SUMOVER – Project Plan – v0c – 27 Oct 2005

JISC DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES

Project Document Cover Sheet

SUMOVER PROJECT PLAN

Project

Project Acronym / SUMOVER / Project ID
Project Title / SUpport for MbOne VidEoconferencing for the Research community
Start Date / August 2005 / End Date / July 2007
Lead Institution / UniversityCollegeLondon
Project Director / Peter Kirstein
Project Manager & contact details / Piers O'Hanlon ()
Computer Science Department
UniversityCollegeLondon
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
Phone: 020 7679 3670
Partner Institutions / UniversityCollegeLondon
Project Web URL /
Programme Name (and number)
Programme Manager / Nicole Harris

Document

Document Title / SUMOVER Project Plan
Reporting Period
Author(s) & project role
Date / Filename / SUMOVER-ProjectPlan-web-v0c.doc
URL /
Access /  Project and JISC internal /  General dissemination

Document History

Version / Date / Comments
0a / September 05 / First Project plan draft
0b / 10 October 05 / Second draft – comments from Kirstein, Varakliotis
0c / 27 October 05 / Final draft - integrated budget and workpackages appendixes
web-0c / 21December 05 / Final draft- removed budget

Table of Contents

1Overview of Project

1.1Background

1.2Aims and Objectives

1.2.1Objectives

1.3Overall Approach

1.4Project Outputs

1.5Project Outcomes

1.6Stakeholder Analysis

1.7Risk Analysis

1.8Standards

1.9Technical Development

1.10Intellectual Property Rights

2Project Resources

2.1Project Partners

2.2Project Management

2.3Programme Support......

2.4Budget

3Detailed Project Planning

3.1Workpackages

3.1.1WP1: Management

3.1.2WP2: Code management systems

3.1.3WP3: Common code base

3.1.4WP4: Tool support

3.1.5WP5: Workshop(s)

3.1.6WP6: Development projects

3.2Evaluation Plan

3.3Quality Assurance Plan

3.4Dissemination Plan

3.5Exit/Sustainability Plan

4References

Appendix A. Project Budget

Appendix B. Workpackages

Page 1 of 16

SUMOVER – Project Plan – v0c – 27 Oct 2005

1Overview of Project

1.1Background

There is now a significant deployment of e-Science conferencing facilities around the UK, which run some form of software system to allow sites to utilise their multi-party audio/video interaction and display facilities effectively. In the UK, according to the Access Grid Support Centre (AGSC)[1], out of a total of 57[2] registered nodes, approximately half the community run the open source Access Grid (AG2) [4]and the other half run the commercial inSORS[3]. Others also run Virtual Rooms Videoconference Service (VRVS)[5] system, or just standalone VIC and RAT. Both the AG2 and VRVS utilise VIC and RAT to provide for video and audio interaction.Thus currently a significant proportion of sites run VIC and RAT in the context of using their e-Science collaborative facilities.

UCL has been involved in development of the media tools since their conception. The Robust Audio Tool (RAT) was wholly developed at UCL, and provides for high-quality multi-way audio communication. The VIdeoConferencing tool (VIC) is a multi-way video conferencing application, originally developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whilst it was developed further at UCL. Both the tools, VIC and RAT, depend upon a library of multimedia functions, called UCL common multimedia library. UCL maintains a source code repository containing the tools and the common library, into which it has incorporated extensive modifications and new features.

To maintain stability and coherence the tools need constructive direction and the facilitation of a support base. However over the last few yearsUCL has only been able to provide a low level of support and guidance with respect to the tools since they have not been directly funded. Subsequently the tools havebecome somewhat divergent and fragmented.

1.2Aims and Objectives

The aim of this project is to setup and provide forongoing support and developmentof the Mbone tools, andthe associated UCL common multimedia library.Input from members of community will be obtained through the use of focussed workshopsand the formation of an evaluation and steering advisory group (ESAG)which will assist in directing the tools development.

The purpose of the project is also to maintain the continued successful incorporation and use of the Mbone tools, and associated libraries in the current generation of Advanced Collaborative Environments (ACEs).

1.2.1Objectives

The specific objectives include the following:

  • Setup and maintenance ofcode managementtools: These systems will provide for coherent evolution and development of the tools, with facilities tracking of bugs and features.
  • Creation of common code base: The code base of the tools has diverged over the past few years since there has not been consistent support for the tools. The project aims to bring together various versions, fixes and changes to the source code into one code base.
  • Provision for support and bug fixing of tools:One of the core tasks of the project will be the actual work of identifying and fixing of bugs. The provision of the common code base and the bug and feature tracking tools will assist and expedite this work.
  • Organisation of workshop(s) to foster collaboration and assist in direction: Consultation with community is essential in guiding the project’s development as to what needs to be addressed. In addition we aim to build and maintain collaborativelinks with the key organisations involved in this area.
  • Creation of a small number of focussed development projects: To maintain a cutting edge the tools should evolve their feature set to include new innovations. The project plans to identify and work on a small set of extensions to the tools.
  • Publish papers on development work done on the tools. The project aims not only to provide support but also to do some work on pushing the boundaries and generating new research.

