Effective bootstrapping of Peer-to Peer networks over Mobile Ad-hoc networks

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks are vigorous, revolutionary communication technologies in the 21st century. They lead the trend of decentralization. Decentralization will ultimately win clients over client/server model, because it gives ordinary network users more control, and stimulates their active participation. It is a determinant factor in shaping the future of networking. MANETs and P2P networks are very similar in nature. Both are dynamic, distributed. Both use multi-hop broadcast or multicast as major pattern of traffic. Both set up connection by self-organizing and maintain connection by self-healing. Embodying the slogan networking without networks, both abandoned traditional client/server model and disclaimed pre-existing infrastructure. However, their status quo levels of real world application are widely divergent. P2P networks are now accountable for about 50 ~ 70% internet traffic, while MANETs are still primarily in the laboratory. The interesting and confusing phenomenon has sparked considerable research effort to transplant successful approaches from P2P networks into MANETs. While most research in the synergy of P2P networks and MANETs focuses on routing, the network bootstrapping problem remains indispensable for any such transplantation to be realized. The most pivotal problems in bootstrapping are: (1) automatic configuration of nodes addresses and IDs, (2) topology discovery and transformation in different layers and name spaces. In this dissertation research, we have found novel solutions for these problems. The contributions of this dissertation are: (1) a non-IP, flat address automatic configuration scheme, which integrates lower layer addresses and P2P IDs in application layer and makes simple cryptographical assignment possible. A related paper entitled Pastry over Ad-Hoc Networks with Automatic Flat Address Configuration was submitted to Elsevier Journal of Ad Hoc Networks in May. (2) an effective ring topology construction algorithm which builds perfect ring in P2P ID space using only simplest multi-hop unicast or multicast. Upon this ring, popular structured P2P networks like Chord, Pastry could be built with great ease. A related paper entitled Chord Bootstrapping on MANETs - All Roads lead to Rome will be ready for submission after defense of the dissertation

Video QoS/QoE over IEEE802.11n/ac: A Contemporary Survey

The demand for video applications over wireless networks has tremendously increased, and IEEE 802.11 standards have provided higher support for video transmission. However, providing Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) for video over WLAN is still a challenge due to the error sensitivity of compressed video and dynamic channels. This thesis presents a contemporary survey study on video QoS/QoE over WLAN issues and solutions. The objective of the study is to provide an overview of the issues by conducting a background study on the video codecs and their features and characteristics, followed by studying QoS and QoE support in IEEE 802.11 standards. Since IEEE 802.11n is the current standard that is mostly deployed worldwide and IEEE 802.11ac is the upcoming standard, this survey study aims to investigate the most recent video QoS/QoE solutions based on these two standards. The solutions are divided into two broad categories, academic solutions, and vendor solutions. Academic solutions are mostly based on three main layers, namely Application, Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY) which are further divided into two major categories, single-layer solutions, and cross-layer solutions. Single-layer solutions are those which focus on a single layer to enhance the video transmission performance over WLAN. Cross-layer solutions involve two or more layers to provide a single QoS solution for video over WLAN. This thesis has also presented and technically analyzed QoS solutions by three popular vendors. This thesis concludes that single-layer solutions are not directly related to video QoS/QoE, and cross-layer solutions are performing better than single-layer solutions, but they are much more complicated and not easy to be implemented. Most vendors rely on their network infrastructure to provide QoS for multimedia applications. They have their techniques and mechanisms, but the concept of providing QoS/QoE for video is almost the same because they are using the same standards and rely on Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) to provide QoS

