195860670
Optimal stream replication for video simulcasting
Video simulcasting enables a sender to generate multiple streams for the same video program but at different rates, targeting receivers of different capacities. Each stream can then be distributed to the target receivers via broadcast or multicast channels. One of the critical issues in video simulcasting is to strike a balance between bandwidth consumption and the user satisfaction. This is because stream replication introduces redundancy which can potentially lead to excessive use of the bandwidth, while on the other hand there usually is a mismatch between a receiver's capacity and the limited choice of the stream bandwidths. We present a formal study on the above issue, which we refer as the optimal stream replication problem. We first formulate the optimal replication problem for a given session bandwidth budget and number of streams, with the objective of minimizing the expected mismatch for all the receivers in the session. A proper choice for the number of the replicated streams is critical in the overall bandwidth provisioning. Though it has been largely assumed that the number of streams is predetermined by service providers, we find that dynamic adjustment of stream number is possible in advanced video stream systems, such as the MPEG-4 Delivery Multimedia Integration Framework (DIMF), and systems employing fast video transcoding algorithms. Therefore, we also study the case of a flexible stream number, with the objective of jointly optimize the stream number and bandwidth allocated to each stream.
7789260
Optimal stream replication for video simulcasting
Video simulcasting enables a sender to generate replicated streams of different rates, serving receivers of diverse access bandwidths. As replication introduces noticeable redundancy, balancing bandwidth consumption with user satisfaction becomes a critical concern in simulcasting. This paper investigates the above issue; more explicitly, we seek answers to the following two questions: what is the number of streams that should be generated, and what is the bandwidth that should be allocated to each stream? We derive optimal and efficient solutions, and evaluate their performance under a variety of configurations. The results demonstrate that an optimal and adaptive bandwidth allocation significantly improves user satisfaction under stringent resource constraints, and an optimal choice of the stream number yields further improvements.
14992487
COPACC: An Architecture of Cooperative Proxy-Client Caching System for On-Demand Media Streaming
Proxy caching is a key technique to reduce transmission cost for on-demand multimedia streaming. The effectiveness of current caching schemes, however, is limited by the insufficient storage space and weak cooperation among proxies and their clients, particularly considering the high bandwidth demands from media objects. In this paper, we propose COPACC, a cooperative proxy-and-client caching system that addresses the above deficiencies. This innovative approach combines the advantages of both proxy caching and peer-to-peer client communications. It leverages the client-side caching to amplify the aggregated cache space and rely on dedicated proxies to effectively coordinate the communications. We propose a comprehensive suite of distributed protocols to facilitate the interactions among different network entities in COPACC. It also realizes a smart and cost-effective cache indexing, searching, and verifying scheme. Furthermore, we develop an efficient cache allocation algorithm for distributing video segments among the proxies and clients. The algorithm not only minimizes the aggregated transmission cost of the whole system, but also accommodates heterogeneous computation and storage constraints of proxies and clients. We have extensively evaluated the performance of COPACC under various network and end-system configurations. The results demonstrate that it achieves remarkably lower transmission cost as compared to pure proxy-based caching with limited storage space. On the other hand, it is much more robust than a pure peer-to-peer communication system in the presence of node failures. Meanwhile, its computation and control overheads are both kept in low levels
14806639
A unified framework for resource discovery and QoS-aware provider selection in ad hoc networks
With the rising popularity of network-based applications and the potential use of mobile ad hoc networks in civilian life, an efficient resource discovery service is needed in such networks for quickly locating resource providers. In addition, to improve user experience, QoS awareness is also crucial. In this paper, we identify the challenges when basic resource discovery techniques for the Internet are used in mobile ad hoc networks. We then propose a framework that provides a unified solution to the discovery of resources and QoS-aware selection of resource providers. The key entities of this framework are a set of self-organized discovery agents. These agents manage the directory information of resources using hash indexing. They also dynamically partition the network into domains and collect intra- and inter-domain QoS information to select appropriate providers. Simulation results show that our framework improves the QoS delivered to the clients, while the cost and response time are kept at a low level.
12033351
mTreebone: A Hybrid Tree/Mesh Overlay for Application-Layer Live Video Multicast
Application-layer overlay networks have recently emerged as a promising solution for live media multicast on the Internet. A tree is probably the most natural structure for a multicast overlay, but is vulnerable in the presence of dynamic end-hosts. Data-driven approaches form a mesh out of overlay nodes to exchange data, which greatly enhances the resilience. It however suffers from an efficiency-latency tradeoff, given that the data have to be pulled from mesh neighbors with periodical notifications. In this paper, we suggest a novel hybrid tree/mesh design that leverages both overlays. The key idea is to identify a set of stable nodes to construct a tree-based backbone, called treebone, with most of the data being pushed over this backbone. These stable nodes, together with others, are further organized through an auxiliary mesh overlay, which facilitates the treebone to accommodate node dynamics and fully exploit the available bandwidth between overlay nodes. This hybrid design, referred to as mTreebone, is braced by our real trace studies, which show strong evidence that the performance of an overlay closely depends on a small set of backbone nodes. It however poses a series of unique and critical design challenges, in particular, the identification of stable nodes and seamless data delivery using both push and pull methods. In this paper, we present optimized solutions to these problems, which reconcile the two overlays under a coherent framework with controlled overhead. We evaluate mTreebone through both simulations and PlanetLab experiments. The results demonstrate the superior efficiency and robustness of this hybrid solution.
