AngelCast: cloud-based peer-assisted live streaming using optimized multi-tree construction

Increasingly, commercial content providers (CPs) offer streaming solutions using peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures, which promises significant scalabil- ity by leveraging clients’ upstream capacity. A major limitation of P2P live streaming is that playout rates are constrained by clients’ upstream capac- ities – typically much lower than downstream capacities – which limit the quality of the delivered stream. To leverage P2P architectures without sacri- ficing quality, CPs must commit additional resources to complement clients’ resources. In this work, we propose a cloud-based service AngelCast that enables CPs to complement P2P streaming. By subscribing to AngelCast, a CP is able to deploy extra resources (angel), on-demand from the cloud, to maintain a desirable stream quality. Angels do not download the whole stream, nor are they in possession of it. Rather, angels only relay the minimal fraction of the stream necessary to achieve the desired quality. We provide a lower bound on the minimum angel capacity needed to maintain a desired client bit-rate, and develop a fluid model construction to achieve it. Realizing the limitations of the fluid model construction, we design a practical multi- tree construction that captures the spirit of the optimal construction, and avoids its limitations. We present a prototype implementation of AngelCast, along with experimental results confirming the feasibility of our service.Supported in part by NSF awards #0720604, #0735974, #0820138, #0952145, #1012798 #1012798 #1430145 #1414119. (0720604 - NSF; 0735974 - NSF; 0820138 - NSF; 0952145 - NSF; 1012798 - NSF; 1430145 - NSF; 1414119 - NSF

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Secure Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the challenges in next-generation networks such as providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to the service providers. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi networks, with each access point (AP) connected to the wired network, in WMNs only a subset of the APs are required to be connected to the wired network. The APs that are connected to the wired network are called the Internet gateways (IGWs), while the APs that do not have wired connections are called the mesh routers (MRs). The MRs are connected to the IGWs using multi-hop communication. The IGWs provide access to conventional clients and interconnect ad hoc, sensor, cellular, and other networks to the Internet. However, most of the existing routing protocols for WMNs are extensions of protocols originally designed for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and thus they perform sub-optimally. Moreover, most routing protocols for WMNs are designed without security issues in mind, where the nodes are all assumed to be honest. In practical deployment scenarios, this assumption does not hold. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of security issues in WMNs and then particularly focuses on secure routing in these networks. First, it identifies security vulnerabilities in the medium access control (MAC) and the network layers. Various possibilities of compromising data confidentiality, data integrity, replay attacks and offline cryptanalysis are also discussed. Then various types of attacks in the MAC and the network layers are discussed. After enumerating the various types of attacks on the MAC and the network layer, the chapter briefly discusses on some of the preventive mechanisms for these attacks.Comment: 44 pages, 17 figures, 5 table

Mediator-assisted multi-source routing in information-centric networks

Among the new communication paradigms recently proposed, information-centric networking (ICN) is able to natively support content awareness at the network layer shifting the focus from hosts (as in traditional IP networks) to information objects. In this paper, we exploit the intrinsic content-awareness ICN features to design a novel multi-source routing mechanism. It involves a new network entity, the ICN mediator, responsible for locating and delivering the requested information objects that are chunked and stored at different locations. Our approach imposes very limited signalling overhead, especially for large chunk size (MBytes). Simulations show significant latency reduction compared to traditional routing approaches

Agent based infrastructure for real-time applications

In this paper we propose a new infrastructure for real-time applications. As a preliminary, we describe basic characteristics of the most popular real-time services like VoIP, videoconferencing, live media streaming, and network multiplayer games. We focus on the end-to-end latency, bandwidth and efficient transmission methods. Next, we present our project concepts, infrastructure model, details of implementation and our testing environment which was designed for testing many aspects of real-time services. The system combines mechanisms for ensuring best possible connection quality (QoS), load balance of servers in infrastructure and gives control over the packet routing decisions. Additionally, provided security mechanisms make it a good choice even in the environment where a high security level is required. The system is based on the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) model and data between users is routed over an overlay network, consisting of all participating peers as network nodes. This overlay can by used for application level multicast or live media stream. In the logging process each user is assigned to a specific node (based on his geographic location and nodes load). Because nodes are participating in data transmission, we have control over the data flow route. It is possible to specify the desired route, so, regardless of the external routing protocol, we can avoid paths that are susceptible to eavesdropping. Another feature of the presented system is usage of agents. Each agent acts within the single node. Its main task is to constantly control the quality of transmission. It analyzes such parameters like link bandwidth use, number of lost packets, time interval between each packet etc. The information collected by the agents from all nodes allows to build a dynamic routing table. Every node uses the Dijkstra's algorithm to find the best at the moment route to all other nodes. The routes are constantly modified as a consequence of changes found by agents or updates sent by other nodes. In VoD services agents also analyze popularity of streamed media, which helps build intelligent video cache. To ensure greater security and high reliability of the system, we have provided a reputation mechanism. It is used during bringing up to date the information about possible routes and their quality, given by other nodes. Owing to this solution nodes and routes which are more reliable get higher priority

