Category Archives: Technology

Summer's Over

Well, the summer is over and it’s time to start blogging again! I have quite a little list of things to blog about. So here’s the first.

The TWICE Board retreat the end of June met at the St. Clair RESA nature center. After the meeting was over, we got a quick tour of the “gator,” a videoconferencing unit on a tractor for presenting programs from the nature center. Very cool. Enjoy these pics, compliments of Anne Thorp, photographer.


Anne Thorp, Ottawa ISD, drives the tractor.


Yup, it’s a Polycom!


Camera mounted on the front of the tractor.


Mike Maison, St. Clair RESA, gets ready to drive.


The trailer.


Inside the trailer.

What other unique setups have you seen for VC?? Please comment & share!

The Polycoms are coming! The Polycoms are coming!

Installation of the 35 Polycom VSX 7000s for our USDA RUS DLT grant began yesterday.

This week I’m participating in an 8 site week-long workshop on videoconferencing: 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing. One of the teachers in the workshop I’m doing this week called her principal to see if she could sign up for a videoconference.

She came back from the phone call just thrilled beyond thrilled! Describing the “sleek” new equipment that arrived a few hours before and how great it looks! The excitement in my workshop is palpable as just about everyone participating is part of the grant and getting equipment in their building within the next two weeks, thanks to the efficiency of AVI Systems.

We are all jazzed!

Learning more about my Tandberg MPS

I have expressed my frustration earlier that I could only use conference 1 for IP address dialing on my Tandberg MPS 32+32 MCU. I’ve also blogged previously about how we do VCs with everybody under the sun and usually they don’t want to/can’t register with my gatekeeper.

In March 2006, with the new Tandberg J3.0 (now J3.1) MPS upgrade, several other dialing schemes became available. I hadn’t tested these since they came out because I didn’t have time and didn’t want to mess up my currently scheduled programs. But now I’ve had time to explore and these are the results. Over two days, I’ve spent several hours with Arnie Comer, Macomb ISD, testing the various conference configurations on my Tandberg MPS version J3.1. I wanted to know how these different types of conferences work with old & new Tandberg endpoints, old & new Polycom endpoints, and the Polycom MGC MCU.

Regular Conferences
The following tests were done using the IP address of the bridge and the 4 digit extension of conference 2. On the Tandberg MPS, only one conference can receive IP address dial-ins. The rest of them use extensions. I’m working and testing with the assumption/experience that when I run projects with videoconference units anywhere in the world, they may not want to or be able to register to my gatekeeper. So I want this to work without gatekeeper registration where possible.

Endpoints are not registered to any gatekeeper.

  • Polycom VSX 7000 v. 8.0.3 can dial the IP address of the bridge, put the extension in the extension box and connect successfully without being registered to the gatekeeper.
  • Polycom Viewstation v. 7.5.4 can’t dial the IP address of the bridge plus extension. I tried it with the ##, two commas, and the @ sign. None of them worked.
  • Polycom MGC 100 v. 6.0.2 can dial the IP address of the bridge, put the extension in the alias type/party number box, and connect successfully without being registered to the gatekeeper.
  • Tandberg 800 v B10.0 can’t connect without being registered to the gatekeeper. When registered to the gatekeeper, it connects successfully with the conference 4 digit number.
  • Tandberg MXP 880 vF3.0 can’t connect without being registered to the gatekeeper. When registered to the gatekeeper, it connects successfully with the conference 4 digit number.

Endpoints are registered to a different gatekeeper (not mine). I’m trying this because this is a common scenario of other schools “out there” connecting in to me.

  • Polycom VSX 7000 v. 8.0.3 can’t dial the IP##extension when registered to a different gatekeeper.
  • I didn’t try the other ones because they can’t call without being registered, so I can’t see them working this way either. And no one is going to register their MGC to my gatekeeper. Not a chance.

Endpoints are registered to my gatekeeper. Of course this all works because that’s the way Tandberg expects me to use it!

Personal Conferences
The Tandberg MPS has a feature to allow personal conferences to be set up ad-hoc based on an e.164 or H323ID number. So these tests are with a 4 digit e.164 number. The interesting thing is, the personal conference e.164 number doesn’t match the “conference e.164 number”. It seems the personal conference number somehow “calls” the conference that is available.

