New International Advanced Communication Services for Ultra-High-Performance Digital Media Demonstrated at the 9th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop in Daejeon, Korea
26 October 2009 -- At the 9th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop in Daejeon, South Korea, this week, an international research consortium demonstrated multiple advanced international digital media communication services supporting ultra-high-resolution content. This Workshop is organized by the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) and hosted by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI).
One demonstration showed a 3D high-resolution visualization being streamed in real time from North America to Daejeon, including one from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which connected through the StarLight international communications exchange. These innovative media services are based on an advanced architecture, network middleware, and dynamically provisioned lightpaths based on flexible optical-fiber technology.
These communication services enable multiple high-resolution digital-media streams to be transported among global sites using dynamically provisioned optical lightpaths across multiple domains, which can be used on a scheduled or on-demand basis. These services have been implemented on an international experimental network testbed -- the High Performance Digital Media Network (HPDMnet) -- using GLIF network resources and GLIF Open Lightpath Exchanges (GOLEs) around the world.
The demonstrated HPDMnet services represent a major departure from traditional Internet-based digital media services, which have limited capabilities for supporting very-high-capacity streams. To address the challenges of 21st century digital-media requirements, the HPDMnet research consortium was established to design, develop, and implement advanced communication services to support extremely high-resolution digital content.
The HPDMnet technologies demonstrated include those that are based on advanced architectures, such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). These services support methods for discovering resources, signalling for services, managing and controlling streams, receiving streams, transporting streams, duplicating streams using dynamically allocated lightpaths (e.g., optical multicast), and scheduling resources. This approach allows customers to select and integrate their own media service attributes instead of forcing them to rely on predefined services. Current HPDMnet services support the highest possible resolution digital media at research and education sites, such as universities, conference centers, and research centers, and they will not be available for consumer use for three to five years.
One objective of the HPDMnet initiative is to implement a persistent service among the major GLIF facilities worldwide. The demonstrations in Korea showcased several components of this persistent service that were developed by HPDMnet consortium partner institutions from many countries around the world.
More information:
Joe Mambretti
International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR)
Northwestern University
j-mambretti@northwestern.edu