ATM BROADBAND NETWORKS

In order to transmit multimedia data over a fibre optic network, a high- speed, communications technology is needed. The protocol that is predominately used is ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode). ATM allows virtually any type of data to be transferred at whatever speed is required. It is ATM that allows full- motion, live video and audio signals to be transmitted across the country during telemedicine conferencing or remote learning. It is ATM that will eventually deliver VOD to the home.

Figure #1: OCRInet, an ATM broadband fibre optic network in Ottawa-Carleton. (23K .gif)

One of the major, experimental, broadband networks in North America is found in Ontario. OCRInet is a not-for-profit corporation in the Ottawa-Carleton region that was formed to manage Canada's first ATM, broadband network. The consortium behind OCRInet reads like a Who's Who of Canada's high-tech industries and institutions. The partners are: Bell Canada, Newbridge Technologies, Gandalf Technologies, Mitel Corporation, Bell Northern Research (BNR), the National Research Council, Algonquin College, Northern Telecom, the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, Stentor Resource, the Communications Research Centre, and the Telecommunications Research Institute of Ontario.

OCRInet is only 35 kilometres long, and was built at a cost of $5 million. It is used by researchers to develop technology and applications that will eventually run on the InfoBahn; however, their underlying interest is in content. As OCRI vice-president Bill Collins puts it, "Where it's going right now is with people who are, in my estimation, in ad agencies, in film and video production, in music. I think the Information Highway is only going to be a success if those industries are involved."

At Bell Northern Research (BNR), they have their own internal, experimental ATM network called COBRAnet (Corporate Broadband Applications Network). With it BNR is evaluating the technical problems of delivering VOD. From a video server at Stentor, BNR is routing a signal into COBRAnet where it evaluates "signal impairments" and "performance" before switching the signal through OCRInet to the University of Ottawa. At the university, students are accessing various educational videos and courseware productions. In the BNR lab, the VOD application is running on a teleputer, a 486, IBM compatible with 8 Meg of RAM running Windows.

Also connected to OCRInet is the Communications Research Centre's BADLAB (Broadband Applications and Demonstration Lab). BADLAB is a federally funded, multi-million dollar, ATM, fibre optic testbed. Its mandate is to "test, demonstrate and license technologies" that have application to the Information Highway. The lab is available to small and medium-sized R&D companies across Canada. One of the unique options that BADLAB can provide through the CRC facilities is a complete satellite link for network expansion. One of their most recent demonstrations was a travel agency kiosk application involving live video-conferencing. The project was developed by MPR Teltech of Burnaby, B.C.

Figure #2: The Communications Research Centre's Technology Incubator, Ottawa. (74K .gif)
BADLAB runs in conjunction with CRC's Technology Incubator, a program that provides eligible companies with offices, lab space and technical support at CRC while developing innovative technologies and applications.

The Region of Peel on the western outskirts of Toronto encompasses the cities of Mississauga and Brampton. Together they are proposing a 200 kilometre, broadband, ATM, fibre optic network called PSTI, the Public Sector Telecommunications Infrastructure. The project would link the municipal governments, police, fire departments, utilities, library systems, 2 school boards (Public and Separate), four hospitals, and two colleges. The first level of activity on the network would be an internal phone system, and the savings on that alone is supposed to be enough to finance the $12 million project.

Initially PSTI would have so much extra bandwidth that there would be no need to compress video when sending it through the network. With three times as many employees in the field as there are in the main office complex, Peel needs to alleviate the "information disparity". Data transmission on PSTI would be so fast that field workers would have virtually the same access to the main computers as those workers just down the hall. Currently PSTI is in committee limbo, as some of the partners have developed cold feet, and are awaiting news about an Ontario-wide network called OPN, the Ontario Public Network.

Also connected to PSTI would be the new Mississauga Living Arts Centre, a $65 million, fibre optic wired theatre and studio complex being built beside Mississauga's Square One shopping centre. The 200,000 square foot facility will include two theatres, a broadcast centre and 50,000 square feet of visual art studio space for drawing, painting, ceramics, music, dance and photography, As well there will be 10 digital art studios, and high tech studios for VR (Virtual Reality) and interactive media production. According to Robin King, head of the design team for the visual arts facilities, the Centre is designed as a "very broad, interactive environment for professional artists and the community."

Quite a different style of broadband network is being planned by Intercom Ontario, a consortium of Bell Canada, IBM Canada, Apple Canada, York University, the CulTech Collaborative Research Centre, Cabletron and CTI Datacom. 300 "smart homes" are being built in Newmarket, Ontario by Ronto Development. Each of the $160,000 - $200,000 homes will be equipped with four personal networks for TVs, computers, smart appliances, and wireless communicators.

Figure #3: Intercom Ontario's Calumet trial running a beta version of Apple's Videophone conferencing software. (56K .gif)

An alpha trial of Intercom Ontario's network has been running in 50 suites at York University's Calumet College since January, 1995. Students are able to send video mail, and access a variety of services including interactive applications such as video conferencing, games, shopping, distance education, and VOD. Applications are running on mid-priced, Apple PowerPC 7100s. Educational content is being provided by the Technology Based Learning, Canada project of the University of Calgary and McMaster University.

