To: rem-conf@es.net
Subject: vat-4.0 alpha test

A source release of version 4.0 of the LBNL audio tool, vat,
is available for alpha-test.  This version of vat conforms to
the final (RTP-7) Internet Draft for the IETF AVT Real Time
Transport protocol.  We've made vat-4 upwards compatible
with vat-3; i.e., it is a drop-in replacement for vat-3 and
by default will come up speaking the old vat protocol.
However, vat-4 accepts a "-r" flag or "Vat.sessionType: rtp"
Xresource to support sessions using the RTP protocol.  RTP is
far superior to the original vat protocol and we hope it will
soon become the default but in the interim we have to figure
out the right sequence of tool deployment and sd/sdr changes to
coordinate an orderly transition between the two protocols.

This alpha-test is intended for sites who are interested in fielding
this new release and are willing to debug and report problems.
Vat's internal architecture has changed substantially in the last
few weeks (leveraging off the RTPv2 and tcl/c++ framework from vic),
and we expect that it will be a few more weeks before the release
stabilizes.

If you're interested, pointers to ftp directories etc. can be found in:

	URL http://www-nrg.ee.lbl.gov/vat/alpha-test.html

Installation and overview material on vat is in:

	URL http://www-nrg.ee.lbl.gov/vat/

Please direct vat-related correspondence to vat@ee.lbl.gov (which includes
only the developers and is not distributed beyond our site), and thanks
for any help with the alpha-test.

Steven McCanne (mccanne@ee.lbl.gov)
Van Jacobson (van@ee.lbl.gov)
Network Research Group (URL http://www-nrg.ee.lbl.gov/)
Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory