Insights in the cost of continuous broadband Internet on trains for multi-service deployments by multiple actors with resource sharing

The economic viability of broadband Internet services on trains has always been proved difficult, mainly due to a high investment cost and low willingness to pay by train passengers, but also due to unused opportunities such as non-passenger services (e.g. train performance monitoring, crew services) and optimization of the resources consumed to offer Internet services. Evaluating opportunities to improve the return on investment is therefore essential towards profitability of the business case. By efficiently sharing resources amongst services, costs can be pooled over several services in order to reduce the investment cost per service. Current techno-economic evaluation models are hard to apply to cost allocation in a multi-service deployment with multiple actors and resource sharing. We therefore propose a new evaluation model and apply it to a deployment of Internet services on trains. We start with a detailed analysis of the technical architecture required to provide Internet access on trains. For each component, we investigate the impact by the different services on resource consumption. The proposed techno-economic evaluation model is then applied in order to calculate the total cost and allocate the used and unused resources to the appropriate services. In a final step, we calculate the business case for each stakeholder involved in the offering of these services. This paper details the proposed model and reports on our findings for a multi-service deployment by multiple actors. Results show important benefits for the case that considers the application of resource sharing in a multi-service, multi-actor scenario and the proposed model produces insights in the contributors to the cost per service and the unused amount of a resource. In addition, ex-ante insights in the cost flows per involved actor are obtained and the model can easily be extended to include revenue flows to evaluate the profitability per actor. As a consequence, the proposed model should be considered to support and stimulate upcoming multi-actor investment decisions for Internet-based multi-service offerings on-board trains with resource sharing

Advanced Free Viewpoint Video Streaming Techniques

Free-viewpoint video is a new type of interactive multimedia service allowing users to control their viewpoint and generate new views of a dynamic scene from any perspective. The uniquely generated and displayed views are composed from two or more high bitrate camera streams that must be delivered to the users depending on their continuously changing perspective. Due to significant network and computational resource requirements, we proposed scalable viewpoint generation and delivery schemes based on multicast forwarding and distributed approach. Our aim was to find the optimal deployment locations of the distributed viewpoint synthesis processes in the network topology by allowing network nodes to act as proxy servers with caching and viewpoint synthesis functionalities. Moreover, a predictive multicast group management scheme was introduced in order to provide all camera views that may be requested in the near future and prevent the viewpoint synthesizer algorithm from remaining without camera streams. The obtained results showed that even 42% traffic decrease can be realized using distributed viewpoint synthesis and the probability of viewpoint synthesis starvation can be also significantly reduced in future free viewpoint video services

Shared content addressing protocol (SCAP): optimizing multimedia content distribution at the transport layer

In recent years, the networking community has put a significant research effort in identifying new ways to distribute content to multiple users in a better-than-unicast manner. Scalable delivery is more important now video is the dominant traffic type and further growth is expected. To make content distribution scalable, in-network optimization functions are needed such as caches. The established transport layer protocols are end-to-end and do not allow optimizing transport below the application layer, hence the popularity of overlay application layer solutions located in the network. In this paper, we introduce a novel transport protocol, the Shared Content Addressing Protocol (SCAP) that allows in-network intermediate elements to participate in optimizing the delivery process, using only the transport layer. SCAP runs on top of standard IP networks, and SCAP optimization functions can be plugged-in the network transparently as needed. As such, only transport protocol based intermediate functions need to be deployed in the network, and the applications can stay at the topological end points. We define and evaluate a prototype version of the SCAP protocol using both simulation and a prototype implementation of a transparent SCAP-only intermediate optimization function

Final report on the evaluation of RRM/CRRM algorithms

Deliverable public del projecte EVERESTThis deliverable provides a definition and a complete evaluation of the RRM/CRRM algorithms selected in D11 and D15, and evolved and refined on an iterative process. The evaluation will be carried out by means of simulations using the simulators provided at D07, and D14.Preprin

Distributed multimedia systems

A distributed multimedia system (DMS) is an integrated communication, computing, and information system that enables the processing, management, delivery, and presentation of synchronized multimedia information with quality-of-service guarantees. Multimedia information may include discrete media data, such as text, data, and images, and continuous media data, such as video and audio. Such a system enhances human communications by exploiting both visual and aural senses and provides the ultimate flexibility in work and entertainment, allowing one to collaborate with remote participants, view movies on demand, access on-line digital libraries from the desktop, and so forth. In this paper, we present a technical survey of a DMS. We give an overview of distributed multimedia systems, examine the fundamental concept of digital media, identify the applications, and survey the important enabling technologies.published_or_final_versio

Audiovisual preservation strategies, data models and value-chains

This is a report on preservation strategies, models and value-chains for digital file-based audiovisual content. The report includes: (a)current and emerging value-chains and business-models for audiovisual preservation;(b) a comparison of preservation strategies for audiovisual content including their strengths and weaknesses, and(c) a review of current preservation metadata models, and requirements for extension to support audiovisual files

Exploring Wireless Data Center Networks: Can They Reduce Energy Consumption While Providing Secure Connections?

Data centers have become the digital backbone of the modern world. To support the growing demands on bandwidth, Data Centers consume an increasing amount of power. A significant portion of that power is consumed by information technology (IT) equipment, including servers and networking components. Additionally, the complex cabling in traditional data centers poses design and maintenance challenges and increases the energy cost of the cooling infrastructure by obstructing the flow of chilled air. Hence, to reduce the power consumption of the data centers, we proposed a wireless server-to-server data center network architecture using millimeter-wave links to eliminate the need for power-hungry switching fabric of traditional fat-tree-based data center networks. The server-to-server wireless data center network (S2S-WiDCN) architecture requires Line-of-Sight (LoS) between servers to establish direct communication links. However, in the presence of interference from internal or external sources, or an obstruction, such as an IT technician, the LoS may be blocked. To address this issue, we also propose a novel obstruction-aware adaptive routing algorithm for S2S-WiDCN. S2S-WiDCN can reduce the power consumption of the data center network portion while not affecting the power consumption of the servers in the data center, which contributes significantly towards the total power consumption of the data center. Moreover, servers in data centers are almost always underutilized due to over-provisioning, which contributes heavily toward the high-power consumption of the data centers. To address the high power consumption of the servers, we proposed a network-aware bandwidth-constrained server consolidation algorithm called Network-Aware Server Consolidation (NASCon) for wireless data centers that can reduce the power consumption up to 37% while improving the network performance. However, due to the arrival of new tasks and the completion of existing tasks, the consolidated utilization profile of servers change, which may have an adverse effect on overall power consumption over time. To overcome this, NASCon algorithm needs to be executed periodically. We have proposed a mathematical model to estimate the optimal inter-consolidation time, which can be used by the data center resource management unit for scheduling NASCon consolidation operation in real-time and leverage the benefits of server consolidation. However, in any data center environment ensuring security is one of the highest design priorities. Hence, for S2S-WiDCN to become a practical and viable solution for data center network design, the security of the network has to be ensured. S2S-WiDCN data center can be vulnerable to a variety of different attacks as it uses wireless links over an unguided channel for communication. As being a wireless system, the network has to be secured against common threats associated with any wireless networks such as eavesdropping attack, denial of services attack, and jamming attack. In parallel, other security threats such as the attack on the control plane, side-channel attack through traffic analysis are also possible. We have done an extensive study to elaborate the scope of these attacks as well as explore probable solutions against these issues. We also proposed viable solutions for the attack against eavesdropping, denial of services, jamming, and control-plane attack. To address the traffic analysis attack, we proposed a simulated annealing-based random routing mechanism which can be adopted instead of default routing in the wireless data center