I.1-1
Real-time Data Acquisition for Synchrotron Radiation Experiments
It is known that the synchrotron radiation (SR) is a much better light
source than any other conventional ones. The characteristics of the
SR source include the extremely high intensity, the wide spectral
range, the narrow collimating, the polarization and the unique time
structure. SRRC is proud of having a third generation storage ring
completed in 1993. Quite a few experiments in the VUV range have been
performed successfully using this facility at the bending magnet beam-lines.
A 25-pole 1.86 Tesla wiggler was installed recently, and the corresponding
beam-lines are also constructed. This is a valuable resource for international
research experiment.
However,
the SRRC facility can only provide hard X-ray with usable energy less
than 15 keV. There is a great demand in the world for the hard X-ray
at high energy range. The local demand is also increasing. So far there
are three on-going third generation storage ring being built in the
world :one in Europe, one in the U.S. and one in Japan. It is not likely
that Taiwan will build a high energy ring locally in the near future,
but it is still very important to keep working in this field. In order
to satisfy the local demand and to maintain the international collaboration,
it is proposed here that a three year international project be worked
out a most efficient way to raise the high-energy SR source. The aim
is to promote the SR related research and also to achieve "remote"
experimental international collaboration by sharing these experimental
resources.
I.1-2
Confocal Microscopy of Physical & Biological Microstructures
Recently the explosive growth of computer capabilities has accelerated
the development of microscopic imaging technologies. Both research groups
at NSYSU Taiwan and SUNY/Buffalo USA have developed multifunctional
scanning confocal microscopic systems. Employing the new systems the
optical and spectroscopic imaging, electro-optical imaging and magnetic-optical
imaging with high spatial, temporal, and spectroscopic resolution have
been produced. The novel properties of various kinds of physical and
biological systems with fine structures are under research. The topics
of stereoscopic biological cell structures, microwave devices, porous
silicon, semiconductor quantum dots, spatial resolved magnetic domain,
and poly p-phenylenevinylene (PPV) light emitting devices (LED) are
being studied. There are needs to exchange technologies to develop high-performance
and sophisticated image reconstruction and visualization algorithm in
two- and three-dimensions. Under this cooperation large-size imaging
data will be exchanged through high speed Internet for imaging processing
and analysis. To implement the high sensitivity detecting systems, photo-assisted
scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and Kerr effect imaging systems,
are also required to ensure the success of the pioneer research.
I.1-3
Application of Multimedia Network in Telemedicine
National Taiwan University College of Medicine (NTUCM) is working on a
web-based project to integrate multimedia, database management, multiple
site video-conferencing system, and cable modem system. This multimedia
network system can be applied to computerized patient record, tele-consultation,
distance learning for group discussion, continuing medical education and
tele-home care.
A.
Medical Multimedia Database System (MMDS):
The
main goal of this topics is to investigate and develop distributed
multimedia databases specific for medical applications. The following
goals are included:
(1) acquisition techniques of medical images and live video;
(2)
knowledge representation methods and reasoning strategies in designing
medical database;
(3)
a web-based kernel consisting engines and CGI interface for integration
of patient records and medical multimedia. By means of medical multimedia
database, the applications of telemedicine and distance education
can be established for web users over the Internet.
B.
Cyber-Medical Center (CMC):
The
purpose of CMC is to create an integrated multimedia medical resource
on TANet. The CMC will serve as a resource center for continuing medical
education (CME) and Telemedicine. This topics will focus on international
collaboration and resource sharing. The aims are to:
(1) establish a Taiwan mirror site for important Internet medical
resources world wide such as the Virtual Hospital from the University
of Iowa;
(2)
build up a model for creating and reviewing multimedia Internet medical
resources;
(3)
integrate medical resources on the Internet and to provide better
tools for higher quality;
(4)
apply the technologies and materials developed in CMC to CME and telemedicine
programs.
I.1-4
Telemedicine Network and High Performance Internet
NTUCM has the experience in using broad-band network on tele-consultation,
distance education program, and web-based virtual classroom for synchronous
and synchronous interaction. CMC will also integrates public ISDN and
Cable TV network on a uniform web interface to provide multimedia course
contents, video on demand (VOD), simulated patients for self-learning
and all services related to telemedicine.
Because
of the large size of medical information and need of high bandwidth
for video-conference system, high-performance network connection is
essential for international collaboration and resource sharing of any
telemedicine programs on the Internet. For example, the Virtual Hospital
from University provide a wealth of healthcare information consisting
of a 32 gigabytes frequently updated database. A high bit-rate and reliable
network is needed for mirror application and remote database access.
I.1-5
Real-time Biomedical Image Transfer
A.
High Resolution Biomedical Image Transfer:
This cooperation project with Carnegie Mellon University and the University
of Pittsburgh involves studies of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI),
Magnetic Resonance Spectroscope Imaging (MRSI), receptor mapping by
kinetic modeling and Positron Emission Topography (PET) and functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The techniques of micro/macro-imaging
is one of the important development of molecular medicine can be transferred
through high-performance network.
