The ISU IP link seems to be improved. This is from Brian:
Well somebody did something about 18:00 last night it went from seconds with a greater then 50% packet loss to an average of 71ms and change with 0% loss, so I would say the next step would be to give it a shot this morning.
I agree with Casey's assessment of our test this morning:
Matt and I just tested the link. It is much improved over yesterday afternoon, but still not what I would expect from a true 384 connection. The video was not as sharp as I would expect, and there was some pixelization and freezing, but nothing compared to yesterday. It will be interesting to see what this afternoon will bring.
We'll see how it goes this afternoon.

 
It seems that the IP connection from Pocatello for ME 412 has been bad all semester from a quality standpoint as well as the connection trouble noted below. Usually the instructor is in Idaho Falls so the problem was not so apparent until he switched to Poky. I connected to the class yesterday and it was indeed very bad: much pixelization, blockiness and audio defects. Their incoming is apparently fine. This is what Brian at ISU found:
Just installed SmokePing 1.26 and actually got the graph for UI MCU to start working and so far things do not look good. I seeing 5 second, yes you read that correctly not millisecond, 5 second, average round trip time with an average packet loss of 57%. I want to let this run for awhile and gather some more stats, but with these numbers I'm surprised anything at all is getting across.
I'm not sure what this means but it doesn't sound good. I will pass this on to the the network monkeys on this end.

 
About the Idaho Falls audio problem 2: I have also learned that EO has no way to feed that codec any sort of mix-minus audio from that studio. In order to get the class on tape they can only record Program video and audio. They also feed Program to the codec. This means that when they are 'tag teaching' a class, and the instructor is sometimes in IF, they will be feeding incoming audio back to the codec. It is surprising that it works at all.

 
ME 412 connections to Pocatello: We are still having trouble with this connection. About 2/3 of the time the connection will go bad on the Poky end. This happens after the MCU successfully calls them and Idaho Falls. But the Engr 2 codec takes longer to negotiate. When it does finally complete the 'handshake' process Poky gets a 'faulty connection' error and loses video. At this point the MCU is still happy, passing video from Poky and reporting a healthy connection. A Pocatello re-connect will clear the problem. Casey thinks the trouble is with the Poky MCU but it could also be made worse by the 'CLI factor'.

 
About the Idaho Falls audio problem: I found that EO had the audio hitting their codec pretty hard and they lowered it a bit. This reduced the distortion (over-modulated audio) I was hearing. I do not know if this solved the problem but we were unable to duplicate the bad audio in a test call after the change.
Dave has a tape of the audio problem and it sounds digital to me, like it was going on at the audio codec level. Perhaps it just couldn't handle the distortion. So once again we are in 'optimistic wariness' mode for a videoconference site (IF2).

 
Ryan called and was not connected to FCS. I called lynette and Donovan forgot about the meeting I reconnected the meeting .meeting time 9:30 was still on time

 
Ag Ed 306, at 5 pm tonight... class break, class started again Twin Falls students were still seeing what was on the MCU at the beginning of break. We could hear and see each other. I disconnected and reconnected, all was fine. Last week,Twin Falls was disconnected during this time frame. HMMMMM... What's happening, where, around 5:00 pm pst

FSC411, Tuesdays, 3:30 - 5:30 pm, When I switch from Enhanced CP to Voice Switched. CdA 1 gets a green screen for a few seconds before switching. This has been consistant for the 6 classes we've had..

MCU software glitches??

You folks out in CV Land pat yourselves on the back. "You're doing a great job!

 
FCS dropped at 1:30 for no aparent reason they said they did not hit the disconnect button I reconnected them (dp)

 
FCS was supposed to connect at 9:00am to Cda2 auto fire, niccoles was not ready. I called lynett and she said they were on a conference call and would be ready in about 15 min but go ahead and fire the EQ. I fired it at 9:24 and it was ready. We still need them to be ready at the time TMS fires.

 
Hi Matt, Dave Anderson called you at 1:13 pm. He wanted to report that CE482, IF2, M2, point to point that had an audio issue similar to the one he'd reported to you last week that went through the MCU. Bob Stiger is presenting from IF and it sounds like a clicking noise when Bob begins to speak. Sound similar to morse code. Please call Dave. Paula

 
INRA connection to WSU today went fine.

