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September 30, 2005

Managing your workstations

In an organisation such as Marratech, where you have employees in many different locations, countries and even continents, IT support can sometimes be a hassle. People run into problems and need someone to look over their software settings. While there are solutions to this (such as Apple Remote Desktop or Windows Remote Assistance), they are not easy to use, and very seldom secure. Most of them requires configuring the local firewall if you want to use them over the Internet - try that while you're at a hotel!

Enter Marratech. Since the Marratech client works well through firewalls, there is no reason why you can't use it in the same way. Better yet, the communication is encrypted using 256 bit AES which means noone else on that hotel network can listen in when you type in your passwords. With the application sharing, people can easily share their desktop with their IT staff, who can fix the error while talking to the employee!

From our Office in Stockholm, I've used this to set up Outlook on a PC in Chicago, manage printers in Copenhagen and fix corrupt documents in Northern Sweden - none of that would have been possible without Marratech due to firewalls and the need for security. More likely, we would've had to send the PC to a technician or the other way around, which would've cost us money and time. Now we had everything up and running in less than half an hour.

Posted by rln at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2005

H.323 Video Conferencing

H.323 Video conferencing

The Internet2 conference took us out to the University of Pennsylvania. A great reception was held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, one of the biggest anthropology museums in the world.

The head of the museum then welcomed us in the auditorium to introduce himself and wanted to engage us in a debate that showed promise. It was to be a debate with Delaware and Croatia on new technologies used for analysis and preservation of human fossils.

What follows is in no way meant to be disrespectful to the HUGE amount of work put down by everyone... having said this, here goes:

A couple of years ago, Magnus and I wrote a Marratech benefits versus H.323 document and got some angry email from industry people that we were spreading FUD. Yesterday night proved that all the work we have put down in developing our system is justified.

Here is what happened at the prestigious event, which was using H.323 Polycom equipement (from what I could see)


I was literally squirming in my seat, feeling bad for the people that put down hard work in making this Internet2 event work. But then, when I talked to Joe, I started remembering why we started Marratech.

H.323 comes from the ITU, an organisation linking the big telephone companies of the world. H.323 is based on H.320, the ISDN predecessor to the IP based H.323.

These standards come from an organisation that is used to dedicated circuits, not the packet based Internet. Dedicated circuits provide dedicated bandwidth and stable network conditions... something you will not find on the Internet and Internet2.

When using the Internet, one must build for the unexpected. While our solution is not perfect, we try to adapt to this reality by dropping video quality and lowering audio quality dynamically if necessary, so that the meeting continues. Our software continuously adapts and tries to compensate for network issues. If the network is cut temporarily, we try to keep it alive as to not have to rejoin the meeting.

This seemingly simple steps have not been so simple to implement, but they have been a priority at Marratech. After seeing yesterday's event, it is obvious H.323 video conferencing did not follow this path.

How can one justify the precedence of video over voice? Seeing debaters move at 30 fps but not hearing them because the audio could not adapt to packet loss is not understandable to me. I guess this is why it is called VIDEO conferencing.

How can a connection be dropped when there is a little network congestion? maybe I have been in my Marratech bubble too long.

Another important lesson I learned from yesterday was how an off-the-shelf computer with a camera and headset can beat the quality offered by a very expensive video conferencing solution with echo cancelling microphones. The participants could have used a much more normal voice (instead of having to scream) yesterday and the audio would have been a lot better had they used headsets.

Echo cancelling microphones and similar technology are very practical and nice, but it does not beat a cheap headset when it comes to quality. And we all know how sensitive our ears are.

I know, things can go bad with our software as well. Badly set up or outdated computers, badly plugged cables, or a network dying all together can really hurt a Marratech meeting. But considering our price difference with the Polycoms and the Tandbergs of this world, and considering our goal to provide reliable and built for the Internet solution, I must say that we have a strong advantage.

This blog entry is on the eve of the release of our H.323 bridging capability, which is a bit ironic. But perhaps this will introduce the H.323 users of the world and make them see how easily and reliable a laptop with a headset, camera and free client software can be!

What do you think?

