Taxonomy of P2P Applications

Peer-to-peer (p2p) networks have gained immense popularity in recent years and the number of services they provide continuously rises. Where p2p-networks were formerly known as file-sharing networks, p2p is now also used for services like VoIP and IPTV. With so many different p2p applications and services the need for a taxonomy framework rises. This paper describes the available p2p applications grouped by the services they provide. A taxonomy framework is proposed to classify old and recent p2p applications based on their characteristics

IPTV deployment - Trigger for advanced network services!

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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

Report of the Third Workshop on the Usage of NetFlow/IPFIX in Network Management

The Network Management Research Group (NMRG) organized in 2010 the Third Workshop on the Usage of NetFlow/IPFIX in Network Management, as part of the 78th IETF Meeting in Maastricht. Yearly organized since 2007, the workshop is an opportunity for people from both academia and industry to discuss the latest developments of the protocol, possibilities for new applications, and practical experiences. This report summarizes the presentations and the main conclusions of the workshop

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

Advanced solutions for quality-oriented multimedia broadcasting

Multimedia content is increasingly being delivered via different types of networks to viewers in a variety of locations and contexts using a variety of devices. The ubiquitous nature of multimedia services comes at a cost, however. The successful delivery of multimedia services will require overcoming numerous technological challenges many of which have a direct effect on the quality of the multimedia experience. For example, due to dynamically changing requirements and networking conditions, the delivery of multimedia content has traditionally adopted a best effort approach. However, this approach has often led to the end-user perceived quality of multimedia-based services being negatively affected. Yet the quality of multimedia content is a vital issue for the continued acceptance and proliferation of these services. Indeed, end-users are becoming increasingly quality-aware in their expectations of multimedia experience and demand an ever-widening spectrum of rich multimedia-based services. As a consequence, there is a continuous and extensive research effort, by both industry and academia, to find solutions for improving the quality of multimedia content delivered to the users; as well, international standards bodies, such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), are renewing their effort on the standardization of multimedia technologies. There are very different directions in which research has attempted to find solutions in order to improve the quality of the rich media content delivered over various network types. It is in this context that this special issue on broadcast multimedia quality of the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting illustrates some of these avenues and presents some of the most significant research results obtained by various teams of researchers from many countries. This special issue provides an example, albeit inevitably limited, of the richness and breath of the current research on multimedia broadcasting services. The research i- - ssues addressed in this special issue include, among others, factors that influence user perceived quality, encoding-related quality assessment and control, transmission and coverage-based solutions and objective quality measurements

Internet protocol television (IPTV): The Killer application for the next-generation internet

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) will be the killer application for the next-generation Internet and will provide exciting new revenue opportunities for service providers. However, to deploy IPTV services with a full quality of service (QoS) guarantee, many underlying technologies must be further studied. This article serves as a survey of IPTV services and the underlying technologies. Technical challenges also are identified