 
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Evening from 4 to 6, I've had classes that Twin Falls Classroom is present.
The feed back is disruptive to the presentor. I've had them muted throught the MCU. This is not a solution because when a Twin Falls student wants to speak he/she should beable to without my interference.

Ag Ed 450, Monday 4-6pm, When a student want to say something and I have them muted though the MCU there is a problem! The instructor asked where a student went they say he was adjusting the volume, in front. Maybe they wanted to speak and couldn't because I had the MCU muted for them....
FCS 411, Tuesday, 3:30 - 5:30pm, The instructor ask both the Moscow and Twin Falls site to mute their mics because the she could not speak and think with her voice coming back to her. I had Moscow and Twin muted as per instructors request. The Cda site used the Elmo and showed Twin how to use the remote control to mute their mics. When I switched from Enhanced CP to voiced switched, I got the green screen.
Ag Ed 306, Wednesday, I connected Twin and Ag 104 through the MCU so I could mute Twin to avoid the feedback. Around 5pm Twin dropped from the conference. I reconnected.

It seems like in the year 2004 there can be a economical, practical solution to this Twin Fall Audio issue.
Paula

 
Mark reports that Duane found a problem with a switch at WSU that was causing errors and corrected it. I did a test call to WHETS and it looked fine. I have not tested the INRA connection yet but I expect it will also be clean when I do. Whew.

 
Today's Ag to WSU INRA class experienced the same trouble we had with earlier WHETS classes noted below. I have notified Mark and he is working with Duane at WSU to identify and resolve the problem.

 
CAMBR site contacts Bill and Eric have been notified by e-mail, by me on 2/6 and by Anita on 2/5, that they will need to dial in, per Don. But they have not done so yet. As happened on Monday, today Post Falls did not dial in for ECE 542. Monday I remotely connected them but today I found that their system was not turned on. Steve said that he had a tape and that he surmised that he was supposed to play it today.

Connection problems (aside from coordination problems above) persist with this site, with what sounds like fairly severe packet loss yielding unacceptable audio: Steve was going to try a speakerphone connection for audio today in an effort to improve audio. I think packets are being lost traversing the Post Falls NAT. Evidence of this is that the MCU and TMS see different IP addresses from the Post Falls codec: TMS reports the actual IP and the MCU reports the NAT address. This makes me think that some packets may be taking different routes to the codec.

 
I re-saved all the Ag router salvos and they seem to working again.

 
All the salvos set up on the new router in Ag seem to be non-functional at this time. I am experimenting to see if they can be brought back to life.

 
Connection issues with WSU have re-emerged. WSU is seeing massive pixelization in the video from us, along with audio trouble. Our incoming from them is clean as a whistle. We had the same trouble on Thursday but thought it was cleared by a reboot of the WHETS gatekeeper. Their network people are investigating. I have a call in to Mark Q to check from this end.

 
Not sure what was going on with the audio coming from Idaho Falls yesterday. IF and JEB were both connected via standard ISDN on net, ISU was via IP. IF and EO both phoned me to report trouble but of course I could not tell what they were hearing. The way Steve described it, it kind of sounded like there might have been some problem with the IF audio board--somehow the incoming audio may have been getting into the outgoing audio and/or the instructor mic was being over-driven and/or there was a stray open mic. I operated a class with Ag and IF2 later in the day and it sounded fine then so maybe they found the problem. I have a call in to DaveA but have not heard back yet. I hope the trouble was in IF, otherwise it may be another issue with the mcu.

 
The audio in TF Classroom. is really bothersome. Same issue, the feedback seems to stay consistant. Last night Ag Ed 306, Bob Haggerty complained about it. At break I disconnected and called in through the MCU so I could mute TF.

Monday's AgEd 450 connection, the feedback was really bugging me so I had the codec volume low. Lori Moore said she did not hear anything in the classroom. I could hear it in the control room.

Wednedsay, Ag Ed 306 connection, I could not hear the feedback except through the headphones. However, Bob could hear it in the classroom.