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 07:36 PM | Comments (1)

September 12, 2005

Ulrika Sandberg

I am happy to announce that Ulrika Sandberg will join our development team is Luleå as test engineer. Ulrika holds a Master of Science in Media Technology from Luleå University of Technology and comes most recently from Tieto Enator.

A big warm welcome Ulrika!

Posted by peter at 03:57 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2005

Help Maurice fight Osteo-Arthritis

Maurice works with Marratech in France. He suffers from a tough disease called Osteo-Arthritis and he is currently touring the UK and cycling on different motorcycle tracks on which he used to compete.

All of us at Marratech cheer you on. We welcome everyone to read http://www.winerider.com/ and donate a few dollars, euro, pounds, crowns, heck... whatever you got!

Good luck Maurice!

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 07:44 PM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2005

Great tutorials

Sometimes, the Internet is amazing. This morning, in our virtual Marratech office, Magnus sent a link to this page.

On it you will find a great tutorial on how to use Marratech in French, Italian and German.

It is sure nice to see customers doing such nice deployments. And it gives us great ideas as well.

Send us more tips!

[EDIT]

Yup, just as a I posted this we got another nice set of material from the Internet. It is in Powerpoint format.

/Serge

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 09:55 AM | Comments (1)

September 06, 2005

Tech: UDP vs TCP

This question came up during the Officeline seminar in Oslo last week. I thought it would be interesting to bring it up on this blog. It is a long article, but could prove interesting for people looking into buying a web conferencing solution like Marratech.

The question was why do certain solutions use TCP while others use UDP
? It is a great question for those looking into a Real Time Collaboration solution.

The Internet Protocol, which is the force that holds all life and objects together, is a bit different than normal telephone networks. The Internet Protocol (IP) is based on small packets. These packets are sent from computer A to computer B through different network technologies. (Wireless, fiber, DSL, etc...) IP differs from the normal telephone network: if data is lost on the way from A to B, then it is lost. The network itself does not repair any lost packets.

This, of course, can be a problem for surfing the web, emails, file transfers and other data that is transferred between two computers.

The Transmission Control Protocol, TCP is used for such situations. If data from A to B gets lost, B "asks" for it again and A resends. (This is really simplifying it, but it should be an accurate representation) The more data that gets lost, the more that needs to be "asked" for and repaired.

TCP is a connection protocol, so it is used only between two computers.

Real Time Collaboration implies Real Time (i.e. short delays). In the Marratech world, it also implies larger groups of users collaborating. TCP is not well adapted to this scenario, here is a few examples why:

- if a video packet is lost, like a little piece of the background, it is not a requirement to get it back.

- if 20 ms of the audio gets lost, there is no time to go back and ask for a retransmission. Doing so would increase delays significantly giving users a sattelite phone conversation effect.

- when a very large group of computers collaborate together, it is very resuorce intensive on the central point (the server) to have to fix everyone's data back and forth.

For these reasons, Marratech uses the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) in its solution.

When information via UDP is sent, it is sent in a connectionless manner. This means that if it is lost, it is lost.

UDP has a few advantages:

- Very low delay (no retransmissions)
- Can be used for both Unicast and network efficient Multicast networks. (Multicast uses UDP to send to many receivers without copying data on the network)
- Less resource intensive. (Some may remember the TCP based T.120 whiteboard for videoconferencing protocol. It had a very hard time to scale past 15 users on expensive dedicated bridges. This is why it is hardly ever used.)

This, in the Marratech world, makes possible:

- Great audio
- Fast video
- Easily use both Unicast and Multicast networks
- The possibility to cluster
- Many simultaneous whiteboard users (we are talking of MANY here, not just 10 or 15 but hundreds)
- A fast whiteboard.

When audio data is lost, our voice codecs try to fix lost information by estimating what was lost. You may be surprised to know that we can handle up to 30 % packet loss without the conversation being adversly affected.

When written media (whiteboard or chat for example) is lost, we use a technology that allows retransmissions over a whole group (not just one to one as the case with TCP). That technology is called SRM (Scalable Reliable Multicast). Do not let the name fool you. SRM works very well on a Marratech Manager using Unicast. SRM avoids the originator from being flooded by repair requests and allows other members of the group to help each other repair data loss.

