As many as 200 members of the global Access Grid (AG) community are expected for the 8th Access Grid Retreat, held in Canada for the first time, and hosted by Ryerson University at the Rogers Communication Center, June 9 to 11.

Both ORION and CANARIE are sponsors of the event, which is expected to draw participants from throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia.

"We expect to be showcasing some of the innovative uses of the Access Grid here at Ryerson and some of the other Canadian nodes," says Rogers Communications Centre Researcher, Many Ayromlou.

"We will also be announcing the formation of Canadian Access Grid Interest Group and their new web site soon to be launched from http://www.accessgrid.ca," he said. The group and it's web site will provide how-to style information for new nodes and will also serve as a focal point for exchange of ideas related to Access Grid technologies."

The Access Grid provides a global venue for group-to-group tele-collaboration, using multicast Internet connections, voice and video teleconferencing, multi-modal media displays, shared applications and interactive interfaces to visualization environments.

The AG began as a community effort in terms of development, support, education and training, and it continues to grow as a result of this approach.

The AG is now used at over 350 institutions worldwide.

Ryerson, the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, York University and the National Research Council Canada Institute for Information Technology, in Ottawa, are recognized as Access Grid global access nodes.

Each institution has one or more Access Grid nodes, or "designed spaces," that contain the high-end audio and visual technology needed to provide a high-quality compelling user experience.

The nodes are also used as a research environment for the development of distributed data and visualization corridors and for the study of issues relating to collaborative work in distributed environments. Members of the AG community use multicast technology to transmit multiple simultaneous video feeds to and from all around the world.

The annual retreats provide an interactive forum for developers, node operators and users, to share recent experiences and research findings, to present ideas for future technical directions, and to train and educate newcomers.

This year's retreat will include hands-on working sessions, interactive panel discussions, special interest group breakouts and visionary keynotes. The content will focus on current AG practices and applications, future technical directions, and collaborative project experiences.

Among the Ryerson sessions is a profile of the "Scientific Workspaces of the Future" project, which is a partnership between technology developers and end users to deploy and further develop next generation high-end collaborative and network-based scientific visualization tools and systems.

Ontario's participation in the Access Grid community is expected to grow significantly, as a result of the ORION network, which offers multicast service to all its users.

Multicast has been enabled on ORION border and distribution routers since the beginning of the year. Multicast allows the broadcast of data from one location to multiple sites. Several IP-based applications are well suited for multicast technology, including Internet video and radio broadcasts, video conferencing, and file transfers to multiple locations.

Learn more about the conference and Access Grid technologies at www.accessgrid.org.