EVEREST IST - 2002 - 00185 : D23 : final report

Deliverable públic del projecte europeu EVERESTThis deliverable constitutes the final report of the project IST-2002-001858 EVEREST. After its successful completion, the project presents this document that firstly summarizes the context, goal and the approach objective of the project. Then it presents a concise summary of the major goals and results, as well as highlights the most valuable lessons derived form the project work. A list of deliverables and publications is included in the annex.Postprint (published version

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

Invited Abstract: A Simulation Package for Energy Consumption of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are becoming an integral part of the future generation Internet. Traditionally, these networks have been designed with the goals of traffic offload and the improvement of users' quality of experience (QoE), but the energy consumption is also becoming an indispensable design factor for CDNs to be a sustainable solution. To study and improve the CDN architectures using this new design metric, we are planning to develop a generic and flexible simulation package in OMNet++. This package is aimed to render a holistic view about the CDN energy consumption behaviour by incorporating the state-of-the-art energy consumption models proposed for the individual elements of CDNs (e.g. servers, routers, wired and wireless links, wireless devices, etc.) and for the various Internet contents (web pages, files, streaming video, etc.).Comment: Published in: A. F\"orster, C. Minkenberg, G. R. Herrera, M. Kirsche (Eds.), Proc. of the 2nd OMNeT++ Community Summit, IBM Research - Zurich, Switzerland, September 3-4, 2015, arXiv:1509.03284, 201

Reporting an Experience on Design and Implementation of e-Health Systems on Azure Cloud

Electronic Health (e-Health) technology has brought the world with significant transformation from traditional paper-based medical practice to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-based systems for automatic management (storage, processing, and archiving) of information. Traditionally e-Health systems have been designed to operate within stovepipes on dedicated networks, physical computers, and locally managed software platforms that make it susceptible to many serious limitations including: 1) lack of on-demand scalability during critical situations; 2) high administrative overheads and costs; and 3) in-efficient resource utilization and energy consumption due to lack of automation. In this paper, we present an approach to migrate the ICT systems in the e-Health sector from traditional in-house Client/Server (C/S) architecture to the virtualised cloud computing environment. To this end, we developed two cloud-based e-Health applications (Medical Practice Management System and Telemedicine Practice System) for demonstrating how cloud services can be leveraged for developing and deploying such applications. The Windows Azure cloud computing platform is selected as an example public cloud platform for our study. We conducted several performance evaluation experiments to understand the Quality Service (QoS) tradeoffs of our applications under variable workload on Azure.Comment: Submitted to third IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing (CGC 2013

Otimização de distribuição de conteúdos multimédia utilizando software-defined networking

The general use of Internet access and user equipments, such as smartphones, tablets and personal computers, is creating a new wave of video content consumption. In the past two decades, the Television broadcasting industry went through several evolutions and changes, evolving from analog to digital distribution, standard definition to high definition TV-channels, form the IPTV method of distribution to the latest set of technologies in content distribution, OTT. The IPTV technology introduced features that changed the passive role of the client to an active one, revolutionizing the way users consume TV content. Thus, the clients’ habits started to shape the services offered, leading to an anywhere and anytime offer of video content. OTT video delivery is a reflection of those habits, meeting the users’ desire, introducing several benefits discussed in this work over the previous technologies. However, the OTT type of delivery poses several challenges in terms of scalability and threatens the Telecommunications Operators business model, because OTT companies use the Telcos infrastructure for free. Consequently, Telecommunications Operators must prepare their infrastructure for future demand while offering new services to stay competitive. This dissertation aims to contribute with insights on what infrastructure changes a Telecommunications Operator must perform with a proposed bandwidth forecasting model. The results obtained from the forecast model paved the way to the proposed video content delivery method, which aims to improve users’ perceived Quality-of-Experience while optimizing load balancing decisions. The overall results show an improvement of users’ experience using the proposed method.A generalização do acesso à Internet e equipamentos pessoais como smartphones, tablets e computadores pessoais, está a criar uma nova onda de consumo de conteúdos multimedia. Nas ultimas duas décadas, a indústria de transmissão de Televisão atravessou várias evoluções e alterações, evoluindo da distribuição analógica para a digital, de canais de Televisão de definição padrão para alta definição, do método de distribuição IPTV, até ao último conjunto de tecnologias na distribuição de conteúdos, OTT. A tecnologia IPTV introduziu novas funcionalidades que mudaram o papel passivo do cliente para um papel activo, revolucionando a forma como os utilizadores consumem conteúdos televisivos. Assim, os hábitos dos clientes começaram a moldar os serviços oferecidos, levando à oferta de consumo de conteúdos em qualquer lugar e em qualquer altura. A entrega de vídeo OTT é um reflexo destes hábitos, indo ao encontro dos desejos dos utilizadores, que introduz inúmeras vantagens sobre outras tecnologias discutidas neste trabalho. No entanto, a entrega de conteúdos OTT cria diversos problemas de escalabilidade e ameaça o modelo de negócio das Operadoras de Telecomunicações, porque os fornecedores de serviço OTT usam a infraestrutura das mesmas sem quaisquer custos. Consequentemente, os Operadores de Telecomunicações devem preparar a sua infraestrutura para o consumo futuro ao mesmo tempo que oferecem novos serviços para se manterem competitivos. Esta dissertação visa contribuir com conhecimento sobre quais alterações uma Operadora de Telecomunicações deve executar com o modelo de previsão de largura de banda proposto. Os resultados obtidos abriram caminho para o método de entrega de conteúdos multimedia proposto, que visa ao melhoramento da qualidade de experiência do utilizador ao mesmo tempo que se optimiza o processo de balanceamento de carga. No geral os testes confirmam uma melhoria na qualidade de experiência do utilizador usando o método proposto.Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e Telemátic