A cross-layer framework for video-on-demand service in multi-hop WiMax mesh networks

In this work, we introduce a cross-layer framework to favor the video-on-demand service in multi-hop WiMax mesh networks. We first propose a joint solution of admission control and channel scheduling for video streams. The proposed approach guarantees that the required data rate is achieved for video streams, which is crucial for multimedia streaming applications. An efficient and light-weight multicast routing technique is also proposed to minimize the bandwidth cost of joining a multicast tree. Furthermore, we adopt the Patching technique in the application layer to improve the capacity of the video server. Overall, the quality of the video-on-demand service is dramatically improved with the help of the efficient cooperation between the techniques proposed in different layers of the network. Simulation study shows that with the proposed approach, true video-on-demand in WiMax mesh networks can be achieved under high video request arrival rate.     

视频监控联网系统中云媒体服务器的架构研究与设计

在视频监控联网系统中,传统独立部署的媒体服务器存在因并发导致的I／O负载严重、网络带宽不足以及负载分配不均等诸多问题。云媒体服务器将整体的调度、统一的管理和性能的优化融为一体,可实现资源利用的最优化和性能提升的最大化。本文研究并设计云媒体服务器的整体架构,基于此架构对服务器集群中媒体服务器的负载评判方法进行了设计。实验结果表明,相对于传统媒体服务架构的视频监控系统,云媒体服务器可较好地实现对业务的负载均衡、容错切换等功能,可以应对媒体服务器中对视频源的突发高并发访问。     

Peer Assisted Video Streaming With Supply-Demand-Based Cache Optimization

In this paper, we consider a hybrid P2P video on-demand architecture that utilizes both the server and the peer resources for efficient transmission of popular videos. In our system architecture, each peer dedicates some cache space to store a particular segment of a video file as well as some of its upload bandwidth to serve the cached segment to other peers. Peers join the system and issue a streaming request to a control server. Control server directs the peers to streaming servers or to other peers who have the desired video segments. Control server also decides which peer should cache which video segment. Our main contribution in this paper is to determine the proper caching strategies at peers such that we minimize the average load on the streaming servers.      

Cost-effective resource provisioning for multimedia cloud-based e-health systems

Recently, multimedia cloud is being considered as a new effective serving mode in e-Health area that meets the requirement of scalable and economic multimedia service for e-health. It can provide a flexible stack of powerful Virtual Machine (VM) resources of cloud like CPU, memory, storage, network bandwidth etc. on demand to manage e-health media services and applications (e.g. medical image/video retrieval, health video transcoding, streaming, video rendering, sharing and delivery) at lower cost. However, one major issue here is how to efficiently allocate VM resources dynamically based on e-health applications’ QoS demands and support energy and cost savings by optimizing the number of servers in use. In order to solve this problem, we propose a cost effective and dynamic VM allocation model based on Nash bargaining solution. With extensive simulations it is shown that the proposed mechanism can reduce the overall cost of running servers while at the same time guarantee QoS demand and maximize resource utilization in various dimensions of server resources.     

面向网格的时移电视系统研究

基于网格技术提出了时移电视服务系统(GridTVOD,Time-shifted TV on demand based on grid).在GridTVOD系统中,系统组织基于Globus MDS,将视频服务器和服务节点组织为流媒体服务网格,视频数据传输采用P2P和Patching相结合,用户作为网格节点,在享受服务时,也作为服务端为其它节点提供服务.整个系统具有如下特点:1)采用流合并机制,有效地减少媒体服务器提供的基流数;2)采用分布式控制协议,系统具有良好的可扩展性;3)利用网格技术,为系统组织提供安全、有效的保障.     

Video placement and configuration of distributed video servers on cable TV networks

A large-scale, distributed video-on-demand (VOD) system allows geographically dispersed residential and business users to access video services, such as movies and other multimedia programs or documents on demand from video servers on a high-speed network. In this paper, we first demonstrate through analysis and simulation the need for a hierarchical architecture for the VOD distribution network.We then assume a hierarchical architecture, which fits the existing tree topology used in today's cable TV (CATV) hybrid fiber/coaxial (HFC) distribution networks. We develop a model for the video program placement, configuration, and performance evaluation of such systems. Our approach takes into account the user behavior, the fact that the user requests are transmitted over a shared channel before reaching the video server containing the requested program, the fact that the input/output (I/O) capacity of the video servers is the costlier resource, and finally the communication cost. In addition, our model employs batching of user requests at the video servers. We study the effect of batching on the performance of the video servers and on the quality of service (QoS) delivered to the user, and we contribute dynamic batching policies which improve server utilization, user QoS, and lower the servers' cost. The evaluation is based on an extensive analytical and simulation study.     

Reducing bandwidth requirement for delivering video over wide area networks with proxy server

Due to the high bandwidth requirement and rate variability of compressed video, delivering video across wide area networks (WANs) is a challenging issue. Proxy servers have been used to reduce network congestion and improve client access time on the Internet by caching passing data. We investigate ways to store or stage partial video in proxy servers to reduce the network bandwidth requirement over WAN. A client needs to access a portion of the video from a proxy server over a local area network (LAN) and the rest from a central server across a WAN. Therefore, client buffer requirement and video synchronization are to be considered. We study the tradeoffs between client buffer, storage requirement on the proxy server, and bandwidth requirement over WAN. Given a video delivery rate for the WAN, we propose several frame staging selection algorithms to determine the video frames to be stored in the proxy server. A scheme called chunk algorithm, which partitions a video into different segments (chunks of frames) with alternating chunks stored in the proxy server, is shown to offer the best tradeoff. We also investigate an efficient way to utilize client buffer when the combination of video streams from WAN and LAN is considered.     

