End-to-end resource management for federated delivery of multimedia services

Recently, the Internet has become a popular platform for the delivery of multimedia content. Currently, multimedia services are either offered by Over-the-top (OTT) providers or by access ISPs over a managed IP network. As OTT providers offer their content across the best-effort Internet, they cannot offer any Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees to their users. On the other hand, users of managed multimedia services are limited to the relatively small selection of content offered by their own ISP. This article presents a framework that combines the advantages of both existing approaches, by dynamically setting up federations between the stakeholders involved in the content delivery process. Specifically, the framework provides an automated mechanism to set up end-to-end federations for QoS-aware delivery of multimedia content across the Internet. QoS contracts are automatically negotiated between the content provider, its customers, and the intermediary network domains. Additionally, a federated resource reservation algorithm is presented, which allows the framework to identify the optimal set of stakeholders and resources to include within a federation. Its goal is to minimize delivery costs for the content provider, while satisfying customer QoS requirements. Moreover, the presented framework allows intermediary storage sites to be included in these federations, supporting on-the-fly deployment of content caches along the delivery paths. The algorithm was thoroughly evaluated in order to validate our approach and assess the merits of including intermediary storage sites. The results clearly show the benefits of our method, with delivery cost reductions of up to 80 % in the evaluated scenario

Identifying Nearest Fog Nodes With Network Coordinate Systems

Identifying the closest fog node is crucial for mobile clients to benefit from fog computing. Relying on geographical location alone us insufficient for this as it ignores real observed client access latency. In this paper, we analyze the performance of the Meridian and Vivaldi network coordinate systems in identifying nearest fog nodes. To that end, we simulate a dense fog environment with mobile clients. We find that while network coordinate systems really find fog nodes in close network proximity, a purely latency-oriented identification approach ignores the larger problem of balancing load across fog nodes

Internationalization capacitation of a SME in the dental prosthetics industry: Oralook

The phenomenon of market globalization has been posing new challenges and opportunities for Portuguese companies, resulting in internationalization initiatives. With the opening and expansion of markets and with the increasing competition and pace of innovation, companies seek for growth in international markets. Increasingly, companies’ must be able to respond to challenges that threaten their economic survival, resulting in stagnation. Internationalization is one of business strategic responses to the globalization challenge. The aim of this dissertation is to develop an in-company project to evaluate a dental laboratory internationalization capacity, and the subject to be studied is a top technological company, Oralook. The motivation to internationalize emerged from an entrepreneurial vision of the company’s managing partner, Gonçalo Duque, a dental prosthetics expert. Today, Oralook has one of the best facilities among Portuguese dental laboratories, equipped with the latest dental technology worldwide, which allows the sale of products and services outside the domestic market. From the detailed internal and external analysis, it is possible to answer pertinent questions brought up by careful research and find solutions towards shaping the future of the laboratory’s internationalization process.O fenómeno da globalização do mercado tem vindo a oferecer novos desafios e oportunidades para as empresas portuguesas, incentivando-as a considerar iniciativas de internacionalização. Com a abertura e expansão dos mercados, com o incremento da concorrência e o acelerado ritmo de inovação, as empresas procuram o seu lugar nos mercados internacionais. Cada vez mais as empresas precisam de estar preparadas para dar resposta aos desafios que poderão ameaçar a sua sobrevivência económica, resultando em estagnação. A internacionalização é uma das estratégias que podem dar resposta ao desafio da globalização. O objetivo desta dissertação é a de elaborar um projeto que avalie a capacidade de internacionalização de um laboratório de prótese dentária. Assim, faz sentido que o objeto de estudo seja uma empresa em constante evolução técnica e tecnológica: Oralook. A iniciativa para internacionalizar a empresa surgiu da visão empreendedora do sócio gestor, Gonçalo Duque, um profissional de prótese dentária. Atualmente, a Oralook tem uma das melhores instalações laboratoriais a nível nacional, equipada com a mais recente tecnologia na área dentária, o que permite a venda de produtos e serviços fora do mercado doméstico. A partir da análise detalhada interna e externamente, é possível responder a questões pertinentes levantadas pela pesquisa cuidadosa e encontrar soluções com vista a moldar o futuro da empresa no processo da internacionalização

Digital agriculture: definitions and technologies.

