Hybrid Fixed-Mobile P2P Superdistribution

The Internet and the cellular telephony system are the two most influential communication systems of the last years. The arrival of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) promises to help service providers to deploy a complete array of real-time, customized business and consumer multimedia services over any access network. IMS is an integrated solution that defines a generic architecture for offering Voice over IP (VoIP) and advanced multimedia services. This project describes a hybrid fixed-mobile peer-to-peer superdistribution system deployed over an IMS platform. This superdistribution service is aligned with the current interests of telecommunication operators that desire to offer services with large user acceptance and that involve a massive access to the service without collapsing their network infrastructure. Operators can increase their revenues for connectivity and Digital Rights Management (DRM)-based license distribution of the multimedia content, depending on the content and on the desired business model

A credit-based approach to scalable video transmission over a peer-to-peer social network

PhDThe objective of the research work presented in this thesis is to study scalable video transmission over peer-to-peer networks. In particular, we analyse how a credit-based approach and exploitation of social networking features can play a significant role in the design of such systems. Peer-to-peer systems are nowadays a valid alternative to the traditional client-server architecture for the distribution of multimedia content, as they transfer the workload from the service provider to the final user, with a subsequent reduction of management costs for the former. On the other hand, scalable video coding helps in dealing with network heterogeneity, since the content can be tailored to the characteristics or resources of the peers. First of all, we present a study that evaluates subjective video quality perceived by the final user under different transmission scenarios. We also propose a video chunk selection algorithm that maximises received video quality under different network conditions. Furthermore, challenges in building reliable peer-to-peer systems for multimedia streaming include optimisation of resource allocation and design mechanisms based on rewards and punishments that provide incentives for users to share their own resources. Our solution relies on a credit-based architecture, where peers do not interact with users that have proven to be malicious in the past. Finally, if peers are allowed to build a social network of trusted users, they can share the local information they have about the network and have a more complete understanding of the type of users they are interacting with. Therefore, in addition to a local credit, a social credit or social reputation is introduced. This thesis concludes with an overview of future developments of this research work

Behavior Modeling and Forensics for Multimedia Social Networks

Within the past decades, the explosive combination of multimedia signal processing, communications and networking technologies has facilitated the sharing of digital multimedia data and enabled pervasive digital media distribution over all kinds of networks. People involved in the sharing and distribution of multimedia contents form \emph{multimedia social networks} in which users share and exchange multimedia content, as well as other resources. Users in a multimedia social network have different objectives and influence each other's decision and performance. It is of ample importance to understand how users interact with and respond to each other and analyze the impact of human factors on multimedia systems. This thesis illustrates various aspects of issues and problems in multimedia social networks via two case studies of human behavior in multimedia fingerprinting and peer-to-peer live streaming. Since media security and content protection is a major issue in current multimedia systems, this thesis first studies the user dynamics of multimedia fingerprinting social networks. We investigate the side information which improves the traitor-tracing performance and provide the optimal strategies for both users (fingerprint detector and the colluders) in the multimedia fingerprinting social network. Furthermore, before a collusion being successfully mounted, the colluders must be stimulated to cooperate with each other and all colluders have to agree on the attack strategy. Therefore, not all types of collusion are possible. We reduce the possible collusion set by analyzing the incentives and bargaining behavior among colluders. We show that the optimal strategies designed based on human behavior can provide more information to the fingerprint detector and effectively improve the collusion resistance. The second part of this thesis focuses on understanding modelling and analyzing user dynamics for users in various types of peer-to-peer live streaming social networks. We stimulate user cooperation by designing the optimal, cheat-proof, and attack-resistant strategies for peer-to-peer live streaming social networks over Internet as well as wireless networks. Also, as more and more smart-phone users subscribe to the live-streaming service, a reasonable market price has to be set to prevent the users from reselling the live video. We start from analyzing the equilibrium between the users who want to resell the video and the potential buyers to provide the optimal price for the content owner

Balance content allocation scheme for peer-service area CDN architecture for IPTV services

One of the main problems in IPTV technology is how to manage the huge amount of multimedia contents efficiently to meet the demands of users especially for Video on Demand (VoD) services.Content Distribution Networks (CDN) are used to solve this problem but the problem of load imbalance among servers still exists due to the dynamic changes in contents and user interests in an IPTV environment.In the VoD context, many content storage management architecture models are proposed: single point, hierarchal, distributed, and service peer area architectures.In the this paper we choose peer-service area architecture for CDN to study the load imbalance problem and try to handle it by modifying peer-service area architecture and proposing a balanced content allocation scheme that solves the load imbalance problem by replicating the contents based on their popularity.Experimental results show that this proposed allocation scheme can maintain the load balancing among servers and avoid over/under utilization of servers

Cooperative Caching for Multimedia Streaming in Overlay Networks

Traditional data caching, such as web caching, only focuses on how to boost the hit rate of requested objects in caches, and therefore, how to reduce the initial delay for object retrieval. However, for multimedia objects, not only reducing the delay of object retrieval, but also provisioning reasonably stable network bandwidth to clients, while the fetching of the cached objects goes on, is important as well. In this paper, we propose our cooperative caching scheme for a multimedia delivery scenario, supporting a large number of peers over peer-to-peer overlay networks. In order to facilitate multimedia streaming and downloading service from servers, our caching scheme (1) determines the appropriate availability of cached stream segments in a cache community, (2) determines the appropriate peer for cache replacement, and (3) performs bandwidth-aware and availability-aware cache replacement. By doing so, it achieves (1) small delay of stream retrieval, (2) stable bandwidth provisioning during retrieval session, and (3) load balancing of clients' requests among peers

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

Smart PIN: utility-based replication and delivery of multimedia content to mobile users in wireless networks

Next generation wireless networks rely on heterogeneous connectivity technologies to support various rich media services such as personal information storage, file sharing and multimedia streaming. Due to users’ mobility and dynamic characteristics of wireless networks, data availability in collaborating devices is a critical issue. In this context Smart PIN was proposed as a personal information network which focuses on performance of delivery and cost efficiency. Smart PIN uses a novel data replication scheme based on individual and overall system utility to best balance the requirements for static data and multimedia content delivery with variable device availability due to user mobility. Simulations show improved results in comparison with other general purpose data replication schemes in terms of data availability

A schema-based P2P network to enable publish-subscribe for multimedia content in open hypermedia systems

Open Hypermedia Systems (OHS) aim to provide efficient dissemination, adaptation and integration of hyperlinked multimedia resources. Content available in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks could add significant value to OHS provided that challenges for efficient discovery and prompt delivery of rich and up-to-date content are successfully addressed. This paper proposes an architecture that enables the operation of OHS over a P2P overlay network of OHS servers based on semantic annotation of (a) peer OHS servers and of (b) multimedia resources that can be obtained through the link services of the OHS. The architecture provides efficient resource discovery. Semantic query-based subscriptions over this P2P network can enable access to up-to-date content, while caching at certain peers enables prompt delivery of multimedia content. Advanced query resolution techniques are employed to match different parts of subscription queries (subqueries). These subscriptions can be shared among different interested peers, thus increasing the efficiency of multimedia content dissemination