LIVE-NET-from video to multi-media

LIVE-NET is the London interactive video for education network. (The term `interactive video´ here means visual communications and visual interaction). It is broad-band fibre-optic network linking each of the five major Colleges of the University of London to a central switching location in the Senate House. LIVE-NET is a metropolitan area network extending from QWM in East London (9 km) to RHBNC at Egham, Surrey (40 km). The transmission and switching system was derived from the switched-star technology developed by BTRL Martlesham. Each site is linked to the central switch (or hub) by a pair of optical fibres. These fibres carry four full bandwidth video channels in each direction together with a fifth lower bandwidth analogue channel which is used to carry digital data. Audio channels are carried at 6 MHz above each video channel and these combined signals are routed through the video switch. The switch is a computer controlled 64×64 video cross-point matrix which can be configured with multiple one to one and one to many connections