B.
High Resolution Graphic Files Transfer:
There
is a need of high quality network for 2-D gel images transfer between
NHRI Research Divisions and cooperative institutes, Case Western Reserve
University, Yale University, Harvard University and NIH, for biochemical
studies. Example application is the development of comprehensive tyrosine
kinase profile in human cancer.
I.1-6
Biological Database Sharing
A.
Genebank Project:
For
research purposes, bio-scientists remote to Genebank need high-quality
Internet services. National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI),
locates in Bethesda, MD, is distributing Genebank, the National Institute
of Health (NIH) genetic sequence database that collect all known DNA
sequences from scientists worldwide. High-performance computer and
file transfer are needed to perform the service.
B.
Human Genome Data Base (GDB) Project:
The
GDB cooperation project with Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore,
Maryland, supports biomedical research, clinical medicine, and professional
and scientific education by providing for the storage and dissemination
of data about genes and other DNA markers, map location, genetic disease
and locus information, and bibliographic information. This project
need a high-speed and secured network.
C.
Protein Data Bank Project:
Researchers
archive and display the three-dimensional structures of protein (and
gel pattern) through Protein Data Bank (PDB). The PDB from Brookhaven
National Laboratory in Upton, New York, is an archive of experimentally
determined three-dimensional structures of biological macromolecules,
serving a global community of researchers. The project need high band
network to FTP (file transfer protocol) and display these image data.
I.1-7
Bio-Workbench and Computational Biology
A.
Bio-workbench Project:
The
Bio-informatic workbench, a cooperate project with National Center
for Supercomputing Application (NCSA) at the University of Illinois,
provides a single easy-to-use web browser front-end for a variety
of DNA and protein sequence database and sequence analysis tools.
Through computational tools and methodology, the biology research
community will be benefited.
B.
Computational Biology Project:
The
Computational Biology Group conducts basic research and also develops
computational tools and methodology for the biology research and teaching.
Cooperating with NCSA, areas of methodological interest will include:
electrostatics, Brownian dynamics, molecular dynamics, biological
databases, and the use of intelligent systems for protein structure
prediction.
I.1-8
MEDLARS Center
National
Health Research Institutes (NHRI) in Taiwan will provide public access
to exploit the National Library of Medicine (NLM), Bethesda, biomedical
information system known as the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval
System (MEDLARS) for the benefit of health professionals. NHRI will
act as one of the MEDLARS international centers and will arrange international
telecommunications service for access by the Center's online users to
NLM computer. The collections of the NLM today have 5 million items
- books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, and pictorial
materials. More and more medical and biological digital information
can transfer through the access to the users.
I.1-9
Data-Mining on National Insurance Research Database Project
With
twenty-one millions insurance claim data, the insurance data in Taiwan
(two-terabyte in 1995) handles by NHRI, Taipei, will provide the best
information for comparison with international health research data.
Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) database from Department
of Health and Human Services (72 millions beneficiaries), the General
Practice Database in the U.K. (8 millions subjects since 1990) and the
Saskatchewan database in Canada (1 million subjects since 1970s) can
be compared through computer dynamic and statistical application. The
benefit of health information can be shared and utilized.
I.1-10
Stanford-Asia-Pacific Program of Hypertension-Insulin Resistance Syndrome
The
Genetic Study of Hypertension-Insulin Resistance Syndrome, A Stanford-Asian
Pacific Program (SAPPHIRe) in Taiwan¡¨ is a Sino-American
cooperation proposal that combines with SAPPHIRe in Stanford university
and Honolulu center to form a network in study of genetic nature and
genotypic characteristics of human hypertension in Chinese. The investigators
of the Taiwan SAPPHIRe involves four medical centers: NTUH, TSGH/NDMC,
VGH-Taipei and VGH-TaiChung. Eight-hundred hypertensive sibpairs will
be enrolled in 5 years. Each medical center will share a common protocol
to classify hypertension into subsets of insulin resistance versus insulin
sensitivity. Another approach to examine the genes for hypertension
in this network is the analysis of multigenerational pedigrees with
10-13 meiosis separating the affected members. The genes for hypertension
will be mapped and identified by using linkage analysis.
I.1-11
Online Global Change Database Sharing Project
Global
change is a very complicated issue that relates to ecological systems,
natural resources, social economics, and public polities. Global change
research relies on large volume of environmental data and also on data
sharing mechanism. Web-based online data visualization and analysis
of global change database are urgently needed by global change scientists.
This project will develop a online web-base global change database in
Taiwan. This database will open to all the global change scientists
in Taiwan and other nations. Current contents of our global change database
include the following: land-use data, digital terrain data, soil data,
forest resources data, coastal area data, water resources data, ecological
protection areas data, daily sea surface temperature data around Taiwan,
and atmospheric chemistry data.
