.Net - The New Jersey Higher Education Network

VRG Meeting Notes - February 13, 2002
George Carroll

Attendance: Twenty-five people attended this meeting.

The meeting was held at Rider University and included three presentations of benefit to NJEDge.Net members.

First Virtual

Tom Vorhees of the First Virtual Corporation gave a presentation on their upgraded Click To Meet (CTM) product. It is now much more than a scheduling package. It is a Web Conferencing product that can be integrated with Blackboard and other products. It has full video screen capabilities, multiple windows, high quality audio and a built in calendar system. CTM Express is a sub-set of the full product. (This product "packaging" is not unlike Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express.)

CTM works well with Cisco products used for video. It runs well on a Pentium server. For more detailed information visit the First Virtual web site: www.fvc.com

CISCO

Albert Garcia gave a presentation on the Gatekeeper stressing that bandwidth management is perhaps its most important function. Terminal endpoints do not know how much bandwidth is available. The Gatekeeper does not prioritize the traffic. Routers and switches perform this function.
The Gatekeeper also provides Quality of Service (QoS) which is vital for video over IP networks. QoS reduces delay and jitter.
The Gatekeeper needs to be in a protected area of the network and it must work properly with any firewall in use. Network managers need to be sure that the correct version of firewall software is being used with the Gatekeeper.
Zones are important to network topology. A zone is a collection of terminals, gateways and Multi Point Control Units (MCUs) managed by one H.323 Gatekeeper.
The video dial plan is related to the zone. The zone must be identified in the dial plan.

NJEDge.Net

Charlie McMickle reported on the organization of State Networks conference that he and George Laskaris attended. This organization is affiliated with EDUCAUSE. He and George learned a great deal about higher education networks in other states.

He also gave an update on the status of planning for our network with emphasis on plans for the video portal connection to Access New Jersey. Over one hundred K-12 schools now use H.321. Our video portal will include an Accord MCU and a First Virtual Vgate.

Charlie then discussed Internet 2 (I2) and our planning to connect to it. The I2 ViDeNet is a large, high quality H.323 video and voice over IP network. It is a test bed for global video over IP. There is an evolving dial plan, zone management tools and directory development underway.