An Overview of the Networking Issues of Cloud Gaming: A Literature Review

With the increasing prevalence of video games comes innovations that aim to evolve them. Cloud gaming is poised as the next phase of gaming. It enables users to play video games on any internet-enabled device. Such improvement could, therefore, enhance the processing power of existing devices and solve the need to spend large amounts of money on the latest gaming equipment. However, others argue that it may be far from being practically functional. Since cloud gaming places dependency on networks, new issues emerge. In relation, this paper is a review of the networking perspective of cloud gaming. Specifically, the paper analyzes its issues and challenges along with possible solutions. In order to accomplish the study, a literature review was performed. Results show that there are numerous issues and challenges regarding cloud gaming networks. Generally, cloud gaming has problems with its network quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE). The poor QoS and QoE of cloud gaming can be linked to unsatisfactory latency, bandwidth, delay, packet loss, and graphics quality. Moreover, the cost of providing the service and the complexity of implementing cloud gaming were considered challenges. For these issues and challenges, solutions were found. The solutions include lag or latency compensation, compression with encoding techniques, client computing power, edge computing, machine learning, frame adaption, and GPU-based server selection. However, these have limitations and may not always be applicable. Thus, even if solutions exist, it would be beneficial to analyze the networking side of cloud gaming further

Monitoring in fog computing: state-of-the-art and research challenges

Fog computing has rapidly become a widely accepted computing paradigm to mitigate cloud computing-based infrastructure limitations such as scarcity of bandwidth, large latency, security, and privacy issues. Fog computing resources and applications dynamically vary at run-time, and they are highly distributed, mobile, and appear-disappear rapidly at any time over the internet. Therefore, to ensure the quality of service and experience for end-users, it is necessary to comply with a comprehensive monitoring approach. However, the volatility and dynamism characteristics of fog resources make the monitoring design complex and cumbersome. The aim of this article is therefore three-fold: 1) to analyse fog computing-based infrastructures and existing monitoring solutions; 2) to highlight the main requirements and challenges based on a taxonomy; 3) to identify open issues and potential future research directions.This work has been (partially) funded by H2020 EU/TW 5G-DIVE (Grant 859881) and H2020 5Growth (Grant 856709). It has been also funded by the Spanish State Research Agency (TRUE5G project, PID2019-108713RB-C52 PID2019-108713RB-C52 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033)

Load Reduction for Timely Applications in the Cloud

In many IoT applications, sensor data is sent remotely to be processed, but only the freshest result is of interest. In this paper we investigate a feedback mechanism that aborts the processing of stale data at the remote end to reduce the load and save costs. The process is approximated by an M/M/∞ queueing system with a feedback loop. We find the exact expression of the average computational time saved and show that with the feedback loop in place the computation time per CPU can be cut up to 25%, making the technique very promising

Quality of Service improvements for real time multimedia applications using next generation network architectures and blockchain in Internet Service Provider cooperative scenario

Real time communications are becoming part of our daily life, requiring constrained requisites with the purpose of being enjoyed in harmony by end users. The factors ruling these requisites are Quality of Service parameters of the users' Internet connections. Achieving a satisfactory QoS level for real time communications depends on parameters that are strongly influenced by the quality of the network connections among the Internet Service Providers, which are located in the path between final users and Over The Top service providers that are supplying them with real time services. Final users can be: business people having real time videoconferences, or adopting crytpocurrencies in their exchanges, videogamers playing online games together with others residing in other countries, migrants talking with their relatives or watching their children growing up in their home countries, people with disabilities adopting tecnologies to help them, doctors performing remote surgeries, manufacturers adopting augmented reality devices to perform dangerous tasks. Each of them performing their daily activities are requiring specific QoS parameters to their ISPs, that nowadays seem to be unable to provide them with a satisfactory QoS level for these kinds of real time services. Through the adoption of next generation networks, such as the Information Centric Networking, it would be possible to overcome the QoS problems that nowadays are experienced. By adopting Blockchain technologies, in several use cases, it would be possible to improve those security aspects related to the non-temperability of information and privacy. I started this thesis analyzing next generation architectures enabling real time multimedia communications. In Software Defined Networking, Named Data Networking and Community Information Centric Networking, I highlighted potential approaches to solve QoS problems that are affecting real time multimedia applications. During my experiments I found that applications able to transmit high quality videos, such as 4k or 8k videos, or to directly interact with devices AR/VR enabled are missing for both ICN approaches. Then I proposed a REST interface for the enforcing of a specific QoS parameter, the round trip time (RTT) taking into consideration the specific use case of a game company that connects with the same telecommunication company of the final user. Supposing that the proposed REST APIs have been deployed in the game company and in the ISP, when one or more users are experiencing lag, the game company will try to ask the ISP to reduce the RTT for that specific user or that group of users. This request can be done by performing a call to a method where IP address(es) and the maximum RTT desired are passed. I also proposed other methods, through which it would be possible to retrieve information about the QoS parameters, and exchange, if necessary, an exceeding parameter in change of another one. The proposed REST APIs can also be used in more complex scenarios, where ISPs along the path are chained together, in order to improve the end to end QoS among Over The Top service provider and final users. To store the information exchanged by using the proposed REST APIs, I proposed to adopt a permissioned blockchain, analizying the ISPs cooperative use case with Hyperledger Fabric, where I proposed the adoption of the Proof of Authority consensus algorithm, to increase the throughput in terms of transactions per second. In a specific case that I examined, I am proposing a combination of Information Centric Networking and Blockchain, in an architecture where ISPs are exchanging valuable information regarding final Users, to improve their QoS parameters. I also proposed my smart contract for the gaming delay use case, that can be used to rule the communication among those ISPs that are along the path among OTT and final users. An extension of this work can be done, by defining billing costs for the QoS improvements

Design and management of image processing pipelines within CPS: Acquired experience towards the end of the FitOptiVis ECSEL Project

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are dynamic and reactive systems interacting with processes, environment and, sometimes, humans. They are often distributed with sensors and actuators, characterized for being smart, adaptive, predictive and react in real-time. Indeed, image- and video-processing pipelines are a prime source for environmental information for systems allowing them to take better decisions according to what they see. Therefore, in FitOptiVis, we are developing novel methods and tools to integrate complex image- and video-processing pipelines. FitOptiVis aims to deliver a reference architecture for describing and optimizing quality and resource management for imaging and video pipelines in CPSs both at design- and run-time. The architecture is concretized in low-power, high-performance, smart components, and in methods and tools for combined design-time and run-time multi-objective optimization and adaptation within system and environment constraints