September 27, 2000

On September 27, SURA sponsored a meeting that brought together engineers from three differing digital conferencing technology efforts for a full day technical discussion immediately preceding the SURA Network Technology Workshop. Attendees included RADVision (leading ITU H.323 standard & stack developer), ViDe, VRVS (Virtual Room Video Conferencing Service, from CalTech/CERN), and the NCSA Alliance AccessGrid. These digital conferencing technology efforts are of specific interest and impact to the SURA community since there are user "islands" of collaborative conferencing beginning to form around each of these technologies within the SURA region.

Discussion in the meeting was both active and provocative. Each organization presented its work to the others, followed by highly interactive Q&A and preliminary evaluations as to the feasibility of developing gateways, whether "generic" or between particular implementations. SURA will coordinate the documentation of each organization's stand on both the technical feasibility and the perceived necessity of a gateway. The final report will be available on the SURA Web site. Mary Fran Yafchak, SURA's IT Program Coordinator, will be presenting a preview of these results in the I2DV track session of upcoming I2 meeting in Atlanta.