1.3Overall Approach

A project management infrastructure will be instantiated, and supported through regular project meetings and the project website. The project management will liaise with JISC whenever required. In addition links with relevant external projects will be established and maintained, through use of workshops and the formation of the project ESAG.

The project plans to hold an initial workshop to provide some guidance from the key members of the community, and establish collaborative links with relevant organisations. This initial workshop will assist in shaping the project’s direction and aid work in development and integration of the code bases. There are various issues of interoperation and functionality which require resolution through collaborative interactions.

An initial assessment of all existing modifications and fixes to the tools will be made to ascertain their utility and suitability. In addition, existing bugs reports will be assed as to their applicability, and will be input into the deployed bug tracking system. In general obvious fixes will be contributed, and conflicting contributions will be flagged and will be dealt with through collaboration with the relevant parties. The goal of this work is obtain a common code base across all current stakeholders.

For the management of continued support and development of the tools asoftware configuration management (SCM) solution will be required. These SCM systems include support of source code versioning, bug and feature tracking and testing systems. The available tools will be surveyed, assessed and tested for suitability. Tools for deployment will be selected from those surveyed tools.

We will consider separately the needs for tool support and further feature development. In this we will work closely with the Access Grid Support Centre (AGSC). They have the responsibility for the support of that system as a whole, so that it is clearly imperative that there be a close collaboration between us.

We aim to maintain full standards compliance in the tools such that they are able to interoperate with other systems supporting similar standards.

The project does not intend to do work on the core of the various Advanced Collaborative Environment systems such VRVS and AG. We aim to work closely with such groups so that our efforts are complementary to their systems operation and development.

1.4Project Outputs

The project will issue a number of deliverables, which are all detailed in the workpackages section in Appendix B.These will include the core project documents:

  • Project plan
  • Project website
  • Biannual progress reports
  • Final project report
  • Completion project report

The project aims to provide other deliverables relevant to the workpackages:

  • Code management systems report
  • Common code base report
  • Tools support report
  • Workshops report
  • Tools development projects report

The software output will be the tools themselves, RAT, VIC and the UCL common multimedia library. Additionally the code support and management systems will be made available for continued access.

1.5Project Outcomes

The project aims to bring together the various strands of work on the Mbone tools into a common base. It is planned that this code base may enable continued use and development of the media tools for use within Advanced Collaborative Environments. With the initiation of collaboration between the interested parties we intend to facilitate continued cooperation in this area.

Through the provision of code management systems and bug and feature tracking systems we will make available information the progression of bugs fixes and the evolution of new features sets. This provides for transparency of operations and enhances collaboration.

We plan to publish research papers on the results of our development projects with the tools, contributing to research in the area of real-time media based collaboration.

1.6Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder / Interest / stake / Importance
AG developers / Integration of the tools and development of desirable features. / High
AG users / Use of the tools and development of desirable features. / High
VRVS developers / Integration of tools and development of desirable features. / High
VRVS users / Use of the tools and development of desirable features. / High
AGSC / Continued support for AG systems. / High
inSORS developers / Integration of compatibility with AG and VRVS systems. / Medium
inSORS users / Maintenance of compatibility with AG and VRVS systems. / Medium
Third party users / Use of the tools and development of desirable features. / Medium

1.7Risk Analysis

Risk / Probability
(1-5) / Severity
(1-5) / Score
(P x S) / Action to Prevent/Manage Risk
Staffing / 1 / 4 / 4 / Good management and making available interesting development work.
Organisational / 1 / 3 / 3 / The project will strive to maintain a well coordinated effort.
Collaborations / 1 / 3 / 3 / The project will endeavour to bring on board relevant parties and maintain collaborative links.
Technical / 1 / 3 / 3 / The project is based on open source software which is readily available. We plan to keep a check on the development process, planning any new work.
External suppliers / 1 / 2 / 2 / The project is largely independent of any external suppliers
External developments / 1 / 3 / 3 / The project aims to provide for high quality tools, however the project must maintain its awareness of related external developments
Legal / 1 / 3 / 3 / There are limited issues of licensing with the use of certain codecs but this has largely been dealt with within the relevant projects. See section 1.10

1.8Standards

The collaborative environments which utilise the media tools rely on standardised transport and encapsulation of media payloads for interoperation. The media tools themselves implement a number of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards, and have also contributed to the development of some of these RFCs. The IETF standards implemented include:

From the Audio/Video Transport (AVT) Working Group:

  • RFC3550 RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications
  • RFC3551 RTP Profile for Audio and Video Conferences with Minimal Control
  • RFC2198 RTP Payload for Redundant Audio Data
  • RFC2429 RTP Payload Format for the 1998 Version of ITU-T Rec. H.263 Video(H.263+)
  • RFC2035 RTP Payload Format for JPEG-compressed Video
  • RFC2032 RTP Payload Format for H.261 Video Streams
  • RFC2029 RTP Payload Format of Sun's CellB Video Encoding

From the Multiparty Multimedia Session Control (MMUSIC) Working Group:

  • RFC2327 SDP: Session Description Protocol
  • RFC3259 A Message Bus for Local Coordination

1.9Technical Development

The tools are developed in a combination of C/C++ and Tk/Tcl. Whilst Tk/Tcl is not in as wide use as other graphical toolkits (e.g. GTK, QT, WxWindows) today, however it is well maintained and still used in a relatively large number of systems. A structured approach will be taken to any modifications of the code, and all changes will be tracked via a source code versioning system. Workpackage 2 is dedicated to the evaluation and deployment of a bug and feature tracking system for the evolution of the tools.

