University of British Columbia Monitors Quality of Service with InterMapper
Network Monitoring & Mapping Tools Used to Ensure Video Conferencing Availability
Customers: Dennis O'Reilly, University of British Columbia
Neil Stainton, Fraser Health
David Lampron, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Business: Large public university serving 50,000 students.
InterMapper's Role: InterMapper, a sophisticated network monitoring and mapping tool from Dartware, monitors 40,000 ports that appear on close to 100 network maps covering the University's widely distributed network. Most recently, InterMapper has been keeping tabs on distributed education in the Faculty of Medicine, which includes a video conferencing system that helps educate undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education students at University Academic Campuses and Clinical Academic Campuses throughout the Province.
Quote: “InterMapper is helpful whenever you think you have a Quality of Service problem, not just VoIP or video conferencing.” (Dennis O'Reilly)
“We make heavy use of video conferencing.” That understatement comes from Dennis O'Reilly, Senior Network Analyst at the University of British Columbia. Three years ago, the University's Faculty of Medicine distributed its MD undergraduate program and began to deliver lectures – everyday, all day – to first year students located in Vancouver, Victoria and Prince George. Last summer, third year students who spend most of their time learning in hospital and clinical settings across the province also began attending videoconference lectures at UBC Clinical Academic Campuses located in BC's health authorities with the help of the MPAACT program.
“We're short of doctors in British Columbia, especially in northern communities. The Faculty of Medicine began sending students out into the province in order to get them integrated into communities that need them to practice there,” explains David Lampron, Technical Operations Manager for the Vancouver Fraser Medical Program and MPAACT Project Manager. Connecting students and teachers via networked classrooms allows the Faculty of Medicine to expand the number of doctors it trains in the geographic areas that need them most while maintaining the rigor of the education it provides.
Lampron puts the critical role of reliable video conferencing in perspective. “Classes have to be available.” O'Reilly adds, “It would be a disaster to lose a connection.”
How it began
In 2004, the UBC Faculty of Medicine embarked on an effort to expand and distribute the MD Undergraduate Program. The idea was to move medical students out of the city of Vancouver into the vast province. Advanced video conference lecture theatres were installed at the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and the University of Northern British Columbia. First and second year medical students attend lectures at those theatres and complete clinical clerkships in many health care settings including local health authority facilities.
There was little, if any, room for technical glitches. Hundreds of students and the faculty members were dependent on lectures happening on schedule. And, of course, transmission quality was critical.
The undergraduate medical program technical team placed a Codex box (either Tandberg or Polycom) at each University. The box was connected to Ethernet switches. Minding these connections was key to insuring that the system was up and running and quality of service (QoS) high. “We wanted IP SLA tests to be unequivocal,” says O'Reilly. “So we attached Cisco 2811 routers to the same switches as the Codex boxes. The cost was incidental to the project and we could be sure that CPUs would never be overloaded by testing.”
Maintaining QoS with InterMapper and the IP SLA Probe
With the video conferencing infrastructure in place and plenty of bandwidth for testing, the next step was to implement a network monitoring system that would quickly point out potential problems and their source while providing troubleshooting data. The choice was easy.
O'Reilly had already been using InterMapper at the University of British Columbia for years. “It's the only monitoring tool we use. We slice and dice the network in many ways using over 100 maps that monitor thousands of devices and go down to all Ethernet switches.” The Faculty of Medicine project was a natural extension of UBC's InterMapper installation.
The first step was to point InterMapper at the video conferencing network equipment which, according to O'Reilly, took “a day or two to set up.” Next, O'Reilly spent another two days writing an IP SLA probe that would report on jitter, latency, and packet loss. InterMapper was up, running, and delivering status reports with “less than a week of work.”
Each AudioVisual Technician at a university location has access to InterMapper via InterMapper Remote. That, along with the IP SLA probe, is critical to fast problem diagnosis and resolution. “The system does experience problems but they are usually with the video system,” says O'Reilly. “The AudioVisual people can't tell what's causing the problem and they typically blame the network. If they didn't have access to InterMapper and if the probe wasn't delivering the data it does, I would have spent the rest of my life figuring out problems for those guys.”
The MPAACT Program
Delivering videoconference lectures for 1st and 2nd year students in university facilities was a huge success. Next, the Faculty of Medicine expanded the service outside of the University network into the clinical location throughout the province via the Medical Provincial Affiliated Academic Clinical Technology (MPAACT) program.
“The IP SLA probe really started to show value when we moved into the clinical institutions,” says Lampron. “End-points are installed on their infrastructure, not the University's. The probe delivers data that offers first-level troubleshooting capability in an environment where we have no administrative authority or control.”
Dedicated monitors in central control rooms throughout the Vancouver Fraser Medical Program display InterMapper maps of the video conferencing network. “Passive monitoring happens all day,” reports Lampron. “If there's a problem we actively seek out InterMapper maps and reports. We find the problem then call and warn technicians at the clinical location.”
The MPAACT program adopted O'Reilly's use of InterMapper with the IP SLA probe. When fully implemented, InterMapper will be monitoring 60-65 MPAACT endpoints.
Moving into the Health Authorities
InterMapper and the IP SLA probe have earned their stripes through the University-based video conferencing program and the MPAACT program. “Now the health authorities are buying into InterMapper to monitor their networks,” says O'Reilly.
Neil Stainton, Information Technology Architect, has chosen InterMapper and the IP SLA probe to map Fraser Health's network and monitor QoS. Fraser Health, one of British Columbia's six health authorities, includes 12 acute care hospitals and 80+ facilities. All locations are connected by a telco WAN. IP voice trunking is in use at most sites and bandwidth is set aside to accommodate both voice and video conferencing. Fraser Health employs 20 video conferencing facilities.
“If there's a problem with the phone or video it can be hard to tell if it's the network or the box,” says Stainton. “For us, InterMapper is a quick and easy way to get the information. We'll be using it as a point product to monitor QoS. I might be able to do it with other tools but really don't have the time to figure it out.”
Stainton's InterMapper installation will mimic O'Reilly's. He plans to put a Cisco router by each PBX box and run test series with the IP SLA probe.
Like Lampron, Stainton is quick to point out that, unlike O'Reilly's University-based video conferencing system and InterMapper installation, video conferencing systems within the health authority sites are all different and under separate control. “People might come in through Ethernet, ATM or ISDN” says Stainton. “They connect to the Faculty of Medicine through a private network gateway.”
Stainton will use the IP SLA probe to note response times along all portions of his network. With InterMapper, Fraser Health technicians will see problems and their source. “I don't need a tool that solves a problem. I just need to see where the problem is so I know who to call.”
End Notes
According to O'Reilly, the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine is the first in Canada to fully distribute its MD undergraduate program and rely so heavily on video conferencing. “It's now being used as a case study for other universities.
The initiative has gotten attention partially because of its ability to stand up to the demands of accreditation but also for its size. According to O'Reilly, “It's a $15 million project that connects 3 university centers and 6 health authorities.” It can be difficult to perform in such a spotlight but O'Reilly says that InterMapper has been “a huge success.”
While InterMapper is currently focusing on QoS related to video conferencing, O'Reilly points out that it can be used “whenever you think you have a QoS problem. It's not just for voice and video conferencing.”
Meanwhile, Dartware has accepted Dennis O'Reilly's generous offer to include the IP SLA probe in InterMapper, making it available to anyone interested in monitoring QoS.