Rich Presence Trial : Arlington, VA : April 2004

Overview

The third experimental demonstration of Rich Presence is designed for testing automatic location publishing, coordinated calendar information, LAN quality conditions, and user agent interoperability. Participants download and install a specially tuned integrated communications client on their laptops. This client uses the participant's personal 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 meeting session they are attending.

When participants connect to the wireless LAN, their location is published to a distributed system of collection devices called skiffs. More precisely, location is derived through triangulation of 802.11 signals collected by the skiffs. Presence is advertised to the SIP Proxy/Registrar and activity information is obtained from the meeting calendar database.

Location, presence, and activity information are dynamically cross-referenced to obtain a resultant rich presence that is published to a web site called the presence portal . sipc client software can obtain other participants' updates from the presence portal and post the presence information to your contact list. Session client software cannot update presence information automatically, but you can set your location manually at the portal.

For more information on the location aggregration, see Jamey Hicks' presentation .

What to Expect

This trial is complex and experimental and requires participant interaction. You will have to configure client software on your laptop. Voice quality over the wireless LAN may be poor. The WiFi signal triangulation may be inaccurate.

Many people put hard work into revising software and hardware prototypes for the April 2004 trial. Updates from previous trials include:

• sipc can import maps of any location
• sipc allows the user to set a location based on a preconfigured map
• use of SIMPLE specifications for presence publishing and updates
• presence portal allows automatic location updates

If successful, this trial will showcase a number of emerging technologies, including:

• SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE)
• 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

Special Note on Privacy

The network infrastructure is monitoring the physical location of each participant and publishing it. Physical location is publicly available at the presence portal Participants are not permitted to intervene in the tagging of their laptop locations, but may set their presence status to be online or offline.

Feedback on privacy issues is requested.

Getting Started

Registration

All registered attendees of the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting have been enabled for participation in this demo. This means you have been provisioned as a user on our SIP server. If you are a walk-in registrant or registered at the last minute, login to the presence portal with your email address as your username, and you will be added to the list.

IMPORTANT: to be added to the pic-demo mailing list you must first login to the presence portal .

If you have any problems logging into the presence portal, then you may send email to the PIC working group's mailing list (wg-pic@internet2.edu) to confirm that you are registered for participation.

Although everyone has been enabled, participation in the trial is voluntary. We encourage you to join in by registering 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 facilitate 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.

Hewlett-Packard sponsored a giveaway promotion, open only to registered demonstration participants. Congratulations to Dave Reese, Leslie Finken, and Loring Holden. Enjoy your new ipaqs!

Your account name for the purposes of this trial is the email address you provided on your Internet2 Spring Member 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 minimal protection against abuse (e.g. by spammers)but is not intended to deliver a high level of security.

Headsets

To test the audio capabilities of the clients, 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. If you would like a headset and did not bring one with you, please send email to the PIC-demo mailing list (pic-demo@internet2.edu) and we may be able to find an extra one for you.

Download a User Agent (UA)

For this trial we are testing two customized SIP user agents, sipc and Session. Use the links below to download the appropriate client. Links updated 4/20/2004 10:00 AM. Additions: SIP interoperability with Session for IM and map installation updates.

• sipc version 2.39 (build 2004-04-20) for Windows 2000/XP (10 MB)
• sipc version 2.39 (build 2004-04-20)for Linux (9 MB)
• Session for Mac OSX (14 MB)
• Session for Windows 2000/XP (49 MB)

sipc is developed within Columbia University's Internet Real-Time Laboratory (IRT) It runs on Linux and Microsoft XP/2000 and offers automatic location updates via the wireless network.

Session is a product of wave3software. It runs on Microsoft XP/2000 and Mac OSX and offers manual location updates via the presence portal.

You can try using other SIP user agents (including previous versions of sipc) but you will not experience many of the advanced elements of the rich presence environment that we are featuring at this meeting.

There are two Windows clients, and each one offers different functionality. While both interact with the presence and automatic location server, sipc provides for automatic location updates and Session provides for manual location updates via the presence portal.

Configuring sipc

Getting started The SIP address you will be using during the demo is based on the email address you used to register for this conference. If you have a previous version of sipc, please uninstall it and delete the .sipc directory and contents. Download a new copy of sipc from the link above. Save the setup.exe executable to a location of your choosing, and then run it. Choose the defaults throughout the install process. sipc Setup for Windows IMPORTANT - disable any VPN connection until after starting sipc. Start sipc. When you start the SIPC program, you will see the Preference dialog box appear (see figure 1) Populate or verify the Name (as you want it to display), SIP address (sip:yourusername@yourdomain), and Email (yourusername@yourdomain) fields using your information Populate the Communication Server using the address of our SIP server (pals.internet2.edu) Select OK Answer “OK” when asked if you want to download the map. To pinpoint your contacts in the hotel map, you can click on the map button as shown in figure 3 At the main screen, your contact list is on the left Select the "+" button to add a contact (see figure 4) 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 sipc Setup for Linux Be sure you have removed the previous version: rm -fr ~/sipc.linux ~/.sipc Install the current version above Unpack the tarball: tar -zxvf sipc.linux.tar.gz Run sipc: PATH=$PATH:. ./sipc More information on sipc For more information on using sipc, view the sipc User's Manual