I.1-12
Weather Forecasting Technology Development
A.
Implementation of operational FX-Advanced Forecast Workstation:
The
FX-Advanced Forecast Workstation project under development at FSL
has been approved to be integrated into the AWIPS (Advanced Weather
Interactive Processing System) baseline Build 3 for the U.S. National
Weather Service. The AWIPS Build 3 will be deployed at 21 since in
1997. FSL will continue to develop Build #4, which is the first operational
system that will replace the legacy NWS system, AFOS (Automation of
field Operations and Services). During the I.A. #10 period, CWB will
adopt this operational system into their first prototype system and
replace its current PC-based system.
B.
Data Assimilation:
CWB
and FSL scientists continue to develop improved data assimilation
techniques. FSL will complete a 3D-VAR (three-dimensional variational)
system for conventional observation data. CWB will apply this data
assimilation technique to one of their operational models. For satellite
radiance assimilation, FSL will provide consultation support to CWB
in the area of initial testing on clear radiance data assimilation.
C.
Development of Scalable Modeling System for Spectral Model:
FSL
will develop the Scalable Modeling System in the area of Scalable
Spectral Tool which can be used to parallelize CWB's Models for their
future high performance computer. FSL will parallelize CWB's second
generation Global Forecast System(GFS) using the SMS software. The
performance of the parallelized GFS will then be tested using one
or more case studies. FSL will also provide SMS documentation to potential
users.
D.
Development of Web-based Forecast Workstation:
FSL
and CWB scientists will develop an inexpensive and simple World Wide
Web-base forecast workstation for use in variety of forecast, training,
education, and research applications. The initial development will
use Web and Java technology. The development phase will be short to
allow the initial operational build to be tested and evaluated at
an early date.
E.
Development of the WSR-SSD Wide-band Radar Data Ingest and Diagnostic
Display System:
FSL
and CWB scientists will design and develop a simple real-time WSR-SSD
diagnostic display tool using a PC running on Windows NT and receiving
broadcast data from an Ethernet connection. The user interface will
be developed using Visual Basic.
I.1-13
Cognitive Science Project
Cognitive
science is the study of human intelligence in all of its forms, from
perception and action to language and reasoning. This project will recruit
active scientists to work on the following three topics: Cognitive Processing
of Chinese Language, Visual Information Processing, and Knowledge Representation.
Concerned psychologists, linguists, philosophers, neural scientists,
and experts in neural imaging will join in the first three-year phase
of the project. Theoreticians and neural-net experts will also join
later on. International cooperation is considered as one of the major
elements to assure the success of this project.
I.2-1
ATM Research Activities and Networking Experiences
In
order to stimulate the research activities and facilitate the early
availability of broadband campus network infrastructure, major universities
in Taiwan have launched several ATM pilot projects, called the Deployment
of High-Speed Networking and Application Testbed, under the sponsorship
of MOE since 1994. These 3-year projects allow ATM research staffs at
major universities to play key roles in introducing and promoting the
ATM technology to the originally FDDI-based campus backbones of Universities,
as well as to participate the upgrade of TANET backbone to DS-3/OC-3c.
In addition, these pilot projects also open up great opportunities for
the ATM research teams at major universities closely working together
to conduct multi-vendor interoperability test, explore the high-quality
video/audio transport, experiment new ATM native mode transport protocols,
and collect traffic measurement of the network transport.
Starting
at December 1995, NCKU and NCCU research teams have successfully developed
a high-quality video/audio transport over the campus ATM LAN and experimental
ATM WAN based on the ADM600/150 DS-3 circuits. To distribute the video/audio
streams, the research teams have introduced the ATM AVA/ATV codec/decoder
equipment for interworking the FORE ATM switch with the SVC signaling.
Based on the MJPEG encoded format and CD-quality audio format, video/audio
streams are converted into AAL5 PDUs and transferred over the ATM network.
The research teams directly works with R&D personnel in Nemesys
Research Limited at Cambridge, UK on the beta version of device control
programs. This research is being extended to experiment the multipoint
conferencing over the experimented ATM WAN with the software based controller.
Besides,
the NTU, NCU, and the NCCU ATM teams successfully conducted the interoperability
test, via a DS-3 interface, with the domestic-made VPX switches under
the Chunghwa Telecom's nation-wide Broadband Service Trial. The DS-3
link and the ATM VP tunnel service provided by Chunghwa Telecom is later
used for the experimental and near-productional interconnection between
the Computer Centers of NCTU and NTU, and between the Computer Centers
of NCU and NCCU, which are regional network centers (Pop) of TANET.
With the sufficient experiences developed in these trials conducted
at major universities, ATM has become well accepted in the TANET community.
Evidence for the acceptance of broadband networks is that major Universities
in Taiwan have used this experimental ATM AVA/ATV transport facility,
mixed with the N-ISDN coder/decoder, in various multiple site (up to
7) teleconferencing and distance learning (with credit) on a regular
or on-demand basis in the last couple of years.
