General Information on the
ITV/Videoconference Network
Video Conferencing Begins at Sul Ross in 1992
Sul Ross has had video conferencing capabilities for distance teaching since 1992. The first room was in MAB-301 and was connected through the Texas Tech Health Net. Texas Tech connected our classroom to the Rural Health Clinic in Presidio where students would meet for classes instructed from the Sul Ross campus classroom.
Region 18 ESC Network Begins in 1997
Beginning in 1997, Region 18 Education Service Center began building a data and video network to provide Internet and interactive video conference services to the public schools in their service area. In order for these schools to still receive classes from Sul Ross over the same circuits, the connection to Texas Tech was dropped and Sul Ross connected to Region 18, becoming a resource for all the schools connected to the Region 18 network.
Moved Video Conference Facilities in 1998
In the summer of 1998, the video conferencing equipment was moved to MAB-205. This room was a traditional classroom and a little larger than the original. Traditional desks were moved out, carpeting was laid, and tables and chairs were moved in to accommodate up to 27 students.
The system in MAB-205 was a custom designed component system, originally designed and built by Texas Tech Healthnet engineers in Lubbock. It was based on an NEC TC1500 codec with a Crestron control system for the operating interface. Two grass Valley video switches handled the video devices which included 2 PTZ cameras, an Elmo document presenter, an Elmo slide to video projector, a VCR and a ScanDo computer VGA scan converter. For audio, it used push to talk microphones in a three conductor daisy chain into one mixer input and a wireless mic for the instructor. 4, 32 inch direct view (TV) monitors were used with far side audio coming through one of the monitors speakers.
Network Expansion and Video Bridge, 1999
In the fall of 1999, Sul Ross installed an integrated voice, data and video, wide area network which connected the Alpine campus with the three Rio Grande College sites in Uvalde, Del Rio and Eagle pass. At that time a multi conference video bridge was installed. The video bridge (a Vtel Smartlink MCS) was connected to the three Rio Grande College sites, Region 18 ESC in Midland and to Region 19 ESC in El Paso. This gave us the ability to connect any number of our SRSU sites and up to three sites at a time on the Region 18 circuit and the Region 19 circuit.
Second ITV Room, 2000
In the summer of 2000, Sul Ross, Alpine campus, installed its second video conference room in ACR-204. It is a custom installed system based on the latest Vtel Galaxy series video conferencing system. The room was renovated in 1989 as a tiered, multi-media lecture room seating approximately 80 people. The new video conferencing system was installed with 6 flat screen plasma monitors, 3 PTZ cameras, 12 ceiling suspended microphones, one wireless instructors mic, a VCR and a Smartboard. Audio to the classroom is fed through the existing installed PA system.
Upgrades to Polycom and AMX, Summer 2001
In the Summer of 2001, both classrooms were upgraded to Polycom systems with AMX function controls. The AMX controls made operation of the room devices much easier (eliminating nearly a dozen IR remote controls) and provided uniformity between the two rooms. Instructors familiar with operating ITV classes in one room could easily operate from the other room.
H.323 Integration, 2002
Currently, the Rio Grande Collage campuses have replaced their V-tel classrooms with Polycom systems. They have also switched from H.320 standards using dedicated video circuits, to H.323 standards to transmit video over IP. Since all of there ITV connections are between their three sites, and since all three sites are on the same wide area network, this made the upgrade of all three classrooms very affordable.
Plans are in place to install a H.323 bridge at the Alpine campus which will enable H.320 and H.323 conferences to be bridged together. This will will provide Rio Grande Collage with the ability to connect with conferences at the Alpine campus or the Region 18 or Region 19 networks and beyond once again. It will also provide tech support people with desk top video conference capabilities, the option of dropping themselves into a video conference to observe and trouble shoot should their assistance be needed.
Current Network Configuration and Capabilities (Aug. 24, 2002)
The two Alpine classroom systems are connected to the MCU bridge, located in the Wildenthal Library Building, via fiber optic and fiber modems. The three Rio Grande College sites are connected to the wide area network with Video over IP (H.323). At this time there are no H.320 to H.323 bridging capabilities in place, but there will be soon.
Full T1's connect the bridge to each of the two Education Service Centers. These two ESC's also maintain a full T1 between each other so that we all three have a redundant path. The ECS's networks are set up for direct dialing of point to point conferences across their networks, and with multi-point bridging capabilities.
The Sul Ross system has access to the public ISDN switched network in Midland at the Region 18 ESC. Through Region 19 we have access to the University of Texas video network at Austin. From there we also have access to the Texas A&M video network.
By running its conferences at 384 kbps., Sul Ross can connect up to 3 conferences over the Region 19 ESC line. In the Region 18 service area, we have several schools participating in a "Wireless Internet" project and data from those remote, wireless sites is brought directly to the Sul Ross network over the same T1 line used for the video conferences. Due to this additional Distance Education service, we have allocated one half of that T1 to video, giving us 2 connections at 384k, and the remainder is allocated for the Wireless project data traffic. When multiple connections are required beyond those two connections, multipoint bridging can be arranged at Region 18.
|
Sul Ross State University