Rich Presence Trial : University of Hawaii : January 2004

Overview

This trial is participatory, distributed, and experimental. Participants download and install a specially tuned integrated communications client on their laptops. This client allow participants to initiate voice, instant messaging, and video calls to each other using the receiver's email address as a single, converged electronic identity.

Communication is enhanced through the inclusion of rich presence services, through which participants may see not only who is on-line, but also where they are and what they are doing. As participants connect to the wireless LAN, their location and calendar presence is updated automatically. Room location is derived through triangulation of 802.11 signals and is cross-referenced with the meeting calendar to learn the name and duration of the session in that room at that time.

Users may also experience placing SIP voice calls to any user at a SIP.edu-enabled institution and may eavesdrop on any member meeting session by initiating voice communication to a "room buddy".

What to Expect

Expect nothing and be pleasantly surprised! This trial is complex and experimental. You will have to configure software on your laptop. Voice quality over the wireless LAN may be poor. The WiFi signal triangulation may be inaccurate. Some or all components may fail.

Some or all components may also function well! If successful, this trial will showcase a number of emerging technologies, including:

• Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
• Automatic Location Services (ALS)
• Rich Presence
• SIP.edu style addressing (converged voice and email identities)
• Integrated Communications (voice, instant messaging, video, and other media in the context of presence)

We hope that this trial will also provoke thoughtful discussion on a number of important issues facing campus telecommunications leaders, including:

• The role of the campus / enterprise in enabling new peer-to-peer communications applications
• The future of personal communications
• Next-generation campus communications services
• The need for strong authentication and authorization of communications, especially the publication of location presence

This is more of an experiment than a demonstration. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to deploy rich presence with automatic location services in a large scale conference. This is also the first Internet2 meeting to encourage attendees to use the WiFi meeting network for voice.

Special Note on Privacy

There are two elements of this trial that may raise privacy concerns.

First, the network infrastructure is monitoring the physical location of each participant and publishing it. Physical location is only monitored for demo participants and only published to fellow demo participants. We will also be gathering aggregate, but not individual, usage information for the purposes of evaluating the preformance of various aspects of the demo and planning for future trials. Furthermore, the presence portal may be used to disable the publication of physical presence or to override manually what is published.

The second aspect of this demo that may raise privacy concerns is that some session rooms are "bugged" allowing anonymous evesdroppers to listen in. IP phones are connected to the room microphone systems and the output is available as part of the demo for people to listien to. Anyone who wishes to speak privately not use these rooms.

Getting Started

Registration

All pre-registred attendees have been also enabled for participation in this demo. This means you have been provisioned as a user on our SIP server and added to a temporary mailing list for demo participants. If you are walk-in registrant than there may be delay before can actively participate in the demo.

Although everyone has been enabled, participation in the trial is voluntary. You chose to join in by registrering with the PIC sip server (most easily done using the pre-configured SIPC client described below.) By registering, you are implying your acknowledgement and consent to the operating conditions of the demo which endeavor to faclitate communications between and location tracking of participants. If you do not chose do register with the PIC sip server, then then information about you and your location will NOT be made available nor will demo participants be communicating with you through the demo services.

Your account name for the purposes of this trial is the email address you provided on your Joint Tech's meeting registration form. Hopefully this is an email address that your colleagues would normally use to reach you, because that is how others will initiate voice, IM, and video communication with you during the course of this demo.

For convenience all trial accounts have been preconfigured with a common password which built into the SIPC client provided for the demo. This is intended to provide minmimal protection against abuse (e.g. by spammers)but is not intended to deliver a high level of security. If you want you can set a new password for yourself using an option on the Presence Portal. If you chose to set a new password please note that the passwords submitted will be stored in plain text in our registration database and may be transmitted in the clear. Do not use a password that should not be compromised.

Get a Headset

You may purchase a Cyber Acoustics CA-200 headset for use with this demo at a cost of US$7.25. These will be branded with "pic.internet2.edu" to point rubberneckers in the right direction. And, there will be rubberneckers, since what you will be doing with your new headset is w4y c00l!

Alternatively, you may use your own headset. We do not recommend using your laptop's built-in microphone and speakers, as they are often of poor quality and, without acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) software, will cause serious echo problems.

Purchase a Headset

If you puchase a headset, you will can pick it up from any of the PIC WG members at the meeting.

Download a User Agent (UA)

For this trial we are encouraging the use of a customized version of the SIPC user agent. Please download it now. You can try using other SIP user agents but you will not experience many of the advanced elememts of the rich presence environment that we are featuring at this meeting.