Endpoints not registered to any gatekeeper.

  • Polycom VSX 7000 v8.0.3 can call the IP address##personalconferenceID.
  • The Polycom Viewstation v7.5.4 can’t call without being registered to the gatekeeper.
  • Polycom MGC 100 v. 6.0.2 can dial the IP address of the bridge, put the personal conference ID in the alias type/party number box, and connect successfully without being registered to the gatekeeper.
  • The Tandberg 800 v B10.0 can’t call without being registered to the gatekeeper.
  • The Tandberg 880 F3.0 can’t call without being registered to the gatekeeper.

Endpoints registered to my gatekeeper. Of course this all works because that’s the way Tandberg expects me to use it!

Single Dial In Conferences
The Tandberg MPS also has the ability to have a single dial in number “waiting room” where users then use DTMF tones to move to the conference room they are suppposed to be in. This feature is designed for ad-hoc conferences, so conferences with this feature can’t be scheduled ahead of time with the Tandberg Management Suite.

Endpoints not registered to any gatekeeper.

  • The Polycom VSX 7000 v 8.0.3 can call and create a conference and can join a conference.
  • The Polycom Viewstation v 7.5.4 just rings & rings dialing the IP address of the MCU.
  • The Polycom MGC 100 v. 6.0.2 can’t call in with DTMF tones (at least that we can figure out).
  • The Tandberg 800 v B10.0 can call and create a conference and can join a conference.
  • The Tandberg 880 F3.0 can call and create a conference and can join a conference.

Conclusions & Questions

  • There isn’t a standard for extension dialing without a gatekeeper. There should be!
  • What’s the difference between e.164 dialing with a gatekeeper and e.164 dialing without a gatekeeper?
  • Clearly IP address dialing works fairly consistently connecting across networks and to rogue units. This other dialing has a long ways to go to become consistent and useful.
  • These designs are clearly made for closed networks. If we all have closed networks, and we can only place outgoing calls, then how do we connect to each other? There are two options. Neighboring our gatekeepers together. I still think there’s too many of us to make this work. The other solution is to use an MCU so both dial outs can meet in a conference. In this scenario the MCU needs to be able to accept incoming IP address calls to more than one conference, which at this moment the Tandberg MPS can’t do.

Please comment if you have other thoughts or comments! Vendors, you’re welcome to comment too!

Update: I wrote this July 14, 2006. Since then, a new version of the Tandberg Gatekeeper has come out. It has some new features related to Single Dial In Conferences that may change things. When I have time to learn about them I’ll write more.

May 21, 2007 Update:  See the latest comments on my bridge here.

E.164 Dialing

For the last 6 months I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around how e.164 dialing could/should/is working connecting outside of our own networks.

Here are some of the things I’ve discovered.

  • E.164 dialing is a specific kind of H323 dialing your endpoint could do, usually in conjunction with a gatekeeper.
  • There is an educational Global Dialing Scheme in the works. You can read about it on the Internet2 website.
  • Megaconference and Megaconference Jr. use the E.164 Global Dialing Scheme dialing. This requires registering to a gatekeeper that participates in the Global Dialing Scheme (GDS). Gatekeepers can be neighbored together to join this scheme and there is a specific procedure for participating in this. Megaconference Jr. did have to allow some sites to dial the IP address instead of the GDS e.164 number because some units could not connect. It would be interesting to know more about that.
  • The United Kindgom has a service called JVCS that is using the GDS. Yesterday I did a test call with a location in the UK. They gave me their long e.164 number. It looked like the long ones used for the Megaconference dialing, so I registered with the Internet2 Commons gatekeeper to see if it would work. They were able to call my e.164 number on the Internet2 Commons gatekeeper, but I couldn’t call them the same way. We are still investigating why. They were also able to use the JVCS MCU to call me via IP address. (I’ve done a few connections now with JVCS’s MCU and the calls work great.)

Questions I Still Have

  • How do organizations get their gatekeepers registered and organized to participate in GDS? Who organizes that? Is it different for each country? What does it cost to participate? Some of the answers are here, but not enough for me to know how my 70 endpoints could participate.
  • If the vendors are pushing us towards gatekeeper registration as “best practice”, then in K12 we have to get something working so we can keep dialing each other. Is that even possible/feasible?
  • On the other hand, I’ve been thinking about this review of my projects session at NECC.

“Towards the end of the session the presenters had participants talk about implementation ideas in our respective school districts. The two people I spoke with agreed that there are a number of challenges to successful video conferences including cost, the technology and developing the programs. One person from a university said that she had never been part of a video conference yet that didn’t need a technician present to make sure it all worked, that it took time before the video conference to make sure all equipment was working prior to the event, and that often, there were interruptions in the connections. In our small group conversation, we wondered what place video conferencing may continue to play in education with the advent of lower costs communication solutions such as podcasts and web based interactive software such as Elluminate or Tegrity. Only time will tell.”

While I don’t agree totally with the tech support issues raised (I have several media specialists who are now able to do calls on their own with minimal problems), it certainly is a valid point. I’ve already blogged about how teachers can’t be expected to do this on their own.

If the technology is getting more complicated (all this weird dialing) instead of easier to use (I’m thinking specifically of K12 schools with limited tech support who want to connect to any other K12 school out there), what then???

I’m still mulling this over. Please comment if you have any thoughts on this!

In the meantime though, I’m going to keep doing creative curriculum based VCs for my schools!! I still do believe in the power of whole group based quality audio videoconferencing for communication & curriculum reasons!

NECC Exhibitor Visit #2

Today I talked to Polycom, Tandberg, and directPacket Research about their firewall traversal units. My main question is, how does it accept incoming calls?

Tandberg and directPacket Research require the “rogue” or “unknown” endpoint on the public side to register with the embedded gatekeeper to allow calls.

Polycom allows incoming calls with extension dialing, however it’s a bit of a trick to make a Tandberg endpoint dial in. I’m waiting for an email with a solution for that. I talked to someone who knows how it can be done and will send me the trick.

Why should I want incoming calls from public IPs?
Read Around the World 2007. How can I match a ton of sites if almost all of them can only dial out?????

“Best Practice”
Here’s the interesting thing. The rationale behind requiring sites to register to the gatekeeper is (in Tandberg’s point of view) best practice videoconferencing. I’m thinking maybe it’s really about security. Is it really secure to punch holes in your firewall for videoconferencing? I’m not a security expert for sure, but there’s a whole bunch of us doing VC this way (with VC holes in our firewalls) and I haven’t heard yet of someone hijacking an endpoint to hack the network.

Here’s my question really. If the industry thinks (or at least some in the industry think) that best practice is not allowing “rogue” or “unknown” units to dial in…. then…. how do we call each other? That term cracks me up! If you want to do a project with me, you’re a rogue endpoint! How does that make you feel?!!! LOL.

The answer is supposed to be gatekeepers. I still chuckle at that. Or at least I try to chuckle at it so I won’t cry! LOL. I did 400 VCs last year with almost 400 different places. Am I going to register with them all? Are we all going to neighbor our gatekeepers together? There’s so many ad hoc installations out there with very little technical support that I really think it’s a pipedream. Wainhouse Research just did a survey of VC in the U.S. and it was announced in the SIG IVC session this evening. The paper is on the Tandberg site right now because they sponsored it, but it will be on the Wainhouse site as well next week. Bottom line. There are 23,000 VC rooms in the US. Now, tell me, how are we going to connect to each other if we have to use gatekeepers?? Can we really get organized enough to neighbor 23,000 endpoints and their respective gatekeepers together? I have me doubts.

Then there was the conversation with vendors about gatekeepers getting in the way of calls. It makes me laugh to see the puzzled looks. I got this at the H323 workshop I went to in May too. Gatekeepers aren’t supposed to get in the way of calls. Unregistering from the GK isn’t supposed to be a solution to make the call work. But just about everyone I know who does lots of VCs  with “rogue units” (i.e. other schools) has run into this little quirk. One of these days several of us need to open trouble tickets so the gurus can trace the packets to see what’s really happening.