Wireless body sensor networks for health-monitoring applications

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Physiological Measurement. The publisher is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0967-3334/29/11/R01

Optimizing on-demand resource deployment for peer-assisted content delivery (PhD thesis)

Increasingly, content delivery solutions leverage client resources in exchange for service in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion. Such peer-assisted service paradigms promise significant infrastructure cost reduction, but suffer from the unpredictability associated with client resources, which is often exhibited as an imbalance between the contribution and consumption of resources by clients. This imbalance hinders the ability to guarantee a minimum service fidelity of these services to the clients. In this thesis, we propose a novel architectural service model that enables the establishment of higher fidelity services through (1) coordinating the content delivery to optimally utilize the available resources, and (2) leasing the least additional cloud resources, available through special nodes (angels) that join the service on-demand, and only if needed, to complement the scarce resources available through clients. While the proposed service model can be deployed in many settings, this thesis focuses on peer-assisted content delivery applications, in which the scarce resource is typically the uplink capacity of clients. We target three applications that require the delivery of fresh as opposed to stale content. The first application is bulk-synchronous transfer, in which the goal of the system is to minimize the maximum distribution time -- the time it takes to deliver the content to all clients in a group. The second application is live streaming, in which the goal of the system is to maintain a given streaming quality. The third application is Tor, the anonymous onion routing network, in which the goal of the system is to boost performance (increase throughput and reduce latency) throughout the network, and especially for bandwidth-intensive applications. For each of the above applications, we develop mathematical models that optimally allocate the already available resources. They also optimally allocate additional on-demand resource to achieve a certain level of service. Our analytical models and efficient constructions depend on some simplifying, yet impractical, assumptions. Thus, inspired by our models and constructions, we develop practical techniques that we incorporate into prototypical peer-assisted angel-enabled cloud services. We evaluate those techniques through simulation and/or implementation. (Major Advisor: Azer Bestavros

Optimizing on-demand resource deployment for peer-assisted content delivery

Increasingly, content delivery solutions leverage client resources in exchange for services in a pee-to-peer (P2P) fashion. Such peer-assisted service paradigm promises significant infrastructure cost reduction, but suffers from the unpredictability associated with client resources, which is often exhibited as an imbalance between the contribution and consumption of resources by clients. This imbalance hinders the ability to guarantee a minimum service fidelity of these services to clients especially for real-time applications where content can not be cached. In this thesis, we propose a novel architectural service model that enables the establishment of higher fidelity services through (1) coordinating the content delivery to efficiently utilize the available resources, and (2) leasing the least additional cloud resources, available through special nodes (angels) that join the service on-demand, and only if needed, to complement the scarce resources available through clients. While the proposed service model can be deployed in many settings, this thesis focuses on peer-assisted content delivery applications, in which the scarce resource is typically the upstream capacity of clients. We target three applications that require the delivery of real-time as opposed to stale content. The first application is bulk-synchronous transfer, in which the goal of the system is to minimize the maximum distribution time - the time it takes to deliver the content to all clients in a group. The second application is live video streaming, in which the goal of the system is to maintain a given streaming quality. The third application is Tor, the anonymous onion routing network, in which the goal of the system is to boost performance (increase throughput and reduce latency) throughout the network, and especially for clients running bandwidth-intensive applications. For each of the above applications, we develop analytical models that efficiently allocate the already available resources. They also efficiently allocate additional on-demand resource to achieve a certain level of service. Our analytical models and efficient constructions depend on some simplifying, yet impractical, assumptions. Thus, inspired by our models and constructions, we develop practical techniques that we incorporate into prototypical peer-assisted angel-enabled cloud services. We evaluate these techniques through simulation and/or implementation