Mathematical analysis of scheduling policies in peer-to-peer video streaming networks

Las redes de pares son comunidades virtuales autogestionadas, desarrolladas en la capa de aplicación sobre la infraestructura de Internet, donde los usuarios (denominados pares) comparten recursos (ancho de banda, memoria, procesamiento) para alcanzar un fin común. La distribución de video representa la aplicación más desafiante, dadas las limitaciones de ancho de banda. Existen básicamente tres servicios de video. El más simple es la descarga, donde un conjunto de servidores posee el contenido original, y los usuarios deben descargar completamente este contenido previo a su reproducción. Un segundo servicio se denomina video bajo demanda, donde los pares se unen a una red virtual siempre que inicien una solicitud de un contenido de video, e inician una descarga progresiva en línea. El último servicio es video en vivo, donde el contenido de video es generado, distribuido y visualizado simultáneamente. En esta tesis se estudian aspectos de diseño para la distribución de video en vivo y bajo demanda. Se presenta un análisis matemático de estabilidad y capacidad de arquitecturas de distribución bajo demanda híbridas, asistidas por pares. Los pares inician descargas concurrentes de múltiples contenidos, y se desconectan cuando lo desean. Se predice la evolución esperada del sistema asumiendo proceso Poisson de arribos y egresos exponenciales, mediante un modelo determinístico de fluidos. Un sub-modelo de descargas secuenciales (no simultáneas) es globalmente y estructuralmente estable, independientemente de los parámetros de la red. Mediante la Ley de Little se determina el tiempo medio de residencia de usuarios en un sistema bajo demanda secuencial estacionario. Se demuestra teóricamente que la filosofía híbrida de cooperación entre pares siempre desempeña mejor que la tecnología pura basada en cliente-servidor

Improving P2P streaming in Wireless Community Networks

Wireless Community Networks (WCNs) are bottom-up broadband networks empowering people with their on-line communication means. Too often, however, services tailored for their characteristics are missing, with the consequence that they have worse performance than what they could. We present here an adaptation of an Open Source P2P live streaming platform that works efficiently, and with good application-level quality, over WCNs. WCNs links are normally symmetric (unlike standard ADSL access), and a WCN topology is local and normally flat (contrary to the global Internet), so that the P2P overlay used for video distribution can be adapted to the underlaying network characteristics. We exploit this observation to derive overlay building strategies that make use of cross-layer information to reduce the impact of the P2P streaming on the WCN while maintaining good application performance. We experiment with a real application in real WCN nodes, both in the Community-Lab provided by the CONFINE EU Project and within an emulation framework based on Mininet, where we can build larger topologies and interact more efficiently with the mesh underlay, which is unfortunately not accessible in Community-Lab. The results show that, with the overlay building strategies proposed, the P2P streaming applications can reduce the load on the WCN to about one half, also equalizing the load on links. At the same time the delivery rate and delay of video chunks are practically unaffected. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Performance Optimization and Dynamics Control for Large-scale Data Transfer in Wide-area Networks

Transport control plays an important role in the performance of large-scale scientific and media streaming applications involving transfer of large data sets, media streaming, online computational steering, interactive visualization, and remote instrument control. In general, these applications have two distinctive classes of transport requirements: large-scale scientific applications require high bandwidths to move bulk data across wide-area networks, while media streaming applications require stable bandwidths to ensure smooth media playback. Unfortunately, the widely deployed Transmission Control Protocol is inadequate for such tasks due to its performance limitations. The purpose of this dissertation is to conduct rigorous analytical study of the design and performance of transport solutions, and develop an integrated transport solution in a systematical way to overcome the limitations of current transport methods. One of the primary challenges is to explore and compose a set of feasible route options with multiple constraints. Another challenge essentially arises from the randomness inherent in wide-area networks, particularly the Internet. This randomness must be explicitly accounted for to achieve both goodput maximization and stabilization over the constructed routes by suitably adjusting the source rate in response to both network and host dynamics.The superior and robust performance of the proposed transport solution is extensively evaluated in a simulated environment and further verified through real-life implementations and deployments over both Internet and dedicated connections under disparate network conditions in comparison with existing transport methods

