June 4, 2008

Purdue tests new video delivery technology for residence halls

Students living in the first and third floors of Purdue's Owen Residence Hall participated in a pilot test of multicast video delivery, which is a new way of delivering high definition programming over the Internet.

Scott Ksander, executive director of Networks and Security for Purdue's Office of Information Technology, says multicast will be the technology of the future, even if it is still a technology in its infancy.

"We're always exploring ways to enhance our Internet network capability," Ksander says. "Multicast is an exciting technology that could help us deliver larger content, such as high definition programs, without disruption."

Most video content is sent either via broadcast, such as television signals, where all users receive the same content, or unicast, such as when a computer user requests a YouTube video and that video is delivered in a one-to-one electronic transaction. The more YouTube streams watched, the higher the load on the campus network.

Multicast takes advantage of the fact that all Internet traffic is already broken into small pieces, called "packets" in the IT world. Multicast delivers packets only once to a specific network and allows the network to replicate the packets at the end user. This means that even if all of the students on a campus want to watch the same file, it is only delivered once to the campus. 

For the testing Purdue partnered with Intercast Networks, a pioneer of using multicast to deliver content to PC's and tested its Kazam student TV service over Purdue's network.

To use Kazam the students installed software on their computers and then subscribed to the channels they wanted to watch. All of the programming for Kazam is delivered legally in high quality, including high definition, and is digital rights management (DRM) protected.

"From the student user's perspective, the technology essentially turns the student's computer into a TiVo-like digital television recorder," Ksander says.

Noam Bardin, chief executive officer of Intercast Networks, says Intercast is considering expanding the trial of Kazam at many more universities and commercial networks in the fall.

"Kazam offers a glimpse into the future of TV," Bardin says. "As a technology oriented university, Purdue offered to test our Kazam service on their multicast enabled network over the Internet2 backbone, and we are pleased with the results of the initial testing of our technology on Purdue’s network."

Although much of the Internet's traffic today includes short videos, there are plans to deliver television shows and movies over the Internet, many in high definition. This will strain networks both on and off campuses, Ksander says.

"The problem with media distribution is that our current technology is not sustainable," Ksander says. "If 15,000 students decide to watch an event in high-definition video, the current technology can't deliver that. This doesn't work, whether it's a university network or a cable television system, because the bandwidth isn't available unless we all switch to fiber optics, which won't happen anytime soon."

Ksander says the benefit to Purdue is that the information technology engineers learned more about this coming technology.

"Our tests showed that the concept makes sense," Ksander says. "As we deployed it on campus, we learned how to troubleshoot the multicast configurations to improve performance."

Ksander says he is optimistic that video delivery will eventually be done using multicast technology.

"We see multicast as being an important part of the network technology on campus in the coming years," he says. "We're prepared to build a complex multicast environment here at Purdue."

Writer: Steve Tally, (765) 494-9809; tally@purdue.edu

Sources: Scott Ksander, (765) 496-8289, ksander@purdue.edu

Noam Bardin, (972) 885-6485, noam@intercast.com

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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