[svctest] Questions to Vidyo

[Andras Kovacs]

Hi All,


First of all, I would like to thank to Vidyo for their commitment in 
such testings. Hopefully, we will be able to do an extensive testing in 
the forthcoming weeks and that will be a valuable input for you as well.

These are the first technical questions to Vidyo (discussed in Bruges 
with some GN2 people).

1. Firewall/NAT traversal:
  o What is the current technology you promote?
  o We heard about Vidyo proxy, what is it all about?

Notes (with researcher community hat on):
  o We have been experiencing that H.323/SIP does not fly due to 
firewall/NAT traversal problems (often requires days of fw/NAT debugging)
  o Adobe and other webconferencing solutions use HTTP tunneling
  o We think that an HTTP tunneling option would solve any of the problems
  o We also think that Vidyo proxy solution (as far as we understand it) 
is not feasible, since a European-level service would require deployment 
thousands of gateways, which is obviously impossible.

2. Audio stream delivery:
  o We are wondering how audio delivery is happening in your solution.
  o Since Vidyo router is switching packet, we suppose that audio mixing 
is also avoided.
  o How the audio delivered without mixing? All-to-all? What happens 
when 20 participants are there?

3. AAI enabling the web interface:
  o What do you think, is there a chance to AAI-enable (maybe Shibboleth 
or eduGAIN) your Vidyo portal?

4. Camera support:
  o We have just received some information on this issue
  o A few notes:
    - Is there a plan to support firewire cameras (many of our users use 
e.g. a Sony camera on a tripod to get better quality and autofocus)
    - I understand you being USB-biased due to better performance by the 
OS/drivers. It is still a question whether a huge userbase (generally 
thinking) could tolerate this or not? (ie. forcing all users to get rid 
of good old PCI hardware).

5. Dialling out/inthrough gateway:
  o Currently, we use e.164 for both H.323 and SIP
  o How the dialling in (to Vidyo cloud) is done at the gateway? (How a 
user could indicate Vidyo meeting room?)
  o How the dialling out is done? (How the number translation is done to 
E.164 at the gateway?)

6. Management of Vidyo solution:
  o How is the management done of Vidyo components (portal, router, 
gateway, etc.)?
  o How to configure them?
  o Is there SNMP support for standard based regular retrieval of system 
parameters?
  o How conferences/users could be monitored?

7. Gateway:
  o It would be very important to test the gateway solution due to 
interoperability issues (protocol and codec compatibility).
  o Can you please provide general technical information about the gw?
  o What is the capacity of the gateway (number of calls in function of 
transcoding done)
  o How a layout is assembled at the gateway (transmitting a VC from 
Vidyo cloud to H.323/SIP world)? Are all the Vidyo participants decoded, 
  assembled onto a screen, and encoded? Is there voice activated modes 
where louder speakers are on the screens?


Sorry for the question-tsunami. ;)


Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Andras