PEER-TO-PEER 3D/MULTI-VIEW VIDEO STREAMING

Abstract The recent advances in stereoscopic video capture, compression and display have made 3D video a visually appealing and costly affordable technology. More sophisticated multi-view videos have also been demonstrated. Yet their remarkably increased data volume poses greater challenges to the conventional client/server systems. The stringent synchronization demands from different views further complicate the system design. In this thesis, we present an initial attempt toward efficient streaming of 3D videos over peer-to-peer networks. We show that the inherent multi-stream nature of 3D video makes playback synchronization more difficult. We address this by a 2-stream buffer, together with a novel segment scheduling. We further extend our system to support multi-view video with view diversity and dynamics. We have evaluated our system under different end-system and network configurations with typical stereo video streams. The simulation results demonstrate the superiority of our system in terms of scalability, streaming quality and dealing with view dynamics

A Continuous Overlay Path Probing Algorithm For Overlay Networks

Bandwidth is a key factor in network technologies and it has been of major importance throughout the history of packet networks. In fact, bandwidth estimation is very beneficial to optimize the performance of end-to-end transport in several overlay applications such as Content Distribution Networks (CDNs), Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing, and dynamic overlay routing. The end-to-end available bandwidth determines the extra bandwidth that can be provided to overlay traffic. Knowledge about the available bandwidth of an overlay path enables dynamic rate adoption and better bandwidth utilization by content distribution schemes in overlay networks. However, the important issue is how to measure the available bandwidth on an end-to-end overlay path without prior knowledge about the physical network. Over the last two decades, researchers have been trying to create algorithms to measure end-to-end available bandwidth and other bandwidth-related metrics accurately, quickly, and without affecting the traffic of the path. Active measurement techniques performed by overlay nodes can provide bandwidth estimations of an end-to-end overlay path. This thesis describes a new algorithm called “COPPA,” which is an in-band path probing algorithm for measuring the end-to-end available bandwidth of an overlay path accurately and continuously. The aim is to provide up-to-date bandwidth information for enhanced content distribution processes in overlay networks. The primary idea is to perform active measurements using the applications’ packets instead of using extra probe packets. Such an in-band probing algorithm reduces measurement overhead on the selected overlay path. Several experiments were carried out using the OMNeT++ simulation framework. The designed algorithm was evaluated using experimental data. The obtained results show that the continuous in-band overlay path probing algorithm (COPPA) provides up-to-date bandwidth information with reduced overhead and minimal impact on the traffic of the path

Diffusion en directe avec du Gossip

Video streaming has become a killer application for peer-to-peer technologies. By aggregating scarce resources such as upload bandwidth, decentralized video streaming protocols make it possible to serve a video stream to huge numbers of users while requiring very limited investments from broadcasters. In this paper, we present HEAP, a novel peer-to-peer streaming protocol designed for heterogeneous scenarios. Gossip protocols have already shown their effec- tiveness in the context of live video streaming. HEAP, HEterogeneity-Aware gossip Protocol, goes beyond their applicability and performance by incorporating several novel features. First, HEAP includes a fanout-adaptation scheme that tunes the contribution of nodes to the streaming process based on their bandwidth capabilities. Second, HEAP comprises heuristics that improve reliability, as well as operation in the presence of heterogeneous network latency. We extensively evaluate HEAP on a real deployment over 200 nodes on the Grid5000 platform in a variety of settings, and assess its scalability with up to 100k simulated nodes. Our results show that HEAP significantly improves the quality of streamed videos over standard homogeneous gossip protocols, especially when the stream rate is close to the average available bandwidth.Le streaming vidéo est devenu une killer application pour les technologies pair-à- pair. En agrégeant les ressources rares telles que le debit maximale téléversement, les protocoles de diffusion vidéo décentralisée permettent servir un flux vidéo à un grand nombre d’utilisateurs tout en limitant les couts. Dans cet article, nous présentons HEAP, un nouveau protocole de streaming pair-à-pair conçu pour des réseaux hétérogènes. Les protocoles de gossip ont déjà mon- tré leur efficacité dans le contexte du streaming vidéo en direct. HEAP, em HEterogeneity-Aware Gossip Protocol, va au-delà de protocoles existantes en incorporant plusieurs caractéristiques nouvelles. Premièrement, HEAP adapte la contribution des noeuds en fonction de leurs debit maximal. Deuxièmement, HEAP inclut des heuristiques qui améliorent la fiabilité, en présence de latence de réseau hétérogène. Nous évaluons HEAP sur un déploiement réel sur 200 noeuds sur la plate-forme Grid5000 avec une variété de paramètres, et évaluons son passage à l’échelle avec jusqu’à 100k noeuds simulé. Nos résultats montrent que HEAP améliore significativement la qualité des vidéos diffusées par rapport au protocoles standard, surtout lorsque le débit est proche de la bande passante moyenne disponible