Since the developments in this project are largely concerned with programming they do not relate directly toDistributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) type activities so most of the guidelines do not apply. However the project will endeavour to follow any guidelines that are relevant, such as in the case of the website and any dissemination material.

1.10Intellectual Property Rights

There are a number of different contributors to the tools. Some of the contributors hold copyright on certain files, whilst other files have slightly differing licenses, which allow for distribution and use of the software.

One codec in RAT, specifically the WB-ADPCM codec, is licensed by British Telecommunications Plc withpermission granted to use in for non-commercial research and development projects – however it is possible to exclude that codec as required.

The licenses in use are mainly a BSD[6] style licence from University College London for RAT and the Common multimedia library, whilst VIC is mainly covered by a BSD licence from Regents of the University of California. Other source files are under a new-BSD licence from external institutions including Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, Sun Microsystems Inc,Xerox Corporation,Apple Computer Inc, University of British Columbia,and WIDE Project. Others files are under the old-BSD license from Argonne National Laboratory/University of Chicago. Some files are freely licensed by the Internet Software Consortium.

In addition to the license holders above there copyright holders including; Bell Communications Research, RSA Data Security, Inc.Nortel Networks, University of Sydney, Technische

Universitaet Berlin, British Telecommunications Plc, Brook Milligan, Intel Corporation,HEWLETT-PACKARD COMPANY, Luigi Rizzo, University of Sydney Vislab, Software Research Associates, Inc, Telenor Research and Development.

To summarise the main bulk of the software is distributed under licenses that make it suitable for general distribution and use.

2Project Resources

2.1Project Partners

Project Manager:Piers O'in contact

Project Director:Peter

Research Fellow:Socrates

Since there is only one institution involved in the project there is no consortium agreement.

2.2Project Management

The project manager will run the project with direction, as necessary, from the project director. The project manager will work closely with the research fellow on the project issues and tasks. The project manager will spend 30% of his time on project management tasks with rest being spent working on general project tasks. We expect to form a small evaluation and steering group (ESAG) to ensure that our project accords with those in the community. The composition of the steering advisory group requires consultation with the JISC programme manager. It is planned that representatives from JISC, AGSC, VRVS, inSORS and others will be invited for bi-annual consultation. However it is expected that some representatives will be not able to be present at meetings in person due to funding issues.

Professor Peter Kirstein has extensive management and technical experience on many different projects over the years. Piers O’Hanlon has had some previous management experience on other projects. Piers O’Hanlon and Socrates Varakliotis haveworked on the media tools on a number projects in the past, and have detailed understanding of their design and operation. It is planned that Piers O’Hanlon will be available throughout the project and Socrates Varakliotis during the first 18 months.

The development and review of the project direction and budgets will be monitored regularly throughout the project. Project management and tasks will be addressed in regular project meetings.

In view of the essential support nature of this work, it should fit into a support environment. For this reason it has been proposed, and UCL-CS supports, that the work should fit into the structure of the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMI). We have discussed this with the director of the OMII and it is not clear to us that this is still considered desirable; we will pursue this with our JISC programme manager, and the director of the OMI.

Currently no training needs have been identified, though if such a need arises this may be considered.

2.3Programme Support

Currently no additional needs for support have been identified for the project, beyond working with the programme manager, attending programme meetings and cluster meetings, and responding to any advice from the programme advisory board.

2.4Budget

The budget is in Appendix A. [Note: Removed from this version]

3Detailed Project Planning

3.1Workpackages

We give a brief overview of the workpackages here, whilst the actual planning and deliverables are detailed in Appendix B.

3.1.1WP1: Management

This workpackage will provide for the management of the project. This will be supported through regular project meetings, the project website, and a project email list. The project management will liaise with JISC whenever required. The formation of the ESAG will provide for links with relevant external projects.

The development and review of the project direction and budgets will be monitored regularly throughout the project. Project management and tasks will be addressed in regular project meetings.

3.1.2WP2: Code management systems

The project plans to investigate code management systemsin this workpackage. These systems will provide for coherent evolution and development of the tools, where problems and issues may be suitably tracked. Such systems include source code management, bug and feature tracking systems, and other systems to enhance collaborative working.

3.1.3WP3: Common code base

This workpackage intends to bring together the code base of the media tools and the UCL common multimedia library. The code base of the tools has diverged over the past few years since there has not been consistent support for the tools. In addition existing bugs reports will be assed as to their applicability, and will be input into the deployed bug tracking system. This workpackage aims to assimilate the various versions, fixes and changes to the tools and common library into one code base.