Reflections on security options for the real-time transport protocol framework

The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) supports a range of video conferencing, telephony, and streaming video ap- plications, but offers few native security features. We discuss the problem of securing RTP, considering the range of applications. We outline why this makes RTP a difficult protocol to secure, and describe the approach we have recently proposed in the IETF to provide security for RTP applications. This approach treats RTP as a framework with a set of extensible security building blocks, and prescribes mandatory-to-implement security at the level of different application classes, rather than at the level of the media transport protocol

deployable) reduction of multicast state with in-packet Bloom filters

Abstract-Recent developments in networking technology have enabled massive media distribution in the Internet. However, bandwidth is still a limited resource and unicast-based media distribution from a single source to multiple receivers is inefficient. Multicasting provides traffic replication closer to the receivers allowing more efficient data distribution. IP multicast can be used for distributing data streams in IP networks, but the bandwidth saving comes at the cost of increased state in the network routers. The amount of state is directly dependent on the number of multicast groups in use. In this paper, we show how in-packet Bloom filter (iBF) multicast can be used to reduce multicast state in the network. The deployment can be done gradually: during the migration phase, a single AS can replace IP multicast with proposed iBF-based solution without affecting the rest of the network, and take advantage of the reduced state in its core routers. I. INTRODUCTION The network usage has changed since the dawn of the Internet as substantial advances in networking technology have enabled new and more diverse applications. Today's Internet performance allows transmitting high-quality audio and video streams over the net. In a typical live media transmission case, a stream is delivered to multiple receivers simultaneously. This dissemination mostly happens via massive fan-outs of unicast connections because network layer multicasting is not widely deployed or enabled -beyond possibly intra-provider IPTV streaming or overlay P2P networks [?]. This makes the media delivery inefficient from the network point of view since the data has to be sent repeatedly over the same links. The need for an efficient multicast solution is obvious. In the current Internet, multicast can be implemented either at the IP layer with IP multicast [1], or with different kinds of application layer solutions Application layer multicast protocols [2] use unicast connections to deliver traffic across routers supporting application layer multicast. At each such multicast router, data packets are replicated at the application layer if necessary, and sent to the next hop router(s) over separate unicast connections, in essence forming an overlay somewhat similar to the early Multicast backbone (Mbone). IP multicast LIPSI

Multiple-Tree Push-based Overlay Streaming

Multiple-Tree Overlay Streaming has attracted a great amount of attention from researchers in the past years. Multiple-tree streaming is a promising alternative to single-tree streaming in terms of node dynamics and load balancing, among others, which in turn addresses the perceived video quality by the streaming user on node dynamics or when heterogeneous nodes join the network. This article presents a comprehensive survey of the different aproaches and techniques used in this research area. In this paper we identify node-disjointness as the property most approaches aim to achieve. We also present an alternative technique which does not try to achieve this but does local optimizations aiming global optimizations. Thus, we identify this property as not being absolute necessary for creating robust and heterogeneous multi-tree overlays. We identify two main design goals: robustness and support for heterogeneity, and classify existing approaches into these categories as their main focus

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

A component-based middleware framework for configurable and reconfigurable Grid computing

Significant progress has been made in the design and development of Grid middleware which, in its present form, is founded on Web services technologies. However, we argue that present-day Grid middleware is severely limited in supporting projected next-generation applications which will involve pervasive and heterogeneous networked infrastructures, and advanced services such as collaborative distributed visualization. In this paper we discuss a new Grid middleware framework that features (i) support for advanced network services based on the novel concept of pluggable overlay networks, (ii) an architectural framework for constructing bespoke Grid middleware platforms in terms of 'middleware domains' such as extensible interaction types and resource discovery. We believe that such features will become increasingly essential with the emergence of next-generation e-Science applications. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Multi-layer virtual transport network management

Nowadays there is an increasing need for a general paradigm which can simplify network management and further enable network innovations. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an efficient way to make the network programmable and reduce management complexity, however it is plagued with limitations inherited from the legacy Internet (TCP/IP) architecture. In this paper, in response to limitations of current Software Defined Networking (SDN) management solutions, we propose a recursive approach to enterprise network management, where network management is done through managing various Virtual Transport Networks (VTNs) over different scopes (i.e., regions of operation). Different from the traditional virtual network model which mainly focuses on routing/tunneling, our VTN provides communication service with explicit Quality-of-Service (QoS) support for applications via transport flows, and it involves all mechanisms (e.g., addressing, routing, error and flow control, resource allocation) needed to support such transport flows. Based on this approach, we design and implement a management architecture, which recurses the same VTN-based management mechanism for enterprise network management. Our experimental results show that our management architecture achieves better performance.National Science Foundation awards: CNS-0963974 and CNS-1346688

CliqueStream: an efficient and fault-resilient live streaming network on a clustered peer-to-peer overlay

Several overlay-based live multimedia streaming platforms have been proposed in the recent peer-to-peer streaming literature. In most of the cases, the overlay neighbors are chosen randomly for robustness of the overlay. However, this causes nodes that are distant in terms of proximity in the underlying physical network to become neighbors, and thus data travels unnecessary distances before reaching the destination. For efficiency of bulk data transmission like multimedia streaming, the overlay neighborhood should resemble the proximity in the underlying network. In this paper, we exploit the proximity and redundancy properties of a recently proposed clique-based clustered overlay network, named eQuus, to build efficient as well as robust overlays for multimedia stream dissemination. To combine the efficiency of content pushing over tree structured overlays and the robustness of data-driven mesh overlays, higher capacity stable nodes are organized in tree structure to carry the long haul traffic and less stable nodes with intermittent presence are organized in localized meshes. The overlay construction and fault-recovery procedures are explained in details. Simulation study demonstrates the good locality properties of the platform. The outage time and control overhead induced by the failure recovery mechanism are minimal as demonstrated by the analysis.Comment: 10 page