What we really need is an option on the front screen to unregister from gatekeepers, or to have a list of “favorite gatekeepers” so the end user can jump between the places (read: school districts around the world) that they like to connect to. I know this isn’t a corporate VC need for sure, but it’s driving some of us in K12 crazy.

I also learned that there is a new standard for firewall traversal called H.460 version 18 & 19. I’m sure we’ll hear more about this in the future. I didn’t get very far in googling it.

Well, I’ll keep learning and investigating this and sharing what I’ve learned. If you know more, or have comments (even vendors!), please comment.

Conference Tags: necc necc06

Hyper-Mirror Videoconferencing

Experience HyperMirror Videoconferencing! Japan-LA-NJ Collaboration! Energize Hands-On Learning!
Agnes Zaorski, Eatontown Public Schools with Takanori Maesako, Osamu Morikawa and Cathy Timpone

I’m in a really cool session about HyperMirror….

Right now during introductions I’m amazed by the blue tarp on the wall and the presenters are in the screen with the remote site! You have to see this! I’ve linked to a picture – but look at the images on this page.

The curriculum focus is on using probes and doing water testing between NJ & Japan.

She’s using phrases like, “we’re sharing data in a HyperMirror with Japan…”

They started with a New Jersey pond study and sometimes an ocean study. In Japan they did a river study.

Hands-on is the best way for students to learn. Students took probes to the water, recorded the data, and brought it back to the classroom for analysis. Two scientists were available in the classroom and via online for the students to ask additional questions.

Any international project includes culture as part of the learning, even in this science collaboration.

HyperMirror makes magic so they look like they in the same room.

How did they solve the time zone! US EST classes came back to school at 6:30 p.m. The Japan kids started at 7:30 a.m. There was a 13 hour difference. Both sites were willing to adjust their learning time. This is THE MOST important part of doing international connections. Being flexible and both sides giving are really important.

They used Moodle as their online community for asynchronous discussion forums to bypass the email issues. They had forums for troubleshooting, ask the expert, general discussions, discussing the latest results, assessment and more. They also use the glossary tool in Moodle.

They went to their water sources and tested various places using litmus paper, probes and computers. “Technology was perceived as process, product and tool.”

The findings were recorded in Excel and DataStudio. Students generated questions about their data.

This is a great example of a higher level thinking project that I’ve been thinking about all week.

So, next, how does HyperMirror work?

Problems with current VC – participants in different spaces and display splits them into 2 worlds.

The development concept is that we can be in a new conversation space that is on screen in a new space together. Digital Mirror World or HyperWorld.

The inventor showed a real mirror in the PowerPoint, and then a HyperMirror. Electronic Mirror. He had a create set of short movies to explain the concept. We are in the same room. What I see is What You See. WISIWYS.

There’s a mixer in between that mixes the two together. You get a live feed where everyone is in the same room using chromakey mixing. Here’s the graphic from the page on how to make it that was in his PowerPoint.


The emergence of etiquette as if you were in the same room. People start to act as if they were in the same room.

This is just wild!!! Amazing!

They started in 2001 and have connected with China, Korea, Afghanistan, Kenya, Mongolia since then.

So now they are going to do water tests on from both sides of the Pacific Ocean. The students are doing the water tests side by side in HyperMirror.
I really wish I’d had a digital camera! Next year I’ll have to come to NECC (if I can come) with a digital camera!

Now we’re doing an origami lesson together. Everyone is folding to make a crab.

This was a really cool session. I see Dale Hilton from the Cleveland Museum of Art here in this session. They already have the chromakey, so it seems it wouldn’t take much for them to implement this. Maybe soon we’ll be “hypermirroring” with the Cleveland Museum of Art!!

Every year at NECC I see a “WOW” connection. This was it for this year!!

Oops. Nope. We might not be doing this. The unit that mixes is research at the Osaka University and isn’t a commerical product. So maybe we won’t be doing it soon.

Hmmm. this works with iChat too.

Other things: virtual dressups with other cultures. Very cool. Very fun. Bringing people together into the same room virtually. Awesome.

Ok one more thing. The switch only needs to be at one site. The blue screen is only at the room that has the mixer. Cool. So we can do this with them!!!