Introduction. Digital technologies. Organization, representation, and information access. Mathematical modelling and statistics. Artificial intelligence. Earth and study sensors. Converging technologies. Final considerations

Organization based multiagent architecture for distributed environments

[EN]Distributed environments represent a complex field in which applied solutions should be flexible and include significant adaptation capabilities. These environments are related to problems where multiple users and devices may interact, and where simple and local solutions could possibly generate good results, but may not be effective with regards to use and interaction. There are many techniques that can be employed to face this kind of problems, from CORBA to multi-agent systems, passing by web-services and SOA, among others. All those methodologies have their advantages and disadvantages that are properly analyzed in this documents, to finally explain the new architecture presented as a solution for distributed environment problems. The new architecture for solving complex solutions in distributed environments presented here is called OBaMADE: Organization Based Multiagent Architecture for Distributed Environments. It is a multiagent architecture based on the organizations of agents paradigm, where the agents in the architecture are structured into organizations to improve their organizational capabilities. The reasoning power of the architecture is based on the Case-Based Reasoning methology, being implemented in a internal organization that uses agents to create services to solve the external request made by the users. The OBaMADE architecture has been successfully applied to two different case studies where its prediction capabilities have been properly checked. Those case studies have showed optimistic results and, being complex systems, have demonstrated the abstraction and generalizations capabilities of the architecture. Nevertheless OBaMADE is intended to be able to solve much other kind of problems in distributed environments scenarios. It should be applied to other varieties of situations and to other knowledge fields to fully develop its potencial.[ES]Los entornos distribuidos representan un campo de conocimiento complejo en el que las soluciones a aplicar deben ser flexibles y deben contar con gran capacidad de adaptación. Este tipo de entornos está normalmente relacionado con problemas donde varios usuarios y dispositivos entran en juego. Para solucionar dichos problemas, pueden utilizarse sistemas locales que, aunque ofrezcan buenos resultados en términos de calidad de los mismos, no son tan efectivos en cuanto a la interacción y posibilidades de uso. Existen múltiples técnicas que pueden ser empleadas para resolver este tipo de problemas, desde CORBA a sistemas multiagente, pasando por servicios web y SOA, entre otros. Todas estas mitologías tienen sus ventajas e inconvenientes, que se analizan en este documento, para explicar, finalmente, la nueva arquitectura presentada como una solución para los problemas generados en entornos distribuidos. La nueva arquitectura aquí se llama OBaMADE, que es el acrónimo del inglés Organization Based Multiagent Architecture for Distributed Environments (Arquitectura Multiagente Basada en Organizaciones para Entornos Distribuidos). Se trata de una arquitectura multiagente basasa en el paradigma de las organizaciones de agente, donde los agentes que forman parte de la arquitectura se estructuran en organizaciones para mejorar sus capacidades organizativas. La capacidad de razonamiento de la arquitectura está basada en la metodología de razonamiento basado en casos, que se ha implementado en una de las organizaciones internas de la arquitectura por medio de agentes que crean servicios que responden a las solicitudes externas de los usuarios. La arquitectura OBaMADE se ha aplicado de forma exitosa a dos casos de estudio diferentes, en los que se han demostrado sus capacidades predictivas. Aplicando OBaMADE a estos casos de estudio se han obtenido resultados esperanzadores y, al ser sistemas complejos, se han demostrado las capacidades tanto de abstracción como de generalización de la arquitectura presentada. Sin embargo, esta arquitectura está diseñada para poder ser aplicada a más tipo de problemas de entornos distribuidos. Debe ser aplicada a más variadas situaciones y a otros campos de conocimiento para desarrollar completamente el potencial de esta arquitectura

Privacy Protection and Mobility Enhancement in Internet

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)The Internet has substantially embraced mobility since last decade. Cellular data network carries majority of Internet mobile access traffic and become the de facto solution of accessing Internet in mobile fashion, while many clean-slate Internet mobility solutions were proposed but none of them has been largely deployed. Internet mobile users increasingly concern more about their privacy as both researches and real-world incidents show leaking of communication and location privacy could lead to serious consequences. Just the communication itself between mobile user and their peer users or websites could leak considerable privacy of mobile user, such as location history, to other parties. Additionally, comparing to ordinary Internet access, connecting through cellular network yet provides equivalent connection stability or longevity. In this research we proposed a novelty paradigm that leverages concurrent far-side proxies to maximize network location privacy protection and minimize interruption and performance penalty brought by mobility.To avoid the deployment feasibility hurdle we also investigated the root causes impeding popularity of existing Internet mobility proposals and proposed guidelines on how to create an economical feasible solution for this goal. Based on these findings we designed a mobility support system offered as a value-added service by mobility service providers and built on elastic infrastructure that leverages various cloud aided designs, to satisfy economic feasibility and explore the architectural trade-offs among service QoS, economic viability, security and privacy