An
important global networking experience related is the Taiwan-US Satellite
ATM trial during March-April 1997. The NTU ATM team was invited to participate
the trial by Chunghwa Telecom Laboratory and Advanced Transmission Laboratory
of US Sprint. The NTU team are responsible for the performance measurement
of TCP over ATM and identifying causes of cell losses. To enhance the
ATM layer performance, the ATM Link Enhancer from COMSAT was employed
over the DS-3 link while the end-to-end throughput of various applications
are measured. In this trial, video conferencing was also proved feasible.
Besides
the above trials, research teams at major universities have been pursuing
projects in design and implementation of high-performance network interface,
hardware and software implementation of various control algorithms,
such as VBR, jitter control for real time VBR traffic, policing, and
discard strategies. Research topics, including ATM switch design with
QOS guarantee, intelligent ATM network management, and IP multicasting
over ATM, have received significant attention from local researchers.
Among those research efforts, the NTU research teams have successfully
developed customized NM applications, such as the JAVA-based NM interface
for multivendor ATM environment. The NCCU team has successfully prototyped
PCI/ATM network interface, and are currently testing new version of
the PCI/ATM with ABR flow control capabilities. The NCKU team has measured
and observed in details the TCP/IP over ATM behaviors under SunOS and
Solaris environments. Findings are that the sender behavior in TCP plays
a key role of the deadlock behavior. Since the TCP flow control and
ABR flow control are quite different, the NCCU and NCKU research teams
will work together to integrate both schemes to derive a better congestion
avoidance strategy. Research teams have also worked with the ITRI/CCL
development team to implement control algorithms that support QoS guarantee
to heterogeneous types of traffic on the prototyped IP/ATM gateway/switch
built upon the MMC chips.
In
the 3-year ATM Testbed project, research teams at major universities
have successfully deployed and interconnected many network devices:
Fore ASX-200/1000 ATM switches, NewBridge ATM switches, Cisco Light
Stream 100/1010 ATM switches, and DEC Giga/ATM Switches, via Permanent
VC and Switched VC. These switches are physically interconnected usually
via OC-3c Multi-mode fiber within the Campus and are connected to Broadband
Service Trial via DS-3 Ports. Several ATM switches, such as the LS-100/1010
and ASX-200 switches directly connected to Chunghwa Telelcom VPX, are
usually monitored by dedicated ATM network management systems, such
as CiscoView and ForeView Manager, so that detailed traffic profile
can be collected. With this underlying ATM infrastructure, Classical
IP over ATM are experimented and then deployed using various ATM-ready
routers, including Cisco 4500 and Cisco 7507/7513 routers, and several
key Internet Servers.
Meanwhile,
several EE departments at major universities have established high speed
network labs which are directly connected to this ATM Testbed. The major
equipment, including hardware and software, is aimed at high speed network
control/management, ATM and Internet traffic monitoring, QoS control/management,
and the development of high-performance network access/applications,
and is procured under various National Science Council sponsored projects.
The
key equipment in these labs includes the following: various models of
SONET/SDH or ATM protocol analyzers, such as HP BSTS with OC-3c LIF,
CPP, Optical Load Generator, and Network Impairment Modules; The Sniffer
Ethernet Protocol Analyzer; Etherswitch/FDDI Hubs with ATM uplink port;
The IBM NetView 6000 and the ForeView ATM network management system,
which are both running on SUN workstations equipped with Fore OC-3c
NIC; many SUN Sparc or Compatible workstations, which are also equipped
with Cisco or Fore OC-3c NICs and Parallax cards.
From
these trials at major Universities in Taiwan, the TANET management committee
has decided to embrace the ATM for the broadband transport. During this
period, all research teams have built up sufficient experiences by employing
the above lab facilities in resolving various issues in exploring new
applications, collecting backbone network statistics, and experimenting
effective control/management capabilities for applications. And the
research teams are ready to embrace possible challenges in the inter-networking
with vBNS.
Project
Investigators:
Zsehong
Tsai, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan
University (ztsai@cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw)
Kim-Joan
Chen, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung
Cheng University (ieekjc@ccunix.ccu.edu.tw)
I.2-2
Research Experiences on Network Control and Management
The
research activities related to network control and management in Taiwan
has been an area attracted interests from research staff in different
disciplines at various universities and research institutes. One of
the best examples where such research is jointly conducted by researchers
and networking technical staff can be found at National Taiwan University.
Currently, the Information Networking Group of the Center for Computing
and Information Networking at National Taiwan University, lead by Prof.
