Evaluator services for optimised service placement in distributed heterogeneous cloud infrastructures

Optimal placement of demanding real-time interactive applications in a distributed heterogeneous cloud very quickly results in a complex tradeoff between the application constraints and resource capabilities. This requires very detailed information of the various requirements and capabilities of the applications and available resources. In this paper, we present a mathematical model for the service optimization problem and study the concept of evaluator services as a flexible and efficient solution for this complex problem. An evaluator service is a service probe that is deployed in particular runtime environments to assess the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of deploying a specific application in such environment. We discuss how this concept can be incorporated in a general framework such as the FUSION architecture and discuss the key benefits and tradeoffs for doing evaluator-based optimal service placement in widely distributed heterogeneous cloud environments

Latency Thresholds for Usability in Games: A Survey

User interactions in interactive applications are time critical operations;late response will degrade the experience. Sensitivity to delay doeshowever vary greatly with between games. This paper surveys existingliterature on the specifics of this limitation. We find a classificationwhere games are grouped with others of roughly the same requirements.In addition we find some numbers on how long latency is acceptable.These numbers are however inconsistent between studies, indicatinginconsistent methodology or insufficient classification of games andinteractions. To improve classification, we suggest some changes.In general, research is too sparse to draw any strong or statisticallysignificant conclusions. In some of the most time critical games, latencyseems to degrade the experience at about 50 ms

Network Latency and Cloud Games: A Study Using GamingAnywhere

Thin client gaming services (services that utilize a cloud gaming model) allow consumers with low-end computers to play high-end video games. Thin client gaming services run the game in the cloud, receive input from the user, and send the visuals of the game to the user’s computer. The performance of thin client games is linked the quality of the user’s Internet connection, in which a common bottleneck is network latency. We performed a study to analyze the relationship between network latency, performance, and quality of experience (QoE) of thin client games. We introduced artificial latency between a server and client. Participants of our study performed worse and had a lower QoE as the latency increased, with a sharp decline in performance and QoE at an intermediate latency

Application of deep learning upscaling technologies in cloud gaming solutions

Durant tota la seva història, la indústria dels videojocs ha vist com any rere any els requeriments hardware de les entregues més populars del mercat augmentaven amb cada nova sortida. Això, juntament amb l'encariment dels components hardware necessaris per poder executar aquests videojocs causat per la pandèmia i per l'auge del mercat de les criptomonedes ha condicionat al sorgiment d'un nou tipus de servei: el cloud gaming. Utilitzant tecnología de streaming de video, el cloud gaming és capaç d'oferir als seus usuaris la capacitat de poder jugar a qualsevol de les últimes entregues del mercat des de qualsevol peça de hardware. Aquesta nova aparició, però, no ha ocorregut sense dificultats, dons els alts requeriments pel que fa a latència i ample de banda dificulten a l'usuari a l'hora de tenir una bona experiència amb el servei. Per tal d'intentar millorar aquesta experiència, en aquest treball s'exploraran les possibles millores que podria aportar l'ús de tècniques de machine learning a l'hora de realitzar un reescalat del tràfic de video per tal d'aconseguir una major resolució final a partir d'una resolució menor de transmissió, reduint l'ample de banda necessari i subseqüentment la latencia del servei.Throughout its history, the video game industry has seen the hardware requirements of the most popular titles on the market increase year after year with each new release. This, in conjunction with the rise in the cost of the hardware components needed to run these video games caused by the pandemic and the rise of the cryptocurrency market, has led to the creation of a new type of services: cloud gaming. Using video streaming technology, cloud gaming is able to offer its users the ability to play any of the latest releases on the market from any piece of hardware. This new appearance, however, has not happened without difficulties, because the high requirements in terms of latency and bandwidth make it difficult for the user to have a good experience with the service. In order to try to improve this experience, this work will explore the possible improvements that could be made by the use of machine learning techniques when re-scaling video traffic to achieve a higher final resolution from a lower transmission resolution, reducing the required bandwidth and subsequently the latency of the service

