I hope this doesn't raise any hackles. Here goes... I had a request for information today about Access Grid in the context of what might be termed a mission-critical application: realtime surgical advice in hospitals. Not a rehearsal! Live body on the slab under the knife, surgeon wanting extra opinions in realtime.
AG is functionally highly suitable in many ways: multiple simultaneously displayed video streams; no voice-switching; multiple audio feeds working simultaneously. There were two sticking points. The first was reliability, and the second was high resolution, also realtime, video streams. There was also a question about security, but I felt it was reasonable to indicate that this is well addressed by encryption and certificates: I hope this is true. Q1: Does anyone who uses AG technology over an INTRANET have any comment on how reliable it (and you might need to specify which AG version 'it' refers to) has proved? Q2: What is the current status of 640x480, 786x576 and 1024x768 video stream capture and display under AG2.x.x? [This must be realtime video - VNC is not suitable.] Let me repeat - this is NOT for teaching, where a bit of outage can be tolerated, but for real operations. As I understand it, it is likely to be covered by a single intranet, but I have no idea which hospital trust was interested as it was a supplier who was asking me the question. My reason for stressing the single intranet aspect is that it appears, as a user and configurator of AG systems, that most of the problems occur between sites and many (most?) are caused by differing interpretation of the overly slack definition of multicast. Hopefully within even a large LAN these problems are minimized. Many thanks in advance for any comments or opinions. Cheers Chris ____________________________________________________________________ Chris Osland Office tel: +44 (0) 1235 446565 Digital Media and Access Grid Medialab tel: +44 (0) 1235 446459 BIT Department Access Grid room tel: +44 (0) 1235 445666 e-mail: c.d.osl...@rl.ac.uk Fax: +44 (0) 1235 445597 CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (Bldg. R18) Chilton, DIDCOT, Oxon OX11 0QX, UK [The contents of this email are confidential and are for the use of the intended recipient only. If you are not the intended recipient do not take any action on it or show it to anyone else, but return this email to the sender and delete your copy of it.]