Very few have succeeded in implementing a real life, robust implementation of SRM. (Peter's brains combined with Marratech's talent made it possible) The beauty of SRM is that we can use it without depending on a central server. Since it is the clients that are in charge of helping each other out, it can be done across several server nodes (clusters). To avoid headaches, think of SRM as a group TCP.

The other advantage is that it enables us to use real end to end encryption.

So, for Real Time Collaboration and for Voice Over IP (IP Telephony) UDP is a given choice.

There is one trade off however. TCP allows you to reuse TCP ports in the firewall. So, if you use TCP, you can reuse port 80 which is normally used for web surfing.

When deploying a UDP based solution such as Marratech or IP Telephony, your firewall will need to be properly (securely) configured for UDP traffic. This configuration is similar to deploying SIP, Skype or other real time applications.

It adds a hurdle. It is a compromise. But look at the alternative: TCP based web conferencing solutions that I have tested are marred with very long delays, a popular one gave me over 6 seconds delay when talking from Sweden to the USA. I was running Marratech over the same connection and never noticed any problems.

TCP tools can not be depended upon for live group communication as the delay cost by normal packet loss is intolerable. You will therefore notice that these tools are mainly used for one person talking to many others (without any discussion going on) Or they are used along side a real telephone, which beats the purpose of using online tools. A telephone based virtual office does not seem acceptable to me.

This is why Marratech uses UDP as a media transfer protocol: low delay, scalability and security (making end to end encryption possible). The compromise is that some customers with very shut firewalls will need to configure them or use VPN access. A small trade off to get the best possible experience for your team!

Hope this answers the question :-)

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2005

Harold Jarche Blog

The Jarche blog (Harold Jarche works together with our reseller Mancomm Performance in Canada) is quite interesting. Harold writes about using technology for teleworking and has been known to write about a certain tool. :-)

You will find his blog here: http://www.jarche.com/blog/1

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

Norway

I just got back from Norway. Our norwegian reseller, Officeline organized three days of Marratech events. Wednesday was a preparation day and a journalist meeting, Thursday was a full day seminar with potential customers, and Friday was spent in Bergen, about 45 minutes flight west from Oslo where we met the Bergen Officeline employees, the health care departement of the region and a net based learning research center.

The events where well organized. I like doing this since it gives us direct contact with the customers, which is critical for staying on top of what is needed when detailing our development plans.

Johnny Widén and David Richardsson each did a presentation and discussed their planning, the need for unofficial meetings and their own experiences. A big thank you for you both!

Johnny brought up a good point. Did you know that between 80 and 90 % of all information exchange with colleagues happens outside of planned formal meetings ??? This is why a virtual office is so effective!

Rikard demo'ed from Luleå for all of my meetings, he is a real trooper. He did about 10 demos. It is an art to repeat one self so many times and yet do it with such interest. Let's just say he is a master of that art!

It feels honest to demo on real equipment and real networks. For instance, when David Richardson's network was loosing packets, we could see the video slowing down without the audio being affected. It gave me a chance to answer questions related to this common scenario.

We often see other companies demoing on dedicated networks with top of the line equipment. This raises expectations to a level that only leads to disapointment. For our demo, we used the Oslo university network, a 1200 USD laptop and an Accumic. Nothing secret. All of it real.

During the seminars, I felt the interest for our H.323 solution which I demoed. I also previewed our development plan (ex. video quality improvements) and got feedback which matches what we are curently focusing on. This confirms that our plans match what customers require.

Some experiences from the seminar:

• When people are online, don't forget to repeat the questions from the live audience. (I forgot this frequently)

• Although it worked on monday, the projector would not go higher than 800 x 600 This seems to be a windows problem.

• The windows computer had the mic boost clicked in. The mic boost only worked when power was plugged into the laptop. When we gave the laptop power, the audio became really bad. When the battery was used, the sound was perfect. Turning off the mic boost solved this issue. Good to remember!

The events served as a good warm up to the upcoming Internet2, Loudoun Economic Summit and Educause events.

More resellers are planning seminars, Marratech-school days and other events that we will participate in. Hope to see you there!

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)