BCNETwork News
 
June, 2005

BCNET Headlines

Lightpaths link med schools

Real-time teaching puts prof in three places at once

By Wendy McLellan

The Province

May 11, 2005

It sounds like something out of a Star Wars movie: Massive files of data travelling along lightpaths to researchers far, far away.

In B.C., it happens every day.

Using fibre-optic connections that send huge files at super speed, researchers from all of B.C.'s major institutions can transmit information to colleagues in the province and around the world.

But it's not only scientists that benefit from BCNET's high-bandwidth advanced networks. For the first time in Canada, the networks -- also called lightpaths -- are also being used to train medical students at three university campuses simultaneously.

Using high-tech videoconferencing equipment in classrooms and labs, medical students at the University of B.C., University of Victoria and the University of Northern B.C. participate in lectures as though they were all in the same room.

Huge projection screens allow teachers to see and interact with students at all three universities. When students want to ask questions, they press a button on a microphone on the desk that triggers a camera to zoom in.

"Without the advanced network, they couldn't do this quality of videoconferencing, and they're using it every day," said Mike Hrybyk, president and CEO of BCNET, the non-profit organization that provides advanced networks to universities and other major research institutions.

"It allows UBC to have a professor teaching in Vancouver but available in real time at the University of Northern B.C. in Prince George and UVic in Victoria. I think we will see nursing and other health professions take advantage of this in future. It's really important to train health professionals in the communities where they live."

The advanced-networks system, provided by BCNET and maintained by the various institutions, connects university and institute campuses as well as research centres in Vancouver, Victoria and Prince George.

BCNET recently received capital funding of $3.15 million from the B.C. government to upgrade and expand the network for research and education to Kelowna, Kamloops and Surrey.

"The amount of data that has to be moved around is incredible. If scientists don't have a fast network, it would take forever," Hrybyk said.

Each city has a central connection point in a downtown location that is then connected to the various research centres in the area.

In Vancouver for example, the cables connect cancer research centres, hospitals, libraries and university campuses. Then, using existing high-speed cables and circuits, the cities are connected into the network.

"It's kind of like connecting the dots," Hrybyk said.

What it means is researchers are linked by multi-gigabit-per-second connections, he said. They can send massive data files at light speed from a computer in Prince George to another in Victoria. At its slowest, the cables are about 1,000-times faster than a home high-speed Internet connection.

When lightpaths are available in Kelowna, Hrybyk said they will connect UBC Okanagan, the new Okanagan College, BCIT's Kelowna campus, the hospital, local health authority and library. It will make similar connections between Kamloops institutions, and in Surrey, it will link SFU's Surrey campus to the existing network.

"We'll have a really fast network to a few more places," he said. "This is now being seen as essential to a university system and that makes us really quite happy.

"It's a shared infrastructure for researchers and higher education institutions, and it keeps the communities connected."

wmclellan@png.canwest.com