Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

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

Supporting Multimedia Services in the Future Network with QoS-routing

The increasing demand for real-time multimedia applications for groups of users, together with the need for assuring high quality support for end-to-end content distribution is motivating the scientific community and industry to develop novel control, management and optimization mechanisms with Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) support. In this context, this paper introduces Q-OSys (QoS-routing with Systematic Access), a distributed QoS-routing approach for enhancing future networks with autonomous mechanisms orchestrating admission control, per-class overprovisioning, IP Multicast and load-balancing to efficiently support multiuser multimedia sessions. Simulation experiments were carried to show the efficiency and impact of Q-OSys on network resources (bandwidth utilization and packet delay). Q-OSys is also evaluated from a user point-of-view, by measuring well-known objective and subjective QoE metrics, namely Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Structural Similarity (SSM) Video Quality Metric (VQM) and Mean Opinion Score (MOS)

Over provisioning-centric QoS-routing mechanism for the communication paradigm of future internet 4WARD proposal

The FP7 4WARD clean-slate Project envisions overcoming the limitations of current Internet by redefining it to efficiently support complex value-added sessions and services, such as location-based, health-care, critical-mission, and geo processing. The list of networking innovations from 4WARD’s Future Internet (FI) proposal includes a new connectivity paradigm called Generic Path (GP), a common representation for all communications. From the networking point of view, a GP is mapped to a communication path for data propagation. For that, GP architecture relies on routing mechanism for selecting best communication paths. In order to assure reliable communications, the routing mechanism must efficiently provision QoS-aware multi-party capable paths, with robustness functions, while keeping network performance. Therefore, this paper proposes the QoS-Routing and Resource Control (QoS-RRC) mechanism to deal with the hereinabove requirements by means of an over provisioning-centric (bandwidth and paths) approach. QoS-RRC achieves scalability by avoiding per-flow operations (e.g., signaling, state storage, etc.). Initial QoS-RRC performance evaluation was carried out in Network Simulator v.2 (NS-2), enabling drastic reduction of overall signaling exchanges compared to per-flow solutions

QoS-RRC: Integrated QoS routing and resource provisioning mechanism for future internet

Generic Path (GP) is a new connectivity paradigm proposed to facilitate the inclusion of new applications and services abstracting communications between entities, regardless of their location or architectural layer. This paper enhances the GP architecture with a new mechanism integrating QoS-Routing and Resource Control (QoS-RRC) strategies to dynamically control GP session requirements regarding QoS and connectivity. This solution uses over-provisioning and admission control, and is aimed at multi-party time-sensitive sessions. Initial performance evaluation was carried out in Network Simulator v.2 (NS-2), showing capabilities in reducing overall signaling load in comparison with a value-added per-flow approach

End-to-end QoE optimization through overlay network deployment

In this paper an overlay network for end-to-end QoE management is presented. The goal of this infrastructure is QoE optimization by routing around failures in the IP network and optimizing the bandwidth usage on the last mile to the client. The overlay network consists of components that are located both in the core and at the edge of the network. A number of overlay servers perform end-to-end QoS monitoring and maintain an overlay topology, allowing them to route around link failures and congestion. Overlay access components situated at the edge of the network are responsible for determining whether packets are sent to the overlay network, while proxy components manage the bandwidth on the last mile. This paper gives a detailed overview of the end-to-end architecture together with representative experimental results which comprehensively demonstrate the overlay network's ability to optimize the QoE