[June 11, 2014]

IMTC SuperOp! 2014 Achieves Record-Breaking Videoconferencing Interoperability Testing Results

The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) announces the successful completion of SuperOp! 2014, the premier telecommunications industry interoperability testing event for multimedia communication standards and products. SuperOp! 2014 took place in San Diego, May 18-23, and covered equipment and service interoperability on combinations of IP and 3G/4G networks across a broad range of technologies including H.264 SV, RCS and DASH, and traditional RTSP streaming, HD videoconferencing, TIP and Telepresence, as well as the full spectrum of SIP and H.323-based videoconferencing systems.

SuperOp! 2014 culminated in SuperConnect, the annual demonstration of interoperability across all participating multimedia endpoints and MCUs. In this year's SuperConnect, over 50 endpoints participated in the SuperConnect call that spanned six MCUs cascaded together in a single, vast video conference. A new record was set when the SuperConnect call was established in only 12 minutes thus demonstrating interoperability and partnership across the multimedia industry, the prime goal of IMTC and SuperOp! Also for the first time, 10 of the call segments were routed through Session Border Controllers (SBCs) simulating a secure and private multimedia carrier enterprise topology. The SuperConnect call was comprised of various forms of endpoints including hardware-based immersive room systems, conference room systems, desktop and software-based clients for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. A multitude of protocols including SIP, H.323, TIP and SVC signaling were used for signaling and media formats included H.264 AVC, Main Profile, Base Profile and SVC.

"SuperConnect's record-breaking completion across 50 endpoints, six MCUs, and three telepresence systems in only twelve minutes is a very impressive result and it clearly shows our growth as an industry," said Anatoli Levine (News - Alert), IMTC President and Director of Product Management at Radvision, an Avaya company. "This year's SuperOp! results are further proof that we can successfully bring together a variety of video clients and systems to test interoperability between products and services, identify and remove technical barriers, deliver results to improve performance and enhance end-user experiences that expedite adoption."

The SIP Parity Activity Group testing drew more than 20 product teams from companies including Avaya, BlueJeans, Cisco, Huawei, Lifesize, Magor, Pexip, Polycom (News - Alert), Sonus, Teliris and Vidyo. Testig was focused on key aspects of videoconferencing/Telepresence interoperability, with the IMTC SIP Parity best practices and associated test cases documents providing a framework within which to test. Interworking among teams was very broad, going above and beyond that described within the best practice documents. Call scenarios included point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and cascaded multipoint conferences. Participants noted the relative ease and success of BFCP over UDP for content sharing as well as TLS for SIP signaling and SRTP for media. There was noticeable growth in the percentage of implementations negotiating and using RTCP feedback messages to request I-frames. The core set of optional H.264 parameters recommended by the SIP Video Profile was supported by nearly all implementations.

The focus of TIP (Telepresence Interoperability Protocol) Activity Group was compatibility testing between Version 7 and Version 8 with participation from Avaya, Cisco, Huawei, Polycom, and Teliris. Over 50 test cases from the IMTC TIP test plan document were executed across 20 different endpoints, three MCUs and three SIP registrars. The testing was used to verify multi-vendor TIP implementation for TIP V8-V7 feature parity, content sharing and pre-emption, Constant Frame Rate (CFR) and Adaptive Frame Rate (AFR) encryption support on endpoints and MCUs, audio and video quality verification, and optimized IDR generation and handling use cases.

The CTI (News - Alert) (Carrier Telepresence Interop) Activity Group performed its second set of SuperOp! testing with participation from AT&T, Avaya, Cisco, Huawei, LifeSize (News - Alert), Magor, Polycom, Sonus, Tata Communications (as an OVCC representative), Teliris, and Vidyo. The CTI AG test bed included 35 video endpoints with four MCUs, three SIP/H.323 registrars and two Session Border Controllers (SBCs). Focused on carrier interoperability, all test calls were routed through a Cisco VCS-E and Sonus SBC peering which simulated Multimedia Service Provider (MSP) peering. Media termination and H.323 to SIP interworking using secure and non-secure media profiles were tested. Over 200 multimedia calls simulating service provider peering through SBCs were executed, covering 55 test cases from Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC) test scenarios with multimedia endpoint, MCU, SBC, signaling protocol, media format, and content sharing elements.

The focus of the PSS (Packet Switch Streaming) Activity Group was on MPEG-DASH and HLS HTTP based streaming technologies. In total, more than 400 tests were conducted during the event by five on-site client implementations on the Media Presentation Description (MPD) and bit-stream signaling level, the media decoding and rendering level, and on video and audio adaptation to different network conditions.

The SVC (Scalable Video Coding) Activity Group performed interoperability testing for the use of Scalable Video Coding, the scalable coding extension of H.264, with participation from Avaya, Polycom, and Vidyo. All test cases included calls made using standardized SIP signaling and included various scalability scenarios, focusing mostly on temporal scalability.

IMTC's SuperOp! 2014 brought together more than 60 engineers from 26 leading companies developing unified communications, video communication products and services worldwide, and was hosted by IMTC with event management from Global Inventures and sponsored by Cisco, Polycom, Vidyo and OVCC. SuperOp! 2015 will be held May 15-22, 2015, in Lisbon, Portugal.

About the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC)

The IMTC is an industry-leading, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote and facilitate the development and use of interoperable, real-time, multimedia telecommunication products and services based on open international standards. The IMTC hosts interoperability testing events and demonstrations throughout the world. IMTC has hosted numerous events to test IMS, VoLTE, SIP, H.323, 3G-324M, TIP, 3G PS Streaming, and other Voice over IP products and services with each other. The IMTC Board of Directors includes representatives from AT&T, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, LifeSize Communications, Nokia, Polycom, Qualcomm, Radvision an Avaya Company, Samsung (News - Alert), Unify and Vidyo. Membership is open to any interested party, including vendors of audio, document, and video conferencing hardware and software; academic institutions; government agencies; and non-profit organizations. The IMTC is making "Rich Media happen Anywhere, Anytime." Further information can be found at http://www.imtc.org.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]