Peer-to-peer stream merging for stored multimedia

In recent years, with the fast development of resource capability of both the Internet and personal computers, multimedia applications like video-on-demand (VOD) streaming have gained dramatic growth and been shown to be potential killer applications in the current and next-generation Internet. Scalable deployment of these applications has become a hot problem area due to the potentially high server and network bandwidth required in these systems.The conventional approach in a VOD streaming system dedicates a media stream for each client request, which is not scalable in a wide-area delivery system serving potentially very large numbers of clients. Recently, various efficient delivery techniques have been proposed to improve the scalability of VOD delivery systems. One approach is to use a scalable delivery protocol based on multicast, such as periodic broadcast or stream merging. These protocols have been mostly developed for single-server based systems and attempt to have each media stream serve as many clients as possible, so as to minimize the required server and network bandwidth. However, the performance improvements possible with techniques that deliver all streams from a single server are limited, especially regarding the required network bandwidth. Another approach is based on proxy caching and content replication, such as in content delivery networks (CDN). Although this approach is able to effectively distribute load across multiple CDN servers, the cost of this approach may be high.With the focus on further improving the system efficiency regarding the server and network bandwidth requirement, a new scalable streaming protocol is developed in this work. It adapts a previously proposed technique called hierarchical multicast stream merging (HMSM) to use a peer-to-peer delivery approach. To be more efficient in media delivery, the conventional early merging policy associated with HMSM is extended to be compatible with the peer-to-peer environment, and various peer selection policies are designed for initiation of media streams. The impact of limited peer resource capability is also studied in this work. In the performance study, a number of simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the new protocol and various design policies, and promising results are reported

Session Management in Multicast

As a new network technique to efficiently distribute information from a small number of senders to large numbers of receivers, multicast encounters many problems in scalability, membership management, security, etc. These problems hinder the deployment of multicast technology in commercial applications. To overcome these problems, a more general solution for multicast technology is needed. In this paper, after studying current multicast technologies, we summarized the technical requirements for multicast, including data delivery, scalability, security, group management, reliability, and deployment. In order to understand and meet the requirements, we define a life cycle model that most multicast sessions should follow. According to the requirements and the life cycle model, we propose and design a general solution that can control each phase of a session and satisfy most requirements for multicast technology. This general solution has three parts: hierarchical topology auto-configuration algorithm, Session Management Mechanism, and techniques supporting different multicast protocols. To verify the feasibility of our solution and compare its performance with other multicast techniques, we simulate our solution and compare it with PIM-SM and ESM

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of-the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: quality-of-service and video communication, routing protocol and cross-layer design. A few interesting problems about security and delay-tolerant networks are also discussed. This book is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

MediaSync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization

This book provides an approachable overview of the most recent advances in the fascinating field of media synchronization (mediasync), gathering contributions from the most representative and influential experts. Understanding the challenges of this field in the current multi-sensory, multi-device, and multi-protocol world is not an easy task. The book revisits the foundations of mediasync, including theoretical frameworks and models, highlights ongoing research efforts, like hybrid broadband broadcast (HBB) delivery and users' perception modeling (i.e., Quality of Experience or QoE), and paves the way for the future (e.g., towards the deployment of multi-sensory and ultra-realistic experiences). Although many advances around mediasync have been devised and deployed, this area of research is getting renewed attention to overcome remaining challenges in the next-generation (heterogeneous and ubiquitous) media ecosystem. Given the significant advances in this research area, its current relevance and the multiple disciplines it involves, the availability of a reference book on mediasync becomes necessary. This book fills the gap in this context. In particular, it addresses key aspects and reviews the most relevant contributions within the mediasync research space, from different perspectives. Mediasync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization is the perfect companion for scholars and practitioners that want to acquire strong knowledge about this research area, and also approach the challenges behind ensuring the best mediated experiences, by providing the adequate synchronization between the media elements that constitute these experiences

Heterogeneous Networks for the IoT and Machine Type Communications

The Internet of Things promises to be a key-factor in the forthcoming industrial and social revolution. The Internet of Things concept rely on pervasive communications where ’things’ are ’always connected’. The focus of the thesis is on Heterogeneous Networks for Internet of Things and Machine Type Communications. Heterogeneous Networks are an enabling factor of paramount important in order to achieve the ’always connected’ paradigm. On the other hand, Machine Type Communications are deeply different from Human-to-Human communications both in terms of traffic patterns and requirements. This thesis investigate both concepts. In particular, here are studied short and long range solutions for Machine-to-machine applications. For this work a dual approach has been followed: for the short-range solutions analysis an experimental approach has been privileged; meanwhile for the long-range solutions analysis a theoretical and simulation approach has been preferred. In both case, a particular attention has been given to the feasibility of the solutions proposed, hence solutions based on products that already exist in the market have been privileged