The Teledoc2 Project: a Heterogeneous Infrastructure for International e-Learning

In this paper we describe the Italian online learning project, called Teledoc2, flnanced by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) and realized by CNIT (National InterUniversity Consortium for Telecommunications)[1]. The Project is running through 2003-2005 and aims to build a complete, multimedia, interactive and fully-featured online-learning service for ICT researchers and PhD students of Italian Research Centres, being branches of CNIT. The paper gives an overview of all the technical, didactical and organizational aspects implemented in order to achieve the successful activation of the Teledoc2 integrated services[2]. CNIT chose avant-garde and technologically updated solutions in all these aspects, in this way building an innovative and e–cient didactic service and giving also a research tone to the Project. The main attention of the paper, in particular, is devoted to one of the key elements of the service: the technical aspects regarding the heterogeneous network architectures, designed, implemented and operated by CNIT to distribute multimedia information among its terminal sites, enabling the Teledoc2 learning service. A series of objective and subjective measurements are still in progress to evaluate the reliability of the difierent network solutions and the Quality of Service guaranteed by the difierent architectures for real-time transmission of audio-video and data contents. The pervasive use of avant-garde technological solutions, like multicast, satellite Ka band and NAT, further increases the e–ciency of the widespread distribution of Teledoc2 learning service in all the Italian territory. Finally, the Project give special attention to the research and experimental activity, called "Network of Laboratories", developed in particular at the WiLab (Wireless Communication Laboratories) of the University of Bologna.