Briefing on the TENET provided Vidyo Videoconferencing platform for South African Higher Education and Research. Describes the service and the ways to access it.

1. Rob Bristow, NREN Exchange Fellow,TENET
25th June 2015
Video-conferencing – A new NREN Service

2. Vision
» Video-conferencing that is:
› High quality
› Easy to use
› Works in rooms, on desktop and mobile devices
› High quality content sharing
› Recording and streaming
› Secure
› Value for money
› Scalable
› Interoperable
TENET 2

3. What’s wrong with conferencing?
» The room is booked out or locked
» The support people have gone home
» The equipment is out of commission
» There is echo on the audio feed
» The video and or audio quality is poor
» I can conference from a room but why can’t I join
from my laptop or cell phone or iPad at my desk, or
at home or from anywhere in the world?
» I want to easily share content from whichever
device I am using
» Etc…
3

4. State of play of conferencing
4

5. Vidyo as Solution
» Capacity of up to 300 concurrent calls viaVidyo Desktop and mobile devices
» A 24 port shared dynamic bridge to connect H.323/SIP endpoints toVidyo meetings and vice-
versa
» A range of integration options for Microsoft Lync, Outlook and GoogleMail, including Lync
Gateways to allow Lync/Vidyo/H.323 calls.
» WebRCT enablement is due for release soon.
» Desktop clients available at no extra charge forWindows, MacOS, Linux. Mobile clients
available for Android and iOS in their respectiveApp stores.
» Access to educational pricing on physicalVidyo Room systems and equivalent software
editions where required for equipping conference rooms.
» Help desk and an advisory service to institutions in meeting their own in-house requirements
for room and desktop based conferencing.
5

6. What isVidyo?
» A software approach to videoconferencing
» Uses SVC (ScalableVideo Codec) and intelligent routing of video and
audio streams to multiple endpoints
» Encoding and decoding is done on the endpoints
» Uses of the shelf non-proprietary peripherals
» Solutions for mobile devices up to full-fledged conference rooms
» Scales to meet capabilities of what it’s running on and network capacity
» Will support 4K (or even 5K screens now)
6

7. CoreVidyo infrastructure
7

8. TheVidyo Landscape
8

9. 9
TENETVidyo
Conferencing
Infrastructure

10. Endpoints
» Desktop (and Laptop)
› Clients for MacOS,Windows (XP – 8.1) and Linux
› Up to 1080p30 encode and UHD 4K (3840x2160) on suitable
hardware (i7)
› Show up to 8 participants and content on separate screen
› Automatic Echo Suppression
› DTMF signaling for calls to legacy and voice-only endpoints
› H.239 Data sharing with H.323/SIP endpoints viaVidyoGateway
› SSL and AES-128 bit encryption

11. End points – Mobile and web
» Mobile
› Android & iOS
› Encodes up to 540p30
decodes at up to 720p.
› Display up to 4 participants
» Web
› Guests download a small
plugin and join through
browser (NativeWebRCT
support coming soon)
11

12. End points - Rooms
» Use existing H.323/SIP endpoints viaVidyoGateway
» UseVidyo badged rooms
› Range of form factors and capabilities to suit a range of scenarios
› Use off-the-shelf peripherals
› Mobile trolley set up available
» UseVidyoRoom SE – all the capabilities but you provide the hardware (i5 or i7)
› Receive up to Ultra HD 4K video (3840x2160), transmit up to 1080p60
› Transmit high frame rate Audio /Video content up to 1080p30
› Content sharing up to 4K content encode and decode
» Connect to H.323/SIP endpoints viaVidyoGateway
12

13. UsingVidyo
» TENET has set up “Tenant” areas for each university/research body
» Looking to transition to user provisioning through SAFIRE
» Meanwhile, request account from your Admin
» Download client fromVidyoPortal (see:
https://tenetvc.wordpress.com/vidyoportal-addresses/ for the
address of yourVidyoPortal
» Login and look at: https://tenetvc.wordpress.com/users/getting-
started-with-vidyo/
» Have a meeting!
13

14. 14
MacBook-Pro:~ rnb$ traceroute vr1-vm1-cpt1.tenet.ac.za
traceroute to vr1-vm1-cpt1.tenet.ac.za (196.24.243.134), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 137.158.12.1 (137.158.12.1) 13.221 ms 28.685 ms 8.027 ms
2 uc-core.net.uct.ac.za (137.158.255.1) 1.842 ms 4.488 ms 1.659 ms
3 uc-firewall.net.uct.ac.za (137.158.248.21) 2.044 ms 5.598 ms 2.197 ms
4 vlan421.uc-edge.net.uct.ac.za (137.158.248.17) 2.940 ms 2.972 ms 2.562 ms
5 155.232.27.74 (155.232.27.74) 5.406 ms 5.275 ms 5.692 ms
6 vr1-vm1-cpt1.tenet.ac.za (196.24.243.134) 4.923 ms 4.850 ms 5.091 ms

15. MeetingToolbar functions

16. Add people to the meeting
Adding participants
Control meeting Select a name and click Invite

17. Control meeting screen

18. New
room per
meeting
option

19. New features (Just released)
» Closer calendar integration for scheduling
» Option to create new room for each meeting
» Better options for searching contacts
» On-screen reminder that you are sharing your whole screen and status of
microphone, speaker and camera muting
» Shows who is a guest in your meeting
» More in application options to control meeting (mute mics, etc.)
» SAML support in the Desktop client
» Support for setting parameters with a managed installation

20. Security enhancements
» Login, signaling and media encryption
› HTTPS/TLS/AES 128 bit
» Component authentication / Access protection
› Spoof protection and hardened Linux appliances
» Database / Password Protection
› Passwords are hashed in DB
› The endpoint never stores the password (Token based)
» US DoD approved and HIPAA compliant for healthcare applications
» Full security review process and testing
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21. What can you use it for?
»Collaboration!
»Teaching and learning
»Administration
»Telemedicine
»Interviews
»Contact with remote workers
21

22. Vidyo at CERN
» CERN needed to scaleV-C capabilities
» TraditionalV-C was way too expensive
» Settled onVidyo
» 20,000 user accounts
» Routers in many locations (one coming on line
in CapeTown)
» Over 800 concurrent connections at peak
» Cool graphic here: http://avc-
dashboard.web.cern.ch`/Vidyo
» CERN askedTENET to provide hosting for
Vidyo Router for SA use
22

23. Vidyo at SKA
» Needed to expand video-conferencing
hugely
» Existing and emerging H.323/SIP
technologies were difficult to use, and very
expensive and were not good for the
desktop/mobile
» Trialed other systems (Zoom, Blue Jeans),
as well as consumer level applications
(Skype,Google Hangouts) but came down
forVidyo
» Have in-houseVidyoGateway but use
TENET’sVidyoPortal and Router
09/10/14 TENET 23

24. Telemedicine at RXCH
20/03/2015 GoogleTidesUpdate - NTUG Meeting March 2015 24

25. CoE– MASS
20/03/2015 GoogleTidesUpdate - NTUG Meeting March 2015 25

26. Administation
4th Nov 2014TENET 26

28. Thank you
Rob Bristow
r.bristow@tenet.ac.za
079 1818 708
@robbristow