EUGENE—Network equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems, Inc., has given $257,300 to the University of Oregon Computing Center, the first installment of a nearly half-million dollar gift to bolster the UO's advanced networked computing efforts. The Computing Center plans to use the gift to expand its work in the area of IP multicast technology, an efficient way to distribute broadcast-quality multimedia programming over the Internet.

"IP multicast uses Internet bandwidth more efficiently than traditional streaming media solutions," says Joanne Hugi, director of the UO Computing Center.

In the case of traditional streaming media technology, if five viewers watch a particular video, five video streams are required; if 500 viewers are watching, 500 streams are needed. But with IP multicast, five, 500 or 500,000 viewers all can share a single copy of the content that is being sent.

"Cisco is providing to us the resources needed to continue building on the work we've already completed in the area of multicast development," Hugi explains.

Specifically, she says, her staff will use the gift to explore a new refinement of multicast called Source Specific Multicast, or SSM, which changes the way IP multicast sessions are advertised and accessed. Previously, IP multicast sessions were advertised and accessed via a session directory that integrated poorly with today's web-centric Internet. SSM now allows IP multicast sessions to be launched with the click of a mouse on a web page-just like any other type of multimedia content.

"SSM also raises the level of security during multicast sessions, making it more difficult for hackers or crackers to hijack a multicast session," Hugi says.

In addition, the gift will help the UO build a content library of materials that can be multicast as well as to purchase the storage media on which these materials will reside.

"We are grateful to Cisco for this gift which will allow us to send some of our networking staff to important technical events such as the Internet Engineering Task Force meetings, Internet2 meetings, and the annual Supercomputing meetings. Our team will use our mobile IP multicast capabilities to make the content of those meetings available to a broader audience. In the process of doing this the networking staff will fine tune and troubleshoot our use of this important and rapidly advancing technology."

The Internet access point to UO IP multicast activities is http://videolab.uoregon.edu/. Information about Cisco's IP Multicast solutions can be accessed at http://www.cisco.com/go/ipmulticast/.

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