18232832
Tree-assisted gossiping for overlay video distribution
Given its readily deployable nature and broad applications for digital entertainment, video streaming through overlay networks has received much attention recently. While a tree topology is often advocated due to its scalability, it suffers from discontinuous playback under highly dynamic network environments. For on-demand streaming, the asynchronicity among client requests further aggravates the problem. On the other hand, gossip protocols using random message dissemination, though robust, fail to meet the real-time constraints for streaming applications. In this paper, we propose TAG, a Tree-Assisted Gossip protocol that addresses the above issues. TAG adopts a tree structure with time indexing to accommodate asynchronous requests, and an efficient pull-based gossip algorithm to mitigate the impact of network dynamicity. It seamlessly integrates these two approaches and realizes their best features, namely, low delay with a regular tree topology, and robust delivery with smart switching among multiple paths, thus making effective use of the available bandwidth in the network. We evaluate the performance of TAG under various settings, and the results demonstrate that it is quite robust in the presence of local and global bandwidth fluctuations. As compared to pure tree-based overlay VOD system, it achieves much lower and stable segment missing rates, even under highly dynamic network conditions.
37149853
New Challenges in the World Wide Wisdom Web (W4) Research
This talk addresses the research and development needs for creating the new paradigm shift in Internet computing. In particular, it presents a promising answer to such needs, called the World Wide Wisdom Web (W4), and identifies several research challenges and enabling technologies in developing the W4.
7025134
Communication speed selection for embedded systems with networked voltage-scalable processors
High-speed serial network interfaces are gaining wide use in connecting multiple processors and peripherals in modern embedded systems, thanks to their size advantage and power efficiency. Many such interfaces also support multiple data rates, and this ability is opening a new dimension in the power/performance trade-offs between communication and computation on voltage scalable embedded processors. To minimize energy consumption in these networked architectures, designers must not only perform functional partitioning but also carefully balance the speeds between communication and computation, which compete for time and energy. Minimizing communication power without considering computation may actually lead to higher energy consumption at the system level due to elongated on-time as well as lost opportunities for dynamic voltage scaling on the processors. We propose a speed selection methodology for globally optimizing the energy consumption in embedded networked architectures. We formulate a multi-dimensional optimization problem by modeling communication dependencies between processors and their timing budgets. This enables engineers to systematically solve the problem of optimal speed selection for global energy reduction. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our speed selection approach with an image processing application mapped onto a multi-processor architecture with a multi-speed Ethernet.
911649
Emergent Constraint Satisfaction Through Multi-Agent Coordinated Interaction
We present a methodology, called Constraint Partition and Coordinated Reaction (CP&CR), for distributed constraint satisfaction based on partitioning the set of constraints into subsets of different constraint types. Associated with each constraint type is a set of specialised agents, each of which is responsible for enforcing constraints of the specified type for the set of variables under its jurisdiction. Variable instantiation is the joint responsibility of a set of agents, each of which has a different perspective on the instantiation according to a particular constraint type and can revise the instantiation in response to violations of the specific constraint type. The final solution emerges through incremental local revisions of an initial, possibly inconsistent, instantiation of all variables. Solution revision is the result of coordinated local reaction of the specialised constraint agents. We have applied the methodology to job shop scheduling, an NP-complete constraint satisfaction problem. Utility of different types of coordination information in CP&CR was investigated. In addition, experimental results on a benchmark suite of problems show that CP&CR performed considerably well as compared to other centralised search scheduling techniques, in both computational cost and number of problems solved.
16023163
Analysis and Characterization of Intel Itanium Instruction Bundles for Improving VLIW Processor Performance
In order to achieve high instruction level parallelism (ILP), designers are turning to very long instruction word (VLIW) based designs, in which different types of instructions are grouped together as bundles of 128 bits or longer. In VLIW, the added nops increase the code size, limit processor performance by the under-utilization of functional units. In examining these performance issues of VLIW systems, we consider Intel first 64-bit architecture, the IA-64, and its first implementation, the Itanium, which employs Intel version of VLIW. We present a comprehensive analysis of the problem of under-utilization due to nops and stops across a wide range of application domains through the use of three different benchmark suites: SPEC CPU 2000, MediaBench, and PacketBench. Our results show that, on average, nops create an under-utilization factor of 28.46% in the case of SPEC CPU, 32.27% in MediaBench, and 29.76% in PacketBench. We also analyze the characteristics of different instruction bundle formats, which we obtain by collecting statistics concerning the frequency of the bundle formats
7088840
Communication protection in IP-based video surveillance systems
For decades, video surveillance systems have been crucial in protecting critical infrastructures. Currently the systems are adopting the emerging internetworking digital technology, changing from the traditional isolated analog technology. While there are several advantages of IP-based video surveillance systems, the systems are also exposed to additional new security threats. Security is a critical factor to make the IP-based video surveillance systems practical and usable. In this paper, we address the security threats to the data communications in IP-based video surveillance systems. We first analyze the current approaches, mainly naive and selective methods, to secure real-time video data, and identify their limitations to IP-based video surveillance systems. Then we propose a system design of secure internetworking video surveillance systems. Our proposed approach adopts a randomly adjustable encryption method to provide confidentiality to the data. Our implementation and performance study demonstrate that our approach achieves a good balance of cost-efficiency and security.