Figure 1 - SIPC preferences dialog box Figure 3 - SIPC "View Map" button Figure 4 - SIPC "Add a new contact" dialog box

Configuring Session If you have not already downloaded the Session software, please take a few minutes to do so now. Once you've downloaded one of the Session installer images above, proceed with the installation by executing the installer program. You can accept most of the default options provided during the install process with one exception. You must enter a specific serial number on the customer information screen. See figure 5 for an example of this screen and the actual serial number that each client should use. Setup Start the Session client and cancel out of the preferences wizard. You will see the main screen. Set outbound SIP proxy to pals.internet2.edu. See figure 7 for an example. Select Edit|Preferences from the main menu toolbar In the Username field, place a name you wish other Session™ users to see in their incoming call log when you call. Select the Calls tab Set the proxy name to pals.internet2.edu Select Apply then OK Establish your SIP identity. See figure 8 for an example. Select Edit | Accounts from the main menu toolbar Select the SIP tab Select the Add button Server (display) name: "PIC WG" Server address: your domain name (right-hand side of your email address) Leave the Realm field blank Username: your username (left-hand side of your email address) Password: jointtechs Select OK. This will cause Session to send a REGISTER message to pals.internet2.edu Create new contacts. See figure 9 for an example. Select Edit | New Contact Fill in the First Name, Last Name and Comment Field The address field is the SIP address of the user. In this demonstration with SIP.edu style addressing, this address should be the email address of this person. This assumes they registered using their email address. Select OK More Information on Session For more information on Session, refer to the Help pulldown or you may reference the User Guide that is included during installation. The User Guide may be found at the following locations: Windows 2000/XP: \Program Files\Session\docs\Client_Userguide.pdf Mac OS X: \Applications\Session\Client_Userguide.pdf

Figure 5 - Session install window Figure 7 - Setting the outbound proxy server address for Session Figure 8 - Defining the registration parameters for Session Figure 9 - Creating a new contact in Session

Experiencing the Demo

There are many elements to this trial. Below we highlight some of the major components. Please exercise the trial and post any feedback or questions to the demo mailing list .

IMPORTANT: to be added to the pic-demo mailing list you must first login to the presence portal .

If you have any problems logging into the presence portal, then you may send email to the PIC working group's mailing list (wg-pic@internet2.edu) to confirm that you are registered for participation.

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 provides 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. Notice that one value of the RP/ALS combination is finding a colleague at the conference is no longer an endless game of tag.

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.

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 participant can initiate a voice call by clicking on another participant. Additionally, participants 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.

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.

IMPORTANT: to be added to the pic-demo mailing list you must first login to the presence portal .

If you have any problems logging into the presence portal, then you may send email to the PIC working group's mailing list (wg-pic@internet2.edu) to confirm that you are registered for participation.

Post a Question to the pic-demo Mailing List

Post a Question to the PIC Working Group 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 members.

   Or check these links:

   • Presence and Location Service: Operation and Client Requirements, Jamey Hicks, Xiaotao Wu, March 4, 2004. [PDF]
   • PIC / ALS Architecture in Brief, Jeremy George, January 16, 2004. [ Word Doc or PDF]

2. Will there be sessions in Arlington where this demo is discussed?

   Yes! There will be informational sessions during the following times:

   Tuesday
   • 10-10:30 AM
   • 11:45-noon
   • 12:45-1:00 PM
   • 2:30-3:00 PM
   
   Wednesday
   • 10-10:30 AM

3. How can I contact PIC team members during the conference, if I need help setting up?
   1. We have "PIC on me" stickers on our badges
   2. We are posting updates to the pic-demo mailing list.

      IMPORTANT: to be added to the pic-demo mailing list you must first login to the presence portal .

      If you have any problems logging into the presence portal, then you may send email to the PIC working group's mailing list (wg-pic@internet2.edu) to confirm that you are registered for participation.

   3. Or add yourself:
      1. Send an e-mail to the address: sympa@internet2.edu
      2. In the subject header OR in the body of the email put: sub pic-demo FirstName LastName

4. Why is my contact list (buddy list) changing in sipc?

Sipc fetches the contact list from the presence server. The lists for each user are populated on the fly by a job that runs once every 5 minutes. However, a new user might not have a contact list until 5 minutes have gone by. New users are also automatically added to the contact lists of the other participants by the same job.

5. .