The MICE demonstrations

JENC, Trondheim, May 10-14, 1993

At the Joint European Networking Conference in Trondheim, Norway, the MICE partners demonstrated two forms of multimedia conferencing, and in addition multicast the proceedings of the conference to about 50 sites around Europe and the rest of the world. The two demonstrations were:

Two way audio and video conferencing at relatively high data rates (up to 1Mbps) between Trondheim and the University of Oslo, including a shared whiteboard.
Multi-way audio and video at low data rates.

Although both systems have been in use amongst the MICE partners for some months, the objective was to demonstrate the feasibility of such systems over the European networking infrastructure. Here is the full paper: JENC: Trondheim, Norway, 1993

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Amsterdam, July 11-16 1993

The main goals for the demonstration at the IETF were to show, in a four-way demonstration:

Conference Multiplexing and Management Centre (CMMC)
Interworking between hardware codecs, software codecs and ISDN codecs
Interworking between conference rooms and workstations
Integration of multi-way shared workspace applications
Interworking with both European and US sites

Functionality shown during the demonstration:

4-way video, unicast to and multiplexed at UCL, and distributed using both multicast and unicast transmission (as appropriate) over the Internet to the MICE partners and others
using hardware and software codecs
audio multicast

The CMMC was set up to show 4 partners on the video at any one time. Which participants were visible was switchable, both from Amsterdam and from London. In the two top quadrants, we usually showed high frame rate video from the conference room at UCL and the demo stand at the IETF. The bottom left-hand quadrant showed the conference room at GMD using a hardware codec much of the time, and on the 4th quadrant, we brought in a partner (RUS) or US site (LBL in California or the University of Hawaii) using a software codec, or occasionally a second camera at the IETF using a software codec, in addition to the continuous hardware codec feed. At least once every day, we also showed video over ISDN from NTR and the BT ISDN help desk in London. Here is the full paper for the IETF demonstration

INTEROP'93, Paris, October 27-29 1993

For this demonstration we were invited by the German Telekom, to show MICE Multimedia Conferencing as an application using their DATEX-M service (a DQDB based SMDS service). For this they provided a special 2 Mbit link from Stuttgart to the Interop. Additionally to the functionality shown during the IETF demonstration we have shown:

extended ISDN functionality (video AND audio)
extended worldwide Multimedia Conferencing (additional European sites, several US sites, Australia)

To summarize, this was a highly successful demonstration, in which MICE partners were joined by friends of the MICE project from the US and Australia and other European countries (Netherlands, Switzerland) in several sessions. MICE was the only stand which demonstrated Multimedia Conferencing on an International scale, and therefore attracted considerable interest from the media and representatives of European Telecoms and other companies.

Full paper on Interop

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