• SIPC from Columbia University's Internet Real-Time Laboratory (IRT)

• Download SIPC for Windows (updated January 22, 2004)
  Download SIPC for Linux (requires RAT which is included in the download) (updated January 22, 2004)

Configuring SIPC

Getting started If you have not yet downloaded a copy of SIPC, please do so now. Save this executable to a location of your choosing, and then run it. Choose the defaults throughout the install process. The SIP address you will be using during the demo is the email address you used to register for participation in the rich presence demo Setup Start SIPC. If a pop-up window appears demanding "Please input your license key", use the key sipc:-:2004-04-17:2004-04-17:3f602805a5a74f17acfaff9f84ad2451 When you start the SIPC program, you will see the Preferences dialog box appear (see figure 1) Populate the Name, SIP address, and Email fields using your information Populate the Outbound Server using the address of our SIP server (pals.internet2.edu) Select OK The main screen is now shown (see figure 2) Select the black button on the upper-left corner Select Accounts / add new account The fields here should be pre-populated with the information needed (see figure 3) Your password is what you selected during the registration process Select OK You should now be prompted for your user credentials again Log in and press OK At the main screen (see figure 2), your contact list is on the left Select the "+" button to add a contact Add the Name that you want shown in your list Add the SIP address (i.e. email address) of the contact Add the name of the group you want this contact in If no group is created, type a name to create a new one Select OK More information on SIPC For more information on using SIPC, see the user's manual. View the SIPC User's Manual

Figure 1 - SIPC preferences dialog box Figure 2 - SIPC main screen Figure 3 - SIPC "Add a new account" dialog box Figure 4 - SIPC "Add a new contact" dialog box

Experiencing the Demo

This is a "first light" trial of integrated communications, meaning that some of the elements are being taken out of the research lab for the first time. As such, in a Confucian sense, we expect this to be an interesting time.

One of the most exciting aspects for the trial developers is the opportunity for "paths-in-the-snow" learning. (Where do you put your sidewalks? Wait until it snows and see where people want to walk.) Please join us in exploring what integrated communications should look like. We value your feedback very much!

There are many elements to this trial. Below we highlight some of the major components. Please exercise the trial and let us know what you think on the participant's mailing list. If you need some more help, please ask one of the PIC WG members.

Rich Presence

Presence has been defined as the "notification of events that facilitate communications" - Henning Schulzrinne. Rich Presence (RP) extends this basic notion to the fuller sense of context-aware communication. Automated Location Services (ALS) takes advantage of information the network has to locate a user geographically. In combination, interesting possibilities arise.

For example, this trial is aware of the conference calendar. If you are in a track session room during a presentation, your presence agent will automatically publish that you are in a meeting and inbound voice calls should not be made to you until the meeting ends. It will further suggest that instant messaging (IM) would be appropriate.

If you leave a room, the ALS software will notice your movement and cause your presence information to change. It will track you as you move within the conference space and publish your location appropriately. Should you move to a hallway, your presence agent will also change your published information now to welcome calls. Notice that one value of the RP/ALS combination is finding a colleague at the conference is no longer an endless game of tag.

Voice over WiFi

The communications software in your laptop will work whether you are connected via wire or over the WiFi network. Clipping the tether inevitably invokes many of the same issues that have been raised with cellular telephones. The value of mobility is juxtaposed with the possibility of some deterioration in call quality and reliability. One of the promises of integrating communications is that communications participants will be able to switch media nearly seamlessly. Should your IM exchange become too complicated for the medium, just switch to voice. Or perhaps the reverse might be wanted should a voice call become unreliable. The participants would be able to switch quickly and easily to IM.

SIP.edu Addressing

Many people have noted that computer-mediated communication (C-MC) over the Internet permits the opportunity to drop "telephone number" addressing in favor of a more people-friendly method. The Internet2 SIP.edu initiative uses email addresses as a one-stop electronic address that can be used for all forms of integrated communications. For example, if Jane's email address is email:jane.doe@bigu.edu. then her voice address would become sip:jane.doe@bigu.edu. For this trial we have modified the SIP server software to permit you to use your email address (the one you with which you registered yourself) as your voice and IM address.

You may also use your soft client to place voice calls to any SIP.edu address, regardless of whether the recipient is present in Honolulu. For example, you can call anyone with a yale.edu, mit.edu, upenn.edu, columbia.edu email address.

Room Buddies

One last feature we've built into the trial is the notion of a "room buddy." Several of the track session rooms will be connected to an audio conference on Internet2's eDial conference server. For example, to listen in on the session taking place in Asia Conference Room, simply place a call to asia@pals.internet2.edu. An interesting side effect of this approach is that you'll be able to converse will other audio conference participants without disturbing the presenter or physical attendees.

Presence Portal

A participant will be able to see the automatically updated and published presence information for all participants at a web portal. This portal will also feature click-to-dial in which a particpant can initiate a voice call by clicking on a participant. Additionally, participant's will be able to set their presence information manually from this page.

Visit the Presence Portal

Where to Find More Help

Members of the PIC working group will be available throughout the meeting and are happy to assist you and answer questions. They have identifying stickers on their badges. If you have purchased a headset you can pick it up from anyone of them.

Participants are encouraged to use the pic-demo@internet2.edu mailing list. Every registered participant in the demo has been automatically added to this temporary listserv.

Post a Question to the pic-demo Mailing List

View the pic-demo Mail Archive

FAQ

1. How did you do this?

   If you are interested in digging deeper into the architecture, standards, and technology behind this trial, visit our demo implementors page, rummage through the PIC working group mail archives, or just ask one of the PIC WG memebers.

   There is also a paper discussing the architectural details for the setup here at Joint Techs as a Word Doc or PDF

2. Will there be a session in Honolulu where this demo is discussed?

   Yes! On Tuesday at 10:25, Jamey Hicks from HP and a member of the PIC working group will discuss the demo, especially the integration of location serivces with integrated presense.

3. .