Recent Trends in Communication Networks

In recent years there has been many developments in communication technology. This has greatly enhanced the computing power of small handheld resource-constrained mobile devices. Different generations of communication technology have evolved. This had led to new research for communication of large volumes of data in different transmission media and the design of different communication protocols. Another direction of research concerns the secure and error-free communication between the sender and receiver despite the risk of the presence of an eavesdropper. For the communication requirement of a huge amount of multimedia streaming data, a lot of research has been carried out in the design of proper overlay networks. The book addresses new research techniques that have evolved to handle these challenges

Providing crowd-sourced and real-time media services through a NDN-based platform

International audienceThe diffusion of social networks and broadband technologies is letting emerge large online communities of people that stay always in touch with each other and exchange messages, thoughts, photos, videos, files, and any other type of contents. At the same time, due to the introduction of crowd-sourcing strategies, according to which services and contents can be obtained by soliciting contributions from a group of users, the amount of data generated and exchanged within a social community may experience a radical increment never seen before. In this context, it becomes essential to guarantee resource scalability and load balancing to support real time media delivery. To this end, the present book chapter aims at investigating the design of a network architecture, based on the emerging Named Data Networking (NDN) paradigm, providing crowd-sourced real-time media contents. Such an architecture is composed by four different entities: a very large group of heterogeneous devices that produce media contents to be shared, an equally large group of users interested in them, a distributed Event Management System that creates events and handles the social community, and a NDN communication infrastructure able to efficiently manage users requests and distribute multimedia contents. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, we have evaluate its performance through a simulation campaign using real-world topologies

Converged IP-over-standard ethernet progress control networks for hydrocarbon process automation applications controllers

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The maturity level of Internet Protocol (IP) and the emergence of standard Ethernet interfaces of Hydrocarbon Process Automation Application (HPAA) present a real opportunity to combine independent industrial applications onto an integrated IP based network platform. Quality of Service (QoS) for IP over Ethernet has the strength to regulate traffic mix and support timely delivery. The combinations of these technologies lend themselves to provide a platform to support HPAA applications across Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN) networks. HPAA systems are composed of sensors, actuators, and logic solvers networked together to form independent control system network platforms. They support hydrocarbon plants operating under critical conditions that — if not controlled — could become dangerous to people, assets and the environment. This demands high speed networking which is triggered by the need to capture data with higher frequency rate at a finer granularity. Nevertheless, existing HPAA network infrastructure is based on unique autonomous systems, which has resulted in multiple, parallel and separate networks with limited interconnectivity supporting different functions. This created increased complexity in integrating various applications and resulted higher costs in the technology life cycle total ownership. To date, the concept of consolidating HPAA into a converged IP network over standard Ethernet has not yet been explored. This research aims to explore and develop the HPAA Process Control Systems (PCS) in a Converged Internet Protocol (CIP) using experimental and simulated networks case studies. Results from experimental and simulation work showed encouraging outcomes and provided a good argument for supporting the co-existence of HPAA and non-HPAA applications taking into consideration timeliness and reliability requirements. This was achieved by invoking priority based scheduling with the highest priority being awarded to PCS among other supported services such as voice, multimedia streams and other applications. HPAA can benefit from utilizing CIP over Ethernet by reducing the number of interdependent HPAA PCS networks to a single uniform and standard network. In addition, this integrated infrastructure offers a platform for additional support services such as multimedia streaming, voice, and data. This network‐based model manifests itself to be integrated with remote control system platform capabilities at the end user's desktop independent of space and time resulting in the concept of plant virtualization