Yeali Sun of the Information Management department, is currently working
on a network surveillance and alarm system for the automation of network
fault and performance management. The network surveillance and alarm
system continuously monitors and collects individual communication equipment
status and operational performance data from the campus network. The
goal of the system is to provide quick detection of network faults and
responsive problem solving. In the automation of network management,
the NTU team have built a) an inventory database of all the communication
resources in our campus network whereby a network administrator can
on-line access information about any device/system in the network when
diagnosing a problem; b) a software that continuously collects performance
data and periodically generates daily/weekly/monthly performance reports
and posts them on the Web to let every network user learn more about
the network they use; and c) a web-based trouble-ticket tracking system
in which problem symptoms and entire diagnosis and solving process will
be completely recorded. The research on network fault management focuses
on the building an expert system to help network administrators in fault
diagnosis and recovery. This includes the implementation of knowledge
representation; problem correlation; scripts for problem handling; and
interaction model with network administrators; prediction of potential
network crisis based on the measured performance data. These systems
are specifically built to control and manage NTU university network.
The current network management system is implemented based on the HP
OpenView. Other on-going network management researches include ATM congestion
detection and control, bandwidth management, traffic control and firewall.
Currently,
the NTU university network consists of three campus networks: Main campus
network, Medical School campus network, School of Public Health campus
network, and Law School campus network. Currently the last three networks
connect to the main campus by T1 leased lines. By the end of this year,
they will be interconnected by twenty-four pairs of OC-3 optical fibers.
A high speed backbone network can not only provide sufficient bandwidth
to the faculty and students of the university in support of their research
and study but also will support distance learning and multimedia web-based
off-class learning. Currently, the Center for Computing and Information
Networking at NTU is also the networking center of the North Region
of TANet. Currently more than seventy universities/schools/institutes
are connected to it. The Main campus network is a hierarchical, multi-vendor,
multi-technology networks, including ATM switches, ATM edge hubs, FDDI,
Ether switches, Ethernet hubs, and dial-up servers running both TCP/IP
and Novell Networks. The management of the network is already quite
complex since this network has more than five thousand computers. Hence,
we expect it is not difficult for the NTU team to re-use their network
management experience and ready-to-use software in support of the emerging
high-performance Internet services in Taiwan.
The
Computer System and Communication Laboratory (CSCL) in Institute of
Information Science (IIS), Academia Sinica, Taiwan, serves as another
excellent example where traffic measurement and characterization for
real-time multimedia applications, such as video-conferencing and video-on-demand,
are made available after intensive study. Various software tools have
been implemented to explore system and network behaviors to make necessary
modifications to designs. For example, they have implemented micro timer
device driver for real-time system engineers. The micro timer can insert
timing probes in operating system kernel or user programs to log the
timing and sequence for executing system programs. From the analyses
of the timing behavior, they can design a new system for higher performance.
Based on these research results, they are now working on the design
of advanced protocol for next generation internet, operating system
supports for real-time routers, and network traffic measurement and
characterization. In these years, the CSCL team in the Institute of
Information Science (IIS), Academia Sinica, Taiwan, have produced many
implementations and simulations in the LAN environment and some limited
internet environment such as MBONE. The obtained research results have
already been exciting and encouraging, even with the existing bandwidth
limited connectivity. After the lack of high speed WAN connectivity
is resolved, even more fruitful results can be expected.
Project
Investigators:
Dr.
Yeali Sun, Information Networking Group, Center for Computing and
Information Networking, National Taiwan University (sunny@wisdom.im.ntu.edu.tw)
Dr.
Jan-Ming Ho, Computer System and Communication Laboratory, Institute
of Information Science, Academia Sinica (hoho@iis.sinica.edu.tw)
I.2-3
IPv6 Related Research Activities and Networking Experiences
National
Tsing Hua University (NTHU) has launched both research and deployment
projects for IPv6. The IPv6 protocols, including IPv6, ICMPv6, TCPv6,
UDPv6, DHCPv6, RSVPv6, have been implemented on the Win95 system which
provides plug-and-play, authentication, security transmission features.
Tunnels are also established to connect to the 6-bone testbed. A three-year
project to develop ATM-based Routers, supported by the NSC, R.O.C.,
is related to this effort as well. This project is leaded by Professor
Nen-Fu Huang, Department of Computer Science. Six Professors from other
Universities are also involved in this project. The hardware platform
for the routers (i960 CPU, Super-task Real-time kernel) is based on
the ATM/EtherSwitch provided by the CCL, ITRI, Taiwan. The software
are developed by this project which include IPv4, IPv6, IP Switching,
RIP, IGMP, DVMRP, SNMP, HTTP, and Network management Agent. The study
the IPv6 Mobility features is in progress as well.
Currently
NTHU has established an ATM testbed and three network related labs:
Multimedia Network Lab, Visual Communication Lab, and High-Speed Network
Lab. Their equipment includes: a Fore Switch (ASX-200), two DEC Switches
(GigaSwitch/ATM), two NewBridge Switches, Routers, Bridges, Remote Bridges,
FDDI networks, Fast EtherSwitches, EtherSwitches, SUN workstations,
Pentium-200 Windows NT server, Pentium PCs, two ATM Protocol Analyzers
(HP and Network General), FDDI Protocol Analyzer, Fast Ethernet Protocol
Analyzer, Ethernet Protocol Analyzer.