Conference Tags: necc necc06

Birds of a Feather: Searching for Mr. Goodware

I just came in late to Scott Merrick and Joan Roehre‘s birds of a feather session on desktop videoconferencing.

Here’s some of the tools mentioned.

  • iVisit – PC & Mac. iVisit to iVisit connections. Has a push to talk button to help reduce echo. They have a server for education – for schools and for higher ed. They also have regular rooms.
  • Sightspeed. PC & Mac. Sightspeed to Sightspeed connections. Multiparty calls.
  • Skype PC only for video. Audio works on both PC & Mac.
  • Xmeeting for Mac. H.323 desktop videoconferencing. Among the group we had tested it with Tandberg, Polycom, and another bridge – I didn’t catch which one it was. Possibly Codian by the sound of it.
  • Ekiga – H323 desktop videoconferencing.
  • iChat AV is the Mac to Mac videoconferencing tool. Awesome quality but can’t connect to PCs.

Hardware
Polycom Communicator. You can do an audio conference with anyone (Skype plus other stuff) and be able to have a roomful of kids talking with someone and not have the echo issues. We talked about how the Polycom Communicator makes the lag go away. Read Scott’s blog entry about it. How does it do that???? It’s so cool! Also Scott’s entry about his connection with kids.

On the side, netvibes is what Scott uses for his RSS agreggator.

Joan: Kids are resilient and accepting of whatever technology you use for collaborative projects over VC. Kenosha is using Breeze to do in district cross platform collaboration.

Joan & Scott meet in this education site for videoconferencing rooms from Illinois. But you can use it if you’re outside IL.

Joan shared a video of Kenosha teachers sharing their use of web cams and teacher mentoring and using iSight cameras. The new teacher could see the mentor teachers class to learn how she was doing discipline, daily schedule, etc. The mentor teacher was in a different building. The two of them talked daily about how their daily work was going. Joan is getting several more iSight cameras for professional development like this. And she’s going to put this movie on her blog soon!

A great informal sharing session!
Conference Tags: necc necc06

Extension Dialing: NECC Exhibitor Visit

One of the “todos” on my list was to talk to the two main VC vendors, Polycom and Tandberg, about extension dialing. This is on my “figure it out” list for this summer. I’ve already done some testing with Arnie Comer at Macomb ISD, and will be publishing the results of that when we finish testing next week. But I figured while I was here I would ask both vendors to get their take on it.

If you remember, I tested a Polycom V2IU a couple weeks ago. One of the things we found was that the Tandberg endpoint can’t seem to dial into it. I am still discussing this issue with both Tandberg and Polycom, and plan to go back to the booths to discuss further.

But here’s the two main take-aways today!

  • There isn’t a standard for extension dialing! And yes, I got that answer from both of them!! Yikes! No wonder it seems like extension dialing/meeting room dialing is this really weird strange world. I’m still reeling over this discovery. What does it mean for matching for Read Around the Planet for example? Hmm. Must consider and learn further.
  • Gatekeepers. Argh. I keep hearing about gatekeepers. The Tandberg firewall traversal unit requires registration to the built in gatekeeper to dial into it. Of course you can dial out. True on the Polycom V2IU firewall traversal unit too. But I’m a little ornery. I want dialing to work both ways without gatekeeper registration. Am I asking too much?? That’s just from experience with RAA matching. And lots of other collaborative projects.

So hmmm. Hmmm. That’s where I am at this moment. No standard for extension dialing.

In theory gatekeepers are supposed to make life easier. What’s the chance, though, that we in K12 education, could be organized enough to neighbor all our gatekeepers together so we can call each other whenever we want. Sounds like a pipe-dream to me!

Hmmm. Any thoughts? Please share them!

Conference Tags: necc necc06

Testing a Polycom V2IU Firewall Traversal Unit

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I have 35 new Polycom VSX7000’s getting installed in 13 of my districts this summer. Of course we’re running into fun firewall challenges. In two of the districts, we have been unsuccessful at getting H323 to work through a Watchguard firewall. Changing the firewall isn’t an option. So I’ve been looking at the Polycom V2IU as a possibile solution. But I was very nervous about the dialing scheme required with any firewall traversal unit. The V2IU has an external IP address, and all the Polycom endpoints behind it have extensions. I haven’t been thrilled with my extension dialing experiences in the past, so I wanted to try this out to see what it could do. I made a list of all the tests I wanted to see working. Here’s the results.

