About

The videoconferencing infrastructure of IPP (and most MPIs) is based on the ITU standard H.323 (Videoconferencing over IP). It has been presented on various occasions (see publications).

The IPP approach guarantees a robust, cost- and manpower-effective framework maintained by RZG's videoconferencing group. In 2011 about 30  videoconferences per day of approx. 120 minutes have been held between the 23 VC capable rooms at IPP-Garching and IPP-Greifswald.

Following IPP's positive experience, EFDA and ITER also established a homogeneous H.323 infrastructure.

More than half of the meetings have been so called Multi Point Conferences. IPP being an Associate of the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft (HGF), regular conferences include HGF sites like AWI, FZJ, FZK and others. The national and international projectgroups of RZG run several multipoint conferences per week.

RZG has its own GDS (Global Dialing Scheme) zones. An OpenSource H.323 gatekeeper/proxy combination routes all H.323 traffic through RZG’s firewall. The Gatekeeper zones are defined by two reserved areas in IPPs telephone extension numbering, namely

0049 893299 6001...6999 for Garching and external systems
and
0049383488 1001...1999 for Greifswald respectively.

These numbers are not to be mixed up with, or used as phone numbers!
The DFNVC (DFN Videoconference service) of the national IP provider DFN-Verein in the German Gigabit network (XWiN) is used for larger (>4 sites) multipoint conferences installed (Q2/2003), which comprise since 2007 three fully HD (720p/1080p) capable Codian MCUs 4520 with 120 ports.

The ITU standard H.239 is now the most common system for sharing presentations together with EFDATV, a VNC server located at IPP.

RZG's booking system allows all IPP to book all meeting rooms from single meeting rooms to multipoint video conferences including several internal and external rooms.

The phonebook contains all internal and external VC systems included in the common database of the gatekeeper and the booking system.

The VC conference load further increased in 2011 to 20000h (7152 h in 2007).  The Gatekeeper worked without downtime. There are  ≈400 registered endpoints, where up to 75 have been active simultaneously.

Presentation sharing using the ITU substandard H.239 has surpassed the VNC. EFDA-TV is common for EFDA people. The HD (720p send/1080p receive) capable Codian MCUs of the DFNVC Service delivered a very reliable and high quality performance, ≈ 55% of all calls via the RZG Gatekeeper were multi point.

Today (2012) 11 High-Definition Systems (5 LifeSize Room, 1 Team & 1 Express, 1 Cisco C20, 2 Cisco C40, 1 Cisco EX90 ) are available: 3 in Greifswald, 3 in Garching in building H1, 1 in the AUG control room,  2 at RZG and 2 in the technology division. In addition 15 Tandberg SD systems and ≈100 software clients are in regular use. The booking system covering 29 rooms (12 VC rooms in Garching, 7 in Greifswald, 10 non VC meeting) worked stable throughout the year. In 2011 there have been 13500 equivalent to an average 2 bookings / room / working day. 280 IPP employees are registered as authorized booking operators.

The RZG project groups held about 200 conferences, some with 1-3 audio-only participants, served via the ISDN-IP gateway of the DFNVC.