QCIF has successfully streamed multiple uncompressed high definition (1920x1080) videos from our St Lucia lab to be displayed in real time on a 62 megapixel OptIPortal display. This technique, known as visualcasting, was demonstrated at the APAN29 conference, held in Sydney in February 2010 and utilised a SAGE  bridge provided by AARNet. Our demonstration showed how researchers at different sites can now collaborate effectively in situations requiring the high resolution display capabilities which OptIPortals provide. It built on the experience previously gained through our participation (also with assistance from AARNet) in visualcasting-related events at past supercomputing conferences (SC08 and SC09).

Background and methodology

Following the 2009 Supercomputing conference (SC09) it was decided to implement a visualcasting testbed in Australia. Earlier QCIF testing had been hampered by local networking constraints. Since then, the University of Queensland had upgraded to a 10Gb/s connection to the AARNet national backbone, following which a 10Gb/s network was installed to the UQVislab - just in time for SC09.

The Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) "provides an advanced networking environment for the research and education community in the Asia Pacific region, and promotes global collaboration". Regular APAN conferences host a number of working groups and sessions including HDTV "to discuss the latest developments around the network based delivery of HD (high definition/4K video technology". It was agreed that a number of institutions would participate in a series of visualcasting tests using AARNet's yet to be built SAGE Bridge. The results of this testing would be presented in the HDTV session at  the 29th APAN conference, held in Sydney, Australia, 8-11 February, 2010. Participating institutions included Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), University of Melbourne (UMelb) and Texas Advanced Computation Center (TACC).

The AARNet SAGE Bridge was implemented as a cluster of three machines, each with 10G connection to the network. The machines were initially installed in the machine room for initial setup and testing. Due to delivery delays of various components, the physical installation was not completed until January 2010 and then, after OS and software installation, trials of visualcasting with local machines were not successful. The planned demonstration at the APAN29 conference was therefore recast to be a show of multiple video streams from each of the participating sites. In the days leading up to the conference, this scenario was tested extensively using multiple streams from UQVislab in Brisbane, leading to a new record for a customer generated data flow across the AARNet backbone. Sustained (overnight) streams at 5Gb/s were achieved, as well as a brief period of 6Gb/s during testing the day before the demonstration.

For further information see the AARNET press release