On the QoS of IPTV and Its Effects on Home Networks

In Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) systems, Quality-of-Service (QoS) is a critical factor for user satisfaction. In this paper, we first propose a queueing model for IPTV systems and discuss how to ensure the QoS of IPTV. We then use the model to analyze the effects of IPTV traffic on other applications in home networks. We find that TCP congestion control may not work well under this circumstance and propose a new approach to improve the performance of TCP. We also verify our results through ns2 simulations

A two-way interactive broadband satellite architecture to break the digital divide barrier

September 24-26, 2007, Turin, Ital

TV-Centric technologies to provide remote areas with two-way satellite broadband access

October 1-2, 2007, Rome, Italy TV-Centric Technologies To Provide Remote Areas With Two-Way Satellite Broadband Acces

Value Creation in a QoE Environment

User behavior of multimedia services currently undergoes strong changes. This is reflected in several recent trends, e.g. the increase of rich media content consumption, preferences for more individual and personalized services and the higher sensitivity of end users for quality issues. These changes will eventually lead to strong changes in network traffic characteristics: rising congestion in peak times and less availability of bandwidth for the individual user. As a result, the quality as perceived by the end-user will decrease if network operators and service providers do not anticipate the required changes for the network. Measurable network requirements such as available video and speech quality, security and reliability are addressed by technologies that are commonly summed up in the Quality of Service (QoS) concept. However, the end-users' perception of quality is only reflected in the wider concept of Quality of Experience (QoE). This takes the measurable network requirements into account as well as customer needs, wants and preferences. For the implementation of QoE technologies several network components need to be added or changed resulting in high capital expenditures. Yet, it is not clear if these costs can be compensated with efficiency increases. Thus, new revenue streams for the network operator are necessary to incentivize investments in QoE technologies. In this paper we address four new value creation models that can serve as basis for more elaborated business models for network operators and other actors. We show how interest in QoE of the user, the content provider, the service provider and the advertiser induces new revenue streams. These models are embedded in five possible future QoE scenarios that reveal regulation, end user quality sensibility and end-to-end support as major issues for the future. --Business Models,Quality of Experience (QoE),Quality of Service (QoS),Value Creation

A Utility-based QoS Model for Emerging Multimedia Applications

Existing network QoS models do not sufficiently reflect the challenges faced by high-throughput, always-on, inelastic multimedia applications. In this paper, a utility-based QoS model is proposed as a user layer extension to existing communication QoS models to better assess the requirements of multimedia applications and manage the QoS provisioning of multimedia flows. Network impairment utility functions are derived from user experiments and combined to application utility functions to evaluate the application quality. Simulation is used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed QoS 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

A Network Algorithm for 3D/2D IPTV Distribution using WiMAX and WLAN Technologies

The final publication is available at link.springer.comThe appearance of new broadband wireless technologies jointly with the ability to offer enough quality of service to provide IPTV over them, have made possible the mobility and ubiquity of any type of device to access the IPTV network. The minimum bandwidth required in the access network to provide appropriate quality 3D/2D IPTV services jointly with the need to guarantee the Quality of Experience (QoE) to the end user, makes the need of algorithms that should be able to combine different wireless standards and technologies. In this paper, we propose a network algorithm that manages the IPTV access network and decides which type of wireless technology the customers should connect with when using multiband devices, depending on the requirements of the IPTV client device, the available networks, and some network parameters (such as the number of loss packets and packet delay), to provide the maximum QoE to the customer. The measurements taken in a real environment from several wireless networks allow us to know the performance of the proposed system when it selects each one of them. The measurements taken from a test bench demonstrate the success of our system.This work has been partially supported by the Polytechnic University of Valencia, though the PAID-15-10 multidisciplinary projects, by the Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Next Generation Networks and Applications Group (NetGNA), Portugal, and by National Funding from the FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia through the PEst-OE/EEI/LA0008/2011 Project.Lloret, J.; Cánovas Solbes, A.; Rodrigues, JJPC.; Lin, K. (2013). A Network Algorithm for 3D/2D IPTV Distribution using WiMAX and WLAN Technologies. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 67(1):7-30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-011-0929-4S730671Abukharis S, MacKenzie R, Farrell TO (2009) Improving QoS of Video Transmitted Over 802.11 WLANs Using Frame Aggregation. 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Assessing quality of experience of IPTV and video on demand services in real-life environments

The ever growing bandwidth in access networks, in combination with IPTV and video on demand (VoD) offerings, opens up unlimited possibilities to the users. The operators can no longer compete solely on the number of channels or content and increasingly make high definition channels and quality of experience (QoE) a service differentiator. Currently, the most reliable way of assessing and measuring QoE is conducting subjective experiments, where human observers evaluate a series of short video sequences, using one of the international standardized subjective quality assessment methodologies. Unfortunately, since these subjective experiments need to be conducted in controlled environments and pose limitations on the sequences and overall experiment duration they cannot be used for real-life QoE assessment of IPTV and VoD services. In this article, we propose a novel subjective quality assessment methodology based on full-length movies. Our methodology enables audiovisual quality assessment in the same environments and under the same conditions users typically watch television. Using our new methodology we conducted subjective experiments and compared the outcome with the results from a subjective test conducted using a standardized method. Our findings indicate significant differences in terms of impairment visibility and tolerance and highlight the importance of real-life QoE assessment

Walled gardens: The new shape of the public internet

This paper argues that the global public internet is undergoing a long-term transformation from a uniform transmission platform to one in which data reachability will be increasingly compromised by emerging technical, political and commercial choices. This phenomenon is not new. It reflects changes away from the original end-to-end principle as a guiding design concept in internet engineering, as well as in the various forms of IP (internet protocol) filtering exercised by governments and other institutions around the world. The emphasis in this paper, however, is on less controversial developments, especially the growth in managed IP services and deployments of MPLS (multiprotocol label switching). The browser-centric public Web has been giving way to 'apps' and 'walled gardens'