The four-year roll out of Intercom's Newmarket trial will begin in November, 1995. Paul Hoffert, executive director of the Intercom Ontario Consortium, says, "It's important that we keep the user at the centre of all of our planning. The Intercom Ontario approach - uniting traditional sectoral competitors with others from previously unrelated sectors - is part of a new collaborative strategy necessary to model the new marketplace and meet the needs of consumers in a trial that will yield vital information for the large scale commercial implementations to come."

SOME BROADBAND APPLICATIONS

Figure #4: Roger's CableLink-SCHOOL will use high-speed, cable modems and their fibre-coax network to link 604 Ontario schools. (39K .gif)

Rogers Communications Inc., as part of the cultural benefits package committed to in exchange for approval of their Maclean Hunter buyout, runs an educational network called CableLink- SCHOOL. Originally beta-tested in 6 North York, Ontario schools, CableLink-SCHOOL is now being implemented in 604 Ontario schools at a cost of $4.9 million. This bi-directional, broadband network uses Rogers's existing fibre-coax cable network to access multimedia educational services. Instead of telephone modems, CableLink-SCHOOL uses high speed cable modems which run at speeds 1,000 times faster than traditional modems. Through CableLink-SCHOOL students can access Industry Canada's SchoolNet, the Classroom edition of The Globe and Mail, the CD-ROM version of the Canadian Encyclopedia, and the Internet/WWW. As well, Rogers maintains its own CD-ROM and multimedia file servers with a variety of interactive, educational material.

CableLink-SCHOOL is designed to integrate with existing school resources. Rogers donates the Zenith cable modems, routers and high speed links. The navigation software is designed to run on the PCs that are now found in most schools.

Rogers is also beta-testing a similar network for business called CableLink-WORK. Again using their existing fibre-coax network, CableLink-WORK uses cable modems to link employees working at home with the workplace. High speed interactive applications such as document sharing allow the home employee to be as efficient and productive as their office counterpart. The technical trial is being done in Newmarket, Ontario and involves twenty IBM Canada employees using 486 PCs with 8 Meg of RAM. 50 consumers will also be involved this summer in the beta-testing of Rogers's home version of the same system, CableLink-HOME.

Figure #5: Map of Stentor's VideoRoute showing use of the American Vyvx Network to link with many North American production centres. (11K .gif)

Stentor has, for a couple of years now, offered a service called VideoRoute. VideoRoute allows real time video and audio transmission between major cities in Canada and the United States. The American part of the operation uses Vyvx Television Network Services. This service is used mostly for video conferencing, and can be accessed from major hotels and convention centres. Sports facilities such as Skydome and Maple Leaf Gardens also provide connectivity. In Toronto, Dome Productions uses the Stentor/Vyvx fibre optic network to offer its clients their Dailies on Demand service which links Toronto to Los Angeles. The service operates in real time; there is no compression used. Video is played back on a VTR and routed to a dedicated outside line. The network is currently not switchable. When Dome needs to use it, they phone Stentor and the normally dark fibre is turned on for their use. The service is not cheap. One hour of transmission from Dome to L.A. is $1,500, half of which is the tariff for using the Stentor/Vyvx network.

Figure #6: The NFB's CinéRobothèque currently handles 2,400 titles stored on double-sided videodiscs. (49K .gif)

The CinéRobothèque at the National Film Board's Montréal centre was designed in a pre-video server era. It is an automated film library run by a two-handed, 350 kilogram robot that manipulates videodiscs and places them in any of 50 videodisc players. The robot is connected to a LAN (Local Area Network) serving 21 personal viewing workstations equipped with touchscreen Macintoshs. The network uses Hypercard to organize and display the cross- referenced NFB collection. There is no digitization involved in this service. The video is stored on the laserdiscs in realtime, linear format, and delivered as such to the viewing modules. With the advent of ATM fibre networks, the NFB is now looking to expand the use of CinéRobothèque. In a project called CinéRoute, the NFB will link up with McGill University and the University of Montréal to provide remote access to CinéRobothèque. The video signal will travel on a Stentor- owned, dedicated line. In order to provide the bi-directionality needed to access the database and run the robot, a dedicated phone line and modem will be used in a Web-like configuration. Not quite VOD, but moving towards it.

Toronto's Digital Renaissance is a multimedia applications development company that specializes in the delivery of multimedia from digital media servers over LANs and WANs (Wide Area Networks). Among their recent projects was the research and development work for Intercom Ontario's VOD server. They also do kiosk-based projects and CD-ROM.

Figure #7: Digital Renaissance's Silver Dart Project includes 30 minutes of MPEG-1 video. (53K .gif)

In 1994 Digital Renaissance designed the Silver Dart Project for the National Aviation Museum in Ottawa. The Silver Dart is a bi-directional, multimedia encyclopedia, documenting the history of aviation in Canada. The finished kiosk provides information about aircraft, engines, aviators, and designers. It contains hundreds of stills and 30 minutes of full-motion video and sound.

The Silver Dart is accessible not only in Ottawa at the National Aviation Museum, but also in Toronto at the Ontario Science Centre. The two gigabyte, Starworks video server in Ottawa is linked to Toronto by a fibre optic, ATM line provided by Stentor, which is a corporate sponsor for the project. The ATM line allows the full-motion, 30 frames per second, MPEG-1-compressed video to be delivered at a transfer rate of 1.2 Mbps. The Silver Dart is displayed on touchscreen, 486/66 PCs running Windows.

Digital Renaissance's president, Keith Kocho, calls the Silver Dart Project "the forerunner of the type of service that Canadians will work and live with in the near future."