V2IU Configured with Embedded Gatekeeper
First we (my district technology coordinator, me, and Cliff John from Polycom) set up the V2IU beside their firewall at the public/private border. We had a Polycom H323 Viewstation behind it, registered to the V2IU as the gatekeeper.

  1. Dial out to Polycom endpoint. Called out to my Polycom VSX 7000 (public IP). Worked great.
  2. Dial in from Polycom endpoint. My Polycom called in (using the extension box on the top right). Worked great.
  3. Dial out to Tandberg endpoint. Called a Tandberg MXP 880 (public IP) with no problem.
  4. Dial in from Tandberg endpoint. The Tandberg MXP 880 couldn’t dial into the V2IU. Could not get any combination of dial strings that we tried to work. Polycom suggested using the web interface to dial “extension@IP address” and said that Tandberg told them e.164 dialing was not supported. We couldn’t get that to work either.
  5. Dial out to Tandberg MPS. Called my Tandberg MPS bridge fine (IP address dial in).
  6. Dial in from Tandberg MPS. Figured out that to dial through the V2IU from my MPS to the Viewstation was extension@IP. (for example 123@111.222.333.444).
  7. Dial out to Polycom MGC. Called Macomb ISD’s Polycom MGC bridge fine (IP address dial in – gave the MGC the V2IU external IP address).
  8. Dial in from Polycom MGC. Figured out that to dial through the V2IU from the MGC (software rev 6.0.2.00) the extension had to be in the party extension box.

V2IU Configured with WAN Side Gatekeeper
The next tests I wanted to do required the endpoint to register to my Tandberg Gatekeeper to get ISDN access through my Tandberg Gateway and to use the Gatekeeper to get into conferences other than the first one on my MPS. To do this, we configured the V2IU with my Tandberg Gatekeeper’s IP address for the WAN side gatekeeper. The Viewstation behind the V2IU was registered to the V2IU gatekeeper. Then we did all these tests.

  1. Dial out to Polycom endpoint. Called out to my Polycom VSX 7000 (public IP). Worked great.
  2. Dial in from Polycom endpoint. My Polycom called in (using the extension box on the top right). Worked great.
  3. Dial out to Tandberg endpoint. Called a Tandberg MXP 880 (public IP) with no problem.
  4. Dial in from Tandberg endpoint. This still didn’t work. Same issue as above.
  5. Dial out to Polycom MGC. Called Macomb ISD’s Polycom MGC bridge fine (IP address dial in – gave the MGC the V2IU external IP address).
  6. Dial in from Polycom MGC. Figured out that to dial through the V2IU from the MGC (software rev 6.0.2.00) the extension had to be in the party extension box.
  7. ISDN dial out to Polycom MGC. Next we tried dialing from the Viewstation to the V2IU through the Tandberg Gatekeeper to the Tandberg Gateway to get ISDN access out to the Polycom MGC. Success!
  8. Dial out to Tandberg MPS. Called my Tandberg MPS bridge fine (IP address dial in to conference 1).
  9. Dial out to Tandberg MPS. Next we called into conference 2 by dialing it’s e.164 number. Success.
  10. Dial in from Tandberg MPS. Worked great by dialing the e.164 number of the endpoint.
  11. Dial in from Tandberg MPS. Dialing extension@IP did not work. However I suspect this is because the MPS can do this call with just the extension and was confused on how to send the call.

There are still a few unknowns, but I was very pleased with the results of these tests. Stay tuned for more learning this summer as our installation progresses.

6/29 Update. Based on some testing I’ve done today, I suspect that the Polycom Viewstations v 7.5.4 can’t call IP##Extension or Extension@IP either. The testing unit is gone, but I can see I’ll be dealing with this in the future.

Learning Still More about H.323

Much more in depth information in today's workshop. Here's a little tidbit I want to remember later.

Tools for Analyzing the Calls
A couple network analyzer tools were mentioned in the class.

The rest of the workshop I'm still processing….