Download Dr Terry Percival,

Paper Submission for QUESTNet 2003
Author:
Dr Terry Percival,
Director, Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy
CSRIO
[email protected]
Biography:
Dr Terry Percival received a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. from the
University of Sydney. The first ten years of his research career was in the
construction of microwave-receiving systems for radio telescopes, including the
Fleurs Telescope, the Australia Telescope and the Very Large Array telescope in New
Mexico.
In 1987 he joined OTC Australia, where he led R&D groups working on the
development of submarine optical fibre communications systems and thin-route
satellite communications systems, including the development of the DAMANET
standard now used around the Asia Pacific region.
He joined CSIRO in 1991 and led a research team working on broadband wireless
communications systems and high-speed wireless LANs. The resulting patented
technology forms the basis of the IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN standard and was
licensed to a spin off company (Radiata Communications) recently acquired by Cisco
Systems. He was awarded the CSIRO 2000 Medal for Research Leadership in
wireless LANs.
In 1996 he established new mobile communications and telecommunications
networking research groups at CSIRO. The networking research culminated in the
establishment for the Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information
Economy (CeNTIE).
Key Terms:
Next Generation Networks, High Speed Networks, Video over Data Networks
Title: CeNTIE – A Next Generation Research Network.
Paper outline:
The Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy (CeNTIE) is
one of three Commonwealth funded Advanced Network Projects in Australia. The
CeNTIE is building several advanced networks; a Foundation Network, a Research
Network and a Media Systems Research Network. The project is half way though its
3 year life and the networks are now being commissioned. This paper will describe
the aims and goals of the CeNTIE Project and describe the three networks.
Four business system testbeds are being constructed in collaboration with a number of
key end users in Tele-health, Media Systems, Distance Education and Information
Brokering. Working with networking research engineers, the users identify the
technological, economic and social impediments to implementing New Economy
Business Systems. Solutions which overcome these impediments are developed and
trialled on the Research Network and then implemented on the Foundation Network.
Telehealth activities reflect the social needs, training needs, and business
opportunities for regional Australia. In order to deliver quality health care a telehealth system needs to give specialists a sense of telepresence. This requires high
quality communications with other health workers and patients as well as the sharing
of medical images and monitor outputs.
The Media Systems research group addresses the networking problems faced by
Australia's growing world-class movie post-production industry as their activities
increasingly transfer into the digital domain. The media industry is a major user of
computing, storage and networking services with needs usually in advance of the
general business community. Key areas include collaborative editing and visual
effects creation, high speed file transfer, and shared storage. A research network
linking 7 key sites in Sydney using Gigabit Ethernet is being established.
Technologies for tele-collaboration and distance education will be developed and
trialled in this business system. The problems associated with one-to-many and
many-to-many collaboration scenarios are being addressed. CeNTIE has developed
high-end audio and video interfaces to enhance the collaboration process. The project
will also address the wider issue of the human factors needed for effective telecollaboration.
Advanced networking technologies will have a major impact on enterprise computing
and pave the way for tightly integrated multi-party distributed applications. This will
enable the development of Information Brokering systems which will offer new ways
for organisations to deliver services and work closely with business partners and
customers. The Information Brokering testbed application uses open distributed
computing technologies and advanced networking to demonstrate how a distributed
organisation can efficiently and reliably deliver integrated services and information to
a geographically dispersed user community.
The common theme which has emerged from all end user groups is the need for
telecollaboration. After extensive trials the enabling technology required for this is
multiple streams of high quality digital video over IP based on standard PC platforms.
In order to illustrate the performance possible with digital video over IP the lecture
will be delivered from Sydney to the Gold Coast using one video stream over CeNTIE
and GrangeNet.
A companion paper will describe the networking research which is being performed
on the CeNTIE Research Network.