Quality of Experience-Enabled Social Networks

Social Networks (SNs), such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, have become ubiquitous in our daily life. However, as the number of SN users grows, the SN usage grows and there is higher demand for users’ Quality of Experience (QoE). For instance, some users would prefer to filter some posts, e.g. unwanted friendship requests and certain categories of posts, i.e. sports related posts. Users may also prefer to subscribe to a higher Quality of Service (QoS) level with their SN provider to have, for instance, higher priority on posting/retrieving. 3GPP 4G Evolved Packet Core (EPC)-Based systems are all IP network architectures that enable users to connect to mobile networks through their mobile devices and seamlessly change from one access technology to another. EPC systems enable service provisioning with guaranteed and differentiated end-to-end QoS. This thesis proposes a novel architecture that enables differentiated QoS and information filtering in SNs to improve the users QoE. The SN is deployed on top of 3GPP 4G EPC-Based systems, and it uses EPC services to enable guaranteed and differentiated QoS. The components of the proposed architecture interact through RESTful web services. This architecture allows users to filter posts using their own criteria and have priority over other users in posting and/or retrieving; thereby, improving users’ QoE. A proof of concept prototype tool has been implemented to illustrate the viability of the proposed architecture and its performance has been partially evaluated

The Performing Arts Data Service: Imaginations/Universities Network Pilot Project.

The Performing Arts Data Service (PADS), funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and based at the University of Glasgow, aims to support research and teaching in UK Higher Education by collecting and promoting the use of digital data relating to the performing arts: music, film, broadcast arts, theatre and dance. The PADS is one of 5 service providers of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) which will provide a single gateway for arts and humanities scholars wishing to search for datasets across various discipline areas. Data is indexed with Dublin Core metadata, will interoperate with other databases within the AHDS and beyond, and will be available via the Web. Data relating to Performing Arts is by nature diverse: from text based, to visuals/images, to the intrinsically time-based. Any information system for dealing with this range of material must be able to store complex and composite data, cope with a multitude of single documents, and offer intelligent, user-friendly but controlled access over wide area networks. To be of most use to researchers some means of delivery of data is required as well as effective searching. To this end PADS has acquired two Silicon Graphics Origin 200 servers, one of which will act as a media server streaming audio and video over scalable networks; the other will run an object-orientated database (Hyperwave Information Server) which will store both the non-time-based data and the metadata of the material on the media server. A significant issue facing the PADS is that of streaming audio and video to multiple platforms over varying bandwidths. This paper will cover the general information systems requirements for complex multimedia data and the web; will describe in detail the hybrid database and mediaserver system chosen for use at the PADS; and give an overview of current plans for testing video streaming at the PADS in conjunction with the British Film Institute/British Universities Film and Video Council and Joint Information Systems Committee’s “Imagination/Universities Network Pilot”

Information Exchange Management as a Service for Network Function Virtualization Environments

The Internet landscape is gradually adopting new communication paradigms characterized by flexibility and adaptability to the resource constraints and service requirements, including network function virtualization (NFV), software-defined networks, and various virtualization and network slicing technologies. These approaches need to be realized from multiple management and network entities exchanging information between each other. We propose a novel information exchange management as a service facility as an extension to ETSI's NFV management and orchestration framework, namely the virtual infrastructure information service (VIS). VIS is characterized by the following properties: 1) it exhibits the dynamic characteristics of such network paradigms; 2) it supports information flow establishment, operation, and optimization; and 3) it provides a logically centralized control of the established information flows with respect to the diverse demands of the entities exchanging information elements. Our proposal addresses the information exchange management requirements of NFV environments and is information-model agnostic. This paper includes an experimental analysis of its main functional and non-functional characteristics

QoE on media deliveriy in 5G environments

231 p.5G expandirá las redes móviles con un mayor ancho de banda, menor latencia y la capacidad de proveer conectividad de forma masiva y sin fallos. Los usuarios de servicios multimedia esperan una experiencia de reproducción multimedia fluida que se adapte de forma dinámica a los intereses del usuario y a su contexto de movilidad. Sin embargo, la red, adoptando una posición neutral, no ayuda a fortalecer los parámetros que inciden en la calidad de experiencia. En consecuencia, las soluciones diseñadas para realizar un envío de tráfico multimedia de forma dinámica y eficiente cobran un especial interés. Para mejorar la calidad de la experiencia de servicios multimedia en entornos 5G la investigación llevada a cabo en esta tesis ha diseñado un sistema múltiple, basado en cuatro contribuciones.El primer mecanismo, SaW, crea una granja elástica de recursos de computación que ejecutan tareas de análisis multimedia. Los resultados confirman la competitividad de este enfoque respecto a granjas de servidores. El segundo mecanismo, LAMB-DASH, elige la calidad en el reproductor multimedia con un diseño que requiere una baja complejidad de procesamiento. Las pruebas concluyen su habilidad para mejorar la estabilidad, consistencia y uniformidad de la calidad de experiencia entre los clientes que comparten una celda de red. El tercer mecanismo, MEC4FAIR, explota las capacidades 5G de analizar métricas del envío de los diferentes flujos. Los resultados muestran cómo habilita al servicio a coordinar a los diferentes clientes en la celda para mejorar la calidad del servicio. El cuarto mecanismo, CogNet, sirve para provisionar recursos de red y configurar una topología capaz de conmutar una demanda estimada y garantizar unas cotas de calidad del servicio. En este caso, los resultados arrojan una mayor precisión cuando la demanda de un servicio es mayor

A comparative analysis of scalable and context-aware trust management approaches for internet of things

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. The Internet of Things - IoT - is a new paradigm in technology that allows most physical ‘things’ to contact each other. Trust between IoT devices is a critical factor. Trust in the IoT environment can be modeled using various approaches, such as confidence level and reputation parameters. Furthermore, trust is an important element in engineering reliable and scalable networks. In this paper, we survey scalable and context-aware trust management for IoT from three perspectives. First, we present an overview of the IoT and the importance of trust in relation to it, and then we provide an in-depth trust/reliable management protocol for the IoT and evaluate comparable trust management protocols. We also investigate a scalable solution for trust management in the IoT and provide a comparative evaluation of existing trust solutions. We then pre-sent a context-aware assessment for the IoT and compare the different trust solutions. Lastly, we give a full comparative analysis of trust/reliability management in the IoT. Our results are drawn from this comparative analysis, and directions for future research are outlined