Citation
Bagwell, C. (2001), "Cross-Continental Course Conferencing: Interactive Distance Learning Without Barriers", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918aac.002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited
Cross-Continental Course Conferencing: Interactive Distance Learning Without Barriers
Christine Bagwell
Cross-Continental Course Conferencing: Interactive Distance Learning Without Barriers
"Interactive Distance Learning Without Barriers", a session in the Infrastructure and Basic Services Track, could have also been called "Interactive Distance Learning Without Borders". Corwin Armstrong gave an engaging presentation on Duke's Fuqua School of Business' advanced network between their North Carolina and Frankfurt, Germany, campuses. John Collins, previously the Director for Strategic Technology Planning at Duke, provided a few comments but begged out due to his recent move to Nortel Networks. Nevin W. Fouts, Fuqua's Associate Dean for Information Technology, was also scheduled to present but opted out to be interviewed by the television news show 60 Minutes.
Normally academic use of the Internet between the USA and Europe would not be notable. However, Duke had dreams for using the Internet that went far beyond sharing information on a Web site or even using a text-based chat room. Fuqua chartered their Information Technology group to devise a means for delivering video conferencing at MPEG-2 video quality over the Internet. While a high-speed Internet connection at home peaks at approximately 1.2 MB per second for cable modems, Fuqua sought and succeeded in transmitting at 34 MB per second. This is an impressive achievement considering the network congestion many experience every day attempting to view Web pages without audio or video. While Fuqua doesn't yet offer courses completely delivered via this system, they do use the mechanism for tutoring and collaboration. The success of their high-speed connection between Duke and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, made Fuqua confident their project could be accomplished. Faculty, researchers, and students used the network to conduct distance learning courses four days a week. This "laid the groundwork", according to Collins, and instilled confidence that this connection would work across the Atlantic Ocean.
Fuqua wanted students at both campuses to feel a personal connection despite the great distance and a high level of comfort with the video conferencing system. Therefore, they contracted with the TeleSuite Corporation www.telesuite.com to build both their Durham and Frankfurt conference rooms identically, "down to the molding", as Corwin described. Another instrumental partner in their success was Litton Network Access Systems www.netaccsys.com, who manufactured the MPEG-2 codecs that Duke used. Also referred to as a compressor, a codec is a "software component which translates video or audio between its uncompressed form and the compressed form in which it is stored" http://www.terran.com/info/glossary.html#C. Collins noted that initially Litton didn't have a codec that exactly fit Duke's needs. They partnered with Litton and were beta testers for the codecs that Fuqua eventually adopted.
Aside from the need for a high-speed transatlantic connection, Fuqua needed the domestic network infrastructure to support their goals. FuquaNet was linked to the main campus network, DukeNet, via a one gigabit connection. DukeNet in turn was connected via two OC-3 155Mbps ATM links to Time/Warner fiber http://www.oit.duke.edu/architecture/dukenet.html. Time/Warner is connected to Abilene, the advanced network backbone supporting Internet2. "Internet2 is a consortium being led by over 180 universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet" http://www.internet2.edu/html/about.html. The connection between Abilene and Europe's version of Internet2, DANTE, occurs in New York City. One of Fuqua's network problems has been congestion in DANTE's equipment.
The last piece of the network was handled by DFN, Germany's Internet2 endeavor. In researching the contracts with DFN, Fuqua discovered their second major hurdle. In Europe telecommunication regulations prevent voice and data from being carried on the same circuit. This is completely contrary to regulation, or rather deregulation, in the USA and divergent from Fuqua's mission to teleconference using voice-over-IP. Astonishingly, Fuqua was able to negotiate for the use of voice-over-IP and received waivers to do so from DFN, Deutsh Telecom, and DANTE.
Once Fuqua had established the high-speed connection between Durham and Frankfurt, they encountered initial performance problems. Corwin noted that the most difficult obstacle was not in resolving the technical problems, but rather in getting the different companies to agree where the problems resided. Because each partner used different software for testing and statistics measurement, Fuqua was repeatedly routed to technicians with no control over the actual problems.
Aside from the current boon to Fuqua's cross-continent program, Fuqua plans to make even greater use of the high-speed connection. They plan to branch into complete distance learning and to make the network available for research computing during "off peak" use.
Christine Bagwell is Manager of the Instructional WWW Development Center, Academic Computer Services, University of California, San Diego. cbagwell@ucsd.edu.
Contact information: University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, MC: 0110, La Jolla, California 92093, 858-822-3315 (telephone), 858-534-7018 (fax), cbagwell@ucsd.edu, http://iwdc.ucsd.edu and http://LearnOnline.ucsd.edu