Also
based on an ATM campus network, National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU)
initiated several pilot projects for future network applications. The
most significant ones include: VOD servers that provides real-time video
play back, Digital Library that provides full text journals in electronic
format, video conference, and distance learning. Since these applications
need bandwidth intensive protocol, a new trial will be built on IPv6
that provides priority, authentication and reliability features.
The
NCTU ATM-based campus network provides QoS services in LAN and connects
to other research centers and campuses. The equipment includes Fore
ASX-1000, ASX-200, Cisco Catalyst 5000, Tecom ATM hub and many 100 Mb
Ethernet switches. The outgoing ATM links has two OC-12 connect to NCHC
and NTHU. Through OC-3 and T3 links, this network is also a part of
TANet backbone that connects to NCU, NTU and other campuses' ATM switches.
Hence, NCTU is expecting the following advantages from high performance
Internet service. Many researchers worldwide can get benefits from the
Digital Library of NCTU. By way of the IPv6 technology, the NCTU VOD
server and Digital Library can offer users fastest services in security
and reliability. Furthermore, through on-line video conference and education,
domestic and international collaborations can be made much easier.
The
major efforts of National Taiwan University regarding IPv6 is focused
on the migration of PCs from existing Linux to new IPv6-ready kernels.
Currently, the High Speed Network Laboratory of the Department of Electrical
Engineering of NTU has successfully intergrated several Linux kernels
and public domain IPv6 tools and applications. They have also established
a small IPv6 test network consisting of Linux PCs. The next step of
NTU's IPv6 trial shall include: IPv6 over ATM, IPv6 over PPP, IPv6 mail
server. In the last effort, IPv6 for Solaris shall be used in the implementation.
Since
the migration of existing IPv4 router to IPv6 router is not trivial,
NTU shall continue to maintain its IPv6 test network by establishing
a test user group within the campus, and start the IPv6 internetworking
trial with other major universities in Taiwan, both through the IPv6
tunneling capability. The major facility used for IPv6 trial at National
Taiwan University is Pentium-based PCs. The dedicated IPv6 mail server
is expected to be a Sun Sparc compatible workstation.
The
IPv6 research activities of National Taiwan Institute of Technology
(NTIT) focuses on the flow control mechanism and the support of QoS
in IPv6 over ATM, while the implementation of IPv6 are on Linux and
Windows95 OS. Dedicated laboratories include: a computer network lab
and a parallel and distributed systems lab., equipped with Pentium-200
Windows NT server, Fore ATM switch, Linux IPv6 PC, HP OpenView and NetMetrix
network management software, and many workstations and PCs.
The
Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica also launched their
own IPv6 effort in the following areas: Porting several real-time continuous
media applications to an IPv6-enabled network of computers; The impact
of IPv6, RSVP, and RTP in supporting real-time continuous media traffic
and QoS, design and implementation of real-time schedulers for transmitting
IP packets; and the study on the design of QoS-based Routing algorithms.
Tamkang
University studies another aspect of IPv6: IPv6 over wireless network,
while their implementation effort are related to IPv6 Router and IPv6
IP Switches. The high speed network lab. of Tamkang University has been
established with Pentium-100 Windows NT server, ACCTON/CNET/CISCO Ether-switches,
WavePoint, PC LanWaves, in addition to PCs.
Project
Investigators:
Nen-Fu
Huang, Professor, Department of Computer Science, National Tsing Hua
University (nfhuang@cs.nthu.edu.tw)
Zsehong
Tsai, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan
University (ztsai@cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw)
Ruay-Shiung
Chang, Associate Professor, Department of Information Management,
National Taiwan Institute of Technology (rschang@cs.ntit.edu.tw)
Jan-Ming
Ho, Research Fellow, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica
(e-mail: hoho@iis.sinica.edu.tw)
Shiann-Tsong
Sheu, Associate Professor,Department of Electrical Engineering, Tamkang
University (stsheu@ee.tku.edu.tw)
I.2-4
RSVP Related Research Activities
The
RSVP Research Group of National Chiao-Tung University is investigating
the following projects with the goal to achieve a certain level of quality
of service (QoS) for transmitting real-time video/audio over computer
networks. Prof. I-Chen Wu, the Dept. of Computer Science and Information
Eng., built a real-time MPEG Layer 2 audio prototype for Internet communication.
Both the FEC technique and the RSVP and RTP protocols are used. Prof.
Yaw-Chung Chen, Dept. of Computer Science and Information Eng., has
several research activities that try to use RSVP and IPv6 to develop
an effective flow control scheme, which is essential to the guarantee
of the QoS on Internet. Their approach combines IPv6 with RSVP. The
purpose is to provide an efficient flow control for delay sensitive
services such as audio/video traffic. The idea is to use a so-called
"time-based bandwidth on demand" (the name is subject to change)
approach, each service-guaranteed flow will be granted a certain amount
of buffer space in each intermediate node according to its traffic characteristic.
This team is currently building the simulation model to evaluate the
approach, preliminary results will be used to compare with some other
selected approaches.
Prof.
Hsueh-Ming Hang (Dept. of Electronics Eng.) is interested in sending
real-time video over Internet. The focus here is when an RSVP-like control
protocol is adopted, what would be the best overall system design that
provides the most satisfactory service. In addition to the study of
the impact of RSVP on real-time services, an MPEG-2 SNR scalable video
system has been studied. The RSVP network can provide a guaranteed style
for each distinct data flow and a shared style for several data flows
sharing a certain amount of unreliable bandwidth. In a scalable system,
the base layer video is transmitted over the guaranteed channel, whereas
the enhancement layer is transmitted over a shared channel. The coder
with scalability has more flexibility in controlling the bit rate and
the image quality. Thus a higher picture rate can be achieved I if fewer
streams are in the network. The future plan of this group includes improving
the aforementioned system, particularly, on the RSVP admission policy.
An RSVP daemon has been installed and tested on Sun workstations. They
expect to try semi-real-time simulations when the environment is completely
set up.
Many
research groups at National Chiao Tung University are also interested
in the real-time communication issues over computer networks. Attached
below is a partial list of these research activities. Prof. Yingdar
Lin (Dept. of Computer and Information Science) is interested in cable
TV MAC protocols, wireless MAC and routing protocols, ATM ABR rate-based
flow control analysis and service creation in network centric computing
environments. Prof. Maria C.-J. Yuang (Dept. of Computer Science and
Information Eng. is working on Multicasting and traffic control over
ATM. Prof. David W. Lin (Dept. of Electronics Engineering) works on
real-time videophone and multi-point video conferencing over Internet.
Prof. Tsern-Huei Lee and Prof. Chung-Ju Chang (Dept. of Communication
Engineering) are interested in real-time multimedia communications over
ATM.
Meanwhile,
at National Taiwan Institute of Technology, dynamic QoS control based
on RSVP is studied with the following motivation. With increasing demand
for multicast multimedia communications, future networks are expected
to provide an integrated service for transporting data packets with
QoS guaranteed over current Internet infrastructure. Resource reservation
schemes seem to be the most effective over the various methods proposed
within ISPN (Integrated Services Packet Network), but the result of
QoS negotiation and resource reservation during connection establishment
may not remain ideal throughout the duration of a communication session.
There are three reasons for this. First, user's QoS requirement can
be very flexible and easily changed. Second, the nature of real time
application has a decisive influence on the required network resources
and different real-time applications have quite different communication
needs. Third, due to a continuously changing networking environment,
network load may change significantly over the duration of the connection.
Therefore, NTIT is studying a framework for the networks to continuously
monitor the actual resources usage and then employ correction mechanisms
to dynamically change the resource allocation among users. It also allows
the end systems to adjust their resource reservation according to the
network resource availability and their requirements. Furthermore, they
also revise the current multicast routing protocol to reduce the resource
reservation failure rate. The multicast routing algorithm attempts to
find a multicast distribution tree with QoS constraints. As many receivers
as possible will share the multicast paths. It can remedy two problems
caused by current design of RSVP. One is to avoid choosing those data
paths whose available resource is insufficient. The other is to solve
the heterogeneity problem caused by different network elements.
Last
but not least, the RSVP protocol is being implemented over the Windows95
environment (Hosts) as well as on routers which are developed by the
High-Speed Networks Labs., Department of Computer Science at National
Tsing Hua University.
Project
Investigators:
Dr.
Hsueh-Ming Hang, Professor, Department of Electronics Engineering,
National Chiao Tung University (hmhang@cc.nctu.edu.tw)
Dr.
Yaw-Chung Chen, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science
and Information Engineering, National Chiao Tung University (ycchen@csie.nctu.edu.tw)
Dr.
Ruay-Shiung Chang, Assciate Professor, Department of Information Management,
National Taiwan Institute of Technology (rschang@cs.ntit.edu.tw)
Dr.
Nen-Fu Huang, Professor, Department of Computer Science, National
Tsing Hua University (nfhuang@cs.nthu.edu.tw)
I.2-5
Experiments of Voice and Video Applications over Networks
The
Video-Audio Processing laboratory (VAPLab) at National Central University
(NCU), led by Pao-Chi Chang, has been pursuing projects in the transport
of audio/video signals over various networks, including internet, ATM
testbed, and wireless networks.
The
ATM testbed at NCU was established in 1995. It consists of three Fore
ASX-200 ATM switches, connected by multi-mode optical fibers. Two to
five workstations with ATM adapter cards, are connected to each switch.
