Focused Effort Title: Uniform Hardware Purchases for use of Tango Interactive

POC Name:  David Bernholdt
POC E-mail Address  bernhold@npac.syr.edu
POC Telephone: 315 443 3857
POC Fax: 315 443 1973

Project Description:

One of Tango Interactive's strengths is its platform
independence as it is based on standards such as Java and
the Netscape browser. However it is now clear that Tango
runs substantially better on some platforms than others.
Here "better" means both more reliably and with higher
performance and these measures are correlated as machines
where Tango runs with poor performance are more likely to
"crash" or just behave erratically due to overburdening of
the system (CPU typically). Tango is dependent on four
characteristics of the platform
  1.   Intrinsic (Tango independent) quality of the Browser
  2.   Intrinsic quality of multimedia support.
  3.   Intrinsic quality of Java support (in Browser)
  4.   Quality of the Tango customization to particular
       operating environment.

It is well known that the market dominance of the PC
architecture implies that basic browser support is superior
here compared to UNIX and Apple platforms. Multimedia
support for PC's is erratic and depends on particular video
card and camera used. Some PC multimedia hardware is
excellent with Tango. Some UNIX systems (such as SGI) have
excellent multimedia support but this is often difficult to
use due to support variation between the different SGI O/S
versions. Tango customization is possible and this is in
principle relevant for instance to making particular PC
video hardware work. However this is very costly to the core
Tango support team as there are rapid changes in both the
basic operating environments (versions of Browser and O/S)
and hardware (there is a new cheaper or otherwise different
video hardware every month or so). Even more so, these
issues are costly at the recipient sites where often the
staff is relatively inexperienced in the necessary arcane
hardware and software issues. Again now every site has
essentially different Tango hardware and O/S. That means
that testing of new Tango capabilities is very costly both
for the core group at Syracuse and the support staff at
recipient sites.

We believe that a modest investment in hardware can
alleviate the situation. We will choose a basic PC platform
and mainstream multimedia hardware for which we can expect
the "Intrinsic" capabilities (items 1 to 3 above) to be as
good as possible. We will strongly recommend this chosen
uniform system and "not be responsible" for users deviating
from it. 

Benefits:

With uniform hardware available to all PET partners, we can then focus
our Tango performance and robustness work on this platform, which will
lead to:
  o    Less effort in Core Tango supporting offbeat systems,
       allowing the team to focus on innovations in the system.
  o    Easier support issues at recipient sites
  o    Better delivery of training and education classes.
  o    Simplifies issues associated with extending use of
       Tango into meeting, general collaboration, etc. within the
       PET team.

Required Resources:

We need at least two systems of the recommended type to allow for the
required testing and troubleshooting in support of this standardized
platform for the PET community.  These systems will also be used for
education and training delivery, PET collaboration, etc.

The recommended configuration is as follows:

1. General/Student workstation

   PC with Windows NT 4.0 SP5 (upgradable to Windows2000 asap)
    1. 400 MHz Pentium III   or faster
    2. 128 MB RAM or more
    3. 8GB HDD or more (can be IDE or ATA)
    4. Winnow 
       http://www.winnov.com/products/vidconfopropci.htm
       PCI Videum Conference Pro $359 
    5. SoundBlaster 64 not necessary if Winnov installed
       External speakers not necessary because of headset, but
       in classroom setting, 2 computers should have speakers
    6. Ethernet 10/100
    7. headset + microphone
       http://www.vxicorp.com/CTS/cts.hmx
       VXI Parrott 10-3    $59
    8. good quality monitor (19") and appropriate graphics card     
       1152x864   True Color, or
       1240x1024  True color - recommended
    9. CDROM 
   10. Software
       Microsoft office
       Textpad,  WinZIP,  FTP client,  netscape 4.7, IE 5

2. Teacher's workstation

   For present time, we recommend that instructors use TWO of the above
   workstations to allow for separation of BuenaVista (A/V
   conferencing), which can be highly resource intensive in a one-to-many
   teaching environment, from the remaining Tango tools.

   Eventually, we expect to recommend a single 2-processor system with
   more memory (256 MB) and larger monitor (1600x1200) as an alternative
   to using two separate workstations, but we have recently
   experienced subtle problems with Netscape on a handful of 2-CPU
   systems and do we would prefer to be cautious in our
   recommendations.

All brand name computers (Dell etc), do not buy clones.

Critical software (OS, Service Packs, browsers, Tango plugin) should
not be changed or upgraded without first checking with
tango-support@npac.syr.edu.  Browsers and Tango plugins in particular
will need to be kept in sync throughout PET userbase to insure
interoperability.