Live Streaming with Gossip

Peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures have emerged as a popular paradigm to support the dynamic and scalable nature of distributed systems. This is particularly relevant today, given the tremendous increase in the intensity of information exchanged over the Internet. A P2P system is typically composed of participants that are willing to contribute resources, such as memory or bandwidth, in the execution of a collaborative task providing a benefit to all participants. File sharing is probably the most widely used collaborative task, where each participant wants to receive an individual copy of some file. Users collaborate by sending fragments of the file they have already downloaded to other participants. Sharing files containing multimedia content, files that typically reach the hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes, introduces a number of challenges. Given typical bandwidths of participants of hundreds of kilobits per second to a couple of megabits per second, it is unacceptable to wait until completion of the download before actually being able to use the file as the download represents a non negligible time. From the point of view of the participant, getting the (entire) file as fast as possible is typically not good enough. As one example, Video on Demand (VoD) is a scenario where a participant would like to start previewing the multimedia content (the stream), offered by a source, even though only a fraction of it has been received, and then continue the viewing while the rest of the content is being received. Following the same line of reasoning, new applications have emerged that rely on live streaming: the source does not own a file that it wants to share with others, but shares content as soon as it is produced. In other words, the content to distribute is live, not pre-recorded and stored. Typical examples include the broadcasting of live sports events, conferences or interviews. The gossip paradigm is a type of data dissemination that relies on random communication between participants in a P2P system, sharing similarities with the epidemic dissemination of diseases. An epidemic starts to spread when the source randomly chooses a set of communication partners, of size fanout, and infects them, i.e., it shares a rumor with them. This set of participants, in turn, randomly picks fanout communication partners each and infects them, i.e., share with them the same rumor. This paradigm has many advantages including fast propagation of rumors, a probabilistic guarantee that each rumor reaches all participants, high resilience to churn (i.e., participants that join and leave) and high scalability. Gossip therefore constitutes a candidate of choice for live streaming in large-scale systems. These advantages, however, come at a price. While disseminating data, gossip creates many duplicates of the same rumor and participants usually receive multiple copies of the same rumor. While this is obviously a feature when it comes to guaranteeing good dissemination of the rumor when churn is high, it is a clear disadvantage when spreading large amounts of multimedia data (i.e., ordered and time-critical) to participants with limited resources, namely upload bandwidth in the case of high-bandwidth content dissemination. This thesis therefore investigates if and how the gossip paradigm can be used as a highly effcient communication system for live streaming under the following specific scenarios: (i) where participants can only contribute limited resources, (ii) when these limited resources are heterogeneously distributed among nodes, and (iii) where only a fraction of participants are contributing their fair share of work while others are freeriding. To meet these challenges, this thesis proposes (i) gossip++: a gossip-based protocol especially tailored for live streaming that separates the dissemination of metadata, i.e., the location of the data, and the dissemination of the data itself. By first spreading the location of the content to interested participants, the protocol avoids wasted bandwidth in sending and receiving duplicates of the payload, (ii) HEAP: a fanout adaptation mechanism that enables gossip to adapt participants' contribution with respect to their resources while still preserving its reliability, and (iii) LiFT: a protocol to secure high-bandwidth gossip-based dissemination protocols against freeriders