With this ATM testbed, VAPLab performs experiments of video data transport
over high speed networks. A workstation with SunVideo card is responsible
for image capture and compression with the help of XIL library. The
compressed video streams are then transmitted over the ATM network based
on the selected QoS parameters. The workstation at the receiving end
is responsible for receiving, decompressing, and displaying the video.
With this experimental setup, the characteristics of video transmission
over ATM, such as the effect of the QoS parameter selection, and the
video quality degradation caused by the delay, can be observed and measured.
Meanwhile,
the voice telephony over ATM technology is being developed in the Network
Lab. at National Taiwan Institute of Technology. They have been studying
various methods for computer telephony integration (CTI), video on demand
(VOD), phone number portability, and multiple session management. To
extend the CTI service to broadband ATM networks, the NTIT team is developing
multicast mechanisms that can be used in the voice/video conference
over ATM networks.
Project
Investigators:
Dr.
Pao-Chi Chang, Associate Professor, National Central University (pcchang@roger.ee.ncu.edu.tw)
Dr.
Jean-Lien C. Wu, Professor, National Taiwan Institute of Technology
(cw@nlhyper.et.ntit.edu.tw)
I.2-6
Research Activities on Multicast
Many
applications in this proposal will benefit from High-Performance Internet
Access with QoS (delay, throughput, and jitter) guarantees. Today, a
lot of researchers use MBone to develop protocols and applications for
group communication. Multicast provides one-to-many and many-to-many
network delivery services for applications such as videoconferencing
system, video-on-demand system, and audio where several hosts need to
communicate simultaneously. There are several situations in which the
need for High-Performance Internet Access among the end-to-end delays
arises. During a videoconference, it is important that the current speaker
be heard by all participants at the same time, or the communication
may lack the feeling of an interactive face-to-face discussion. Consider
also the use of multicast message to update multiple copies of a replicated
data item in a distributed database system. Minimizing the delay variation
in this case would minimize the length of time during which the database
is in an inconsistent state. Finally, being able to look at the information
carried by the multicast message long before others can will lead to
the capability of gaining a competitive edge. A distributed game scenario
in which the players are connected to a game server, and compete against
each other using information sent by the server to their screens, would
be one such example.
The
benefits we will receive from a vBNS Internet connection will be substantial,
and we can overcome the constraints of current networks in moving large
digital information. Interactive TV and video-on-demand are two important
one-to-many multicasting services made possible by advance in video
compression and network transmission technologies. In a VOD system,
multimedia streams are stored on a storage server and played out to
the user station upon requests. A VOD server is expected not only to
concurrently serve many clients (hundreds or more), but also to provide
interactive features for video playout including pause/resume, backward
play, and fast-forward and fast-backward play, which home viewers have
come to expect from their current VCR systems. Applications of many-to-many
multicasting include decentralized consensus protocols, extrema finding,
acquisition of a new global state among mobile hosts, and the broadcasting
of various system-dependent message.
The
main areas of network services and corresponding protocols that need
to be developed and demonstrated contain the following : 1.) Quality
of service, 2.) Security and system robustness, 3.) Network management,
including the allocation and sharing of bandwidth, 4.) Systems engineering
and operations, including definitions and tools for service architectures,
metrics, measurement, statistics, and analysis, 5.) New or modified
protocols for routing, switching, multicast, reliable, transport, security,
and mobility, 6.) Computer operating systems, including new requirements
generated by advanced computer architectures, 7.) Collaborative and
distributed application environments. The primary strategy for achieving
the above goals is to develop and deploy the services, protocols, and
functionality required by the network infrastructure and applications.
This will be done in an open technology transfer environment within
the framework of collaboration as exemplified by the IETF, ATM Forum,
Educom, etc.
The
Network Database Lab. in National Taiwan University has been pursuing
projects in high-performance network database design, VOD system, videoconferencing
system, multicast, and protocol performance and implementation. Our
above mentioned endeavor will certainly benefit a lot from the connection
to the vBNS. VAPLab in National Central University mentioned before
has installed Mbone on Ethernet for video conferencing experiments.
On top of Mbone, several applications including Session Directory (SD),
White Board (WB), Visual Audio Tool (VAT), and Video Conference (VC),
are installed for further experiments. SD allows a user to allocate
a channel for media transport. It also manages the use of all channels.
WB provides a realtime low-rate shared document among multi-users. VAT
allows two or more users to hold an interactive voice-dominant conference.
VIC allows multi-users to exchange video signals among many computers
in different environments. All the applications operate well except
VIC, since the delay is serious due to its high bandwidth requirement.
All the Mbone experiments are performed on NCU LAN thus far. In the
near future, National Taiwan University (NTU) will be connected through
"mrouted" server for wide area experiments. The objective
of this proposal is to establish high-performance international Mbone
connection and to measure the video/audio application performance.
Project
Investigators:
Dr.
Ming-Syan Chen, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, National
Taiwan University (mschen@cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw)
Dr.
Pao-Chi Chang, Associate Professor, National Central University (pcchang@roger.ee.ncu.edu.tw)