Defining crucial factors of cloud gaming services and how gamers value them

In recent years, the gaming market experienced the addition of a new platform for users to play on. Cloud Gaming Services are rivaling PC hardware and console manufacturers. Big players like Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Amazon entered the market and now compete for market share. This thesis aims to find the most relevant parameters responsible for the success of cloud gaming, and subsequently analyze how gamers value these parameters. Current research about the gaming industry and cloud services in the form of secondary data was used as a foundation to find the most relevant and challenging factors for service providers. In addition, primary data in the form of a consumer survey was collected to analyze the perception of gamers on the topic. The analysis showed that the most important parameters could be grouped into two categories: performance-related and service structure. Hardcore gamers focus more on performance-related issues compared to casual gamers. The amount consumers are willing to spend is not dependent on income but on the service's offerings.Nos últimos anos, novas plataformas para onde os usuários podem jogar, foram adicionadas ao mercado do gaming. Cloud Gaming Services oferecem concorrência a hardware de PC e a fabricantes de consolas. Grandes empresas como a Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA e Amazon entraram no mercado com capacidade de competir. Esta tese visa encontrar os parâmetros mais relevantes responsáveis pelo sucesso dos jogos na nuvem, e subsequentemente analisar como os jogadores valorizam estes parâmetros. A investigação actual sobre a indústria de jogos e serviços em nuvem sob a forma de dados secundários foi utilizada como base para encontrar os factores mais relevantes e desafiantes para os prestadores de serviços. Além disso, foram recolhidos dados primários sob a forma de um inquérito aos consumidores para analisar a percepção dos jogadores sobre o tema. A análise mostrou que os parâmetros mais importantes podiam ser agrupados em duas categorias: relacionados com o desempenho e a estrutura dos serviços. Os jogadores hardcore concentram-se mais em questões relacionadas com o desempenho em comparação com os jogadores casuais. A quantidade que os consumidores estão dispostos a gastar não depende dos rendimentos, mas das ofertas do serviço

Characterizing a Meta-CDN

CDNs have reshaped the Internet architecture at large. They operate (globally) distributed networks of servers to reduce latencies as well as to increase availability for content and to handle large traffic bursts. Traditionally, content providers were mostly limited to a single CDN operator. However, in recent years, more and more content providers employ multiple CDNs to serve the same content and provide the same services. Thus, switching between CDNs, which can be beneficial to reduce costs or to select CDNs by optimal performance in different geographic regions or to overcome CDN-specific outages, becomes an important task. Services that tackle this task emerged, also known as CDN broker, Multi-CDN selectors, or Meta-CDNs. Despite their existence, little is known about Meta-CDN operation in the wild. In this paper, we thus shed light on this topic by dissecting a major Meta-CDN. Our analysis provides insights into its infrastructure, its operation in practice, and its usage by Internet sites. We leverage PlanetLab and Ripe Atlas as distributed infrastructures to study how a Meta-CDN impacts the web latency

Metaverse: A Vision, Architectural Elements, and Future Directions for Scalable and Realtime Virtual Worlds

With the emergence of Cloud computing, Internet of Things-enabled Human-Computer Interfaces, Generative Artificial Intelligence, and high-accurate Machine and Deep-learning recognition and predictive models, along with the Post Covid-19 proliferation of social networking, and remote communications, the Metaverse gained a lot of popularity. Metaverse has the prospective to extend the physical world using virtual and augmented reality so the users can interact seamlessly with the real and virtual worlds using avatars and holograms. It has the potential to impact people in the way they interact on social media, collaborate in their work, perform marketing and business, teach, learn, and even access personalized healthcare. Several works in the literature examine Metaverse in terms of hardware wearable devices, and virtual reality gaming applications. However, the requirements of realizing the Metaverse in realtime and at a large-scale need yet to be examined for the technology to be usable. To address this limitation, this paper presents the temporal evolution of Metaverse definitions and captures its evolving requirements. Consequently, we provide insights into Metaverse requirements. In addition to enabling technologies, we lay out architectural elements for scalable, reliable, and efficient Metaverse systems, and a classification of existing Metaverse applications along with proposing required future research directions

Traffic Optimization in Data Center and Software-Defined Programmable Networks

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen