![Internet Videoconferencing Backbone in US MBONE](images/66.jpg) |
Internet
Videoconferencing Backbone in
US MBONE |
From round-the-clock coverage of
space shuttle flights to international
broadcast of a complex liver operation
to a Rolling Stones concert, the use
and influence of the Internet has
been extended by the multicast backbone
(M-Bone). First used in a broadcast
in 1992, M-bone is a virtual network
that sends compressed audio/video
data packets to multiple remote locations
on the Internet as one data stream,
minimizing duplicate transmissions.
M-Bone enables users worldwide to
not only see and talk to one another,
but to also work on a shared electronic
window called a whiteboard, or "infinite
piece of paper." A principal creator
was Van Jacobson of Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, whose team developed
most of the user-friendly software
tools. Although simple in concept,
M-Bone is unique in its capability
to dynamically construct distribution
trees using the shortest, most efficient
paths. This high level of efficiency
is necessary to prevent congestion
and collapse of the Internet, because
the broadcasts usually include live
video, which generates large volumes
of data.
Scientific Impact:
M-bone launched a new era in scientific
collaboration. Not long after its
introduction, M-bone was put into
service routinely for collaborative
work by more than 10,000 users at
federal agencies and other sites in
30 countries.
Social Impact: More
democratic than traditional videoteleconferencing,
which joins a few sites with expensive
dedicated transmission lines. M-Bone
links anyone who has a workstation
with audiovisual capabilities and
a high-speed connection to the Internet.
Reference: Deering,
S., Estrin, D., Farinacci, D., Jacobson,
V., Lui, C., and Wei, L., "The PIM
Architecture for Wide-Area Multicast
Routing," IEEE/ACM
Transactions on Networking,
Vol.4, No.2, April 1996. An earlier
version, "An Architecture for Wide-Area
Multicast Routing," appeared in SIGCOMM
1994, August 1994, pp. 126-135.
McCanne, S., and Jacobson, V., vic:
"A Flexible Framework Framework for
Packet Video," ACM Multimedia
'95, November 1995, San Francisco,
CA, pp. 511-522. (Best student paper
award.)
Schulzrinne, H., Casner, S., Frederick,
R., and Jacobson, V., "RTP: A Transport
Protocol for Real-Time Applications,"
RFC 1889, January 1996.
URL:
http://www-nrg.ee.lbl.gov/
Technical Contact:
Thomas N'Dousse-Fetter, Mathematical,
Information, & Computational Sciences
Division, 301-903-9960
Press Contact: Jeff
Sherwood, DOE Office of Public Affairs,
202-586-5806
SC-Funding Office:
Office of Advanced Scientific Computing
Research |