本地带宽资源管理系统的设计与实现

通过分析传统的尽最大努力(BE)传输网络在传输视频流时存在的服务性能高度依赖于本地可用带宽资源问题,设计并实现了本地带宽资源管理系统.可有效管理本地网络带宽资源,同时为视频流传输提供有保证转发(AF)服务.测试结果表明,该系统能有效保障视频流的服务质量(QoS).     

视频服务器网络中影像对象映射问题的研究

视频服务器网络中的影像对象映射问题是一种新的组合优化问题.服务器网络可以建立在基于局域网的工作站网络之上,也可以建立在广域网之上.基于对用户的服务请求模式、服务器网络的存储容量和通信带宽等因素的综合考虑,研究了服务器网络中影像对象映射问题,利用局部搜索算法给出了一套对该映射问题的解决方案.然后用一套基准集实例对给出的算法集进行验证.结果表明,在较短的计算时间内,该算法可以得到近似最优解的方案.     

Minimizing delivery cost in scalable streaming content distribution systems

Recent scalable multicast streaming protocols for on-demand delivery of media content offer the promise of greatly reduced server and network bandwidth. However, a key unresolved issue is how to design scalable content distribution systems that place replica servers closer to various client populations and route client requests and response streams so as to minimize the total server and network delivery cost. This issue is significantly more complex than the design of distribution systems for traditional Web files or unicast on-demand streaming, for two reasons. First, closest server and shortest path routing does not minimize network bandwidth usage; instead, the optimal routing of client requests and server multicasts is complex and interdependent. Second, the server bandwidth usage increases with the number of replicas. Nevertheless, this paper shows that the complex replica placement and routing optimization problem, in its essential form, can be expressed fairly simply, and can be solved for example client populations and realistic network topologies. The solutions show that the optimal scalable system can differ significantly from the optimal system for conventional delivery. Furthermore, simple canonical networks are analyzed to develop insights into effective heuristics for near-optimal placement and routing. The proposed new heuristics can be used for designing large and heterogeneous systems that are of practical interest. For a number of example networks, the best heuristics produce systems with total delivery cost that is within 16% of optimality.     

Game theoretic bandwidth procurement mechanisms in live P2P streaming systems

With the dramatic growth of Internet video streaming applications, resource provisioning for video streaming systems to satisfy their upload bandwidth deficit is a challenging task. The design of incentive mechanisms for taking advantage of unused upload capability of helper peers is proven to be a viable, cost-effective solution for this problem. The existing incentive mechanisms for video streaming systems do not consider the hierarchical nature of helper-server interactions, the limited budget of server to procure the needed bandwidth, and limited information of helpers about the other parties in the system. To address these issues, we designed cooperation mechanisms for two different cases: in the full-information case where the server has the full control over the amount of payments to each helper, a Stackelberg helping game is formulated in which the server as leader determines the amount of payment for each helper and then, helpers as followers decide on their amount of contributed bandwidth accordingly. We characterize the Stackelberg Equilibrium (SE) point of game in which the server shares the benefits of bandwidth sharing with the helpers through a market mechanism. In the partial information case where the helpers’ cost and utility functions are private and unknown to the server, we propose a budget-limited reverse auction in which the helpers, in contrast to the former case, announce the lowest price at which they are willing to sell their upload bandwidth first and the server then selects a subset of the helpers and pays them proportional to their contributions. The results of extensive simulations reveal that the mechanisms are truthful and result in lower server workload and higher peers’ streaming rate and delivery ratio.     

影响多媒体服务器性能的关键因素研究

在构建大规模视频服务系统时 ,基于层次型多服务器群的体系结构在吞吐率、可扩展性、经济性等方面都有其突出的优势 ,尤其适合于在因特网上的应用 .但是 ,要充分发挥和提高视频服务系统的性能 ,还要针对一些主要的瓶颈(如服务器磁盘 I/ O带宽与网络带宽 ) ,解决好一系列的问题 .本文分析了影响多媒体视频服务器性能的一些主要因素 ,如视频服务器的体系结构、服务器与客户端之间的数据传送方式、媒体数据在视频服务器存储子系统中的分布与放置方式、对磁盘访问请求的调度、单服务器中的缓存及多服务器间协同缓存的管理、接入控制策略、流调度策略等 ,这些因素对视频服务器的性能与吞吐率有着极大的影响 .本文还介绍了一些适用于大规模视频服务系统的性能优化技术 ,如广播、批处理等流调度策略 .在构建视频服务器系统时 ,只有综合考虑这些因素 ,才能真正提高服务器乃至整个视频服务系统的吞吐率 ,并较好地满足客户的 Qo S要求     

Design and analysis of a demand adaptive and locality aware streaming media server cluster

The wide availability of broadband networking technologies such as cable modems and DSL coupled with the growing popularity of the Internet has led to a dramatic increase in the availability and the use of online streaming media. With the “last mile” network bandwidth no longer a constraint, the bottleneck for video streaming has been pushed closer to the server. Streaming high-quality audio and video to a myriad of clients imposes significant resource demands on the server. In this work, we propose a demand adaptive and locality aware (DALA) clustered media server architecture that can dynamically allocate resources to adapt to changing demand and also maximize the number of clients serviced by the server cluster. Moreover, our design exploits temporal locality among requests by dispatching newly arriving requests to servers that are already servicing prior requests for those objects, thereby extracting the benefits of locality. We explore the efficacy of the DALA clustered architecture through both performance models and simulations. Evaluation of the models and simulation results show that DALA exhibits significant performance gains when compared to static schemes. Furthermore, our simulation results show that DALA is highly adaptive, and has a low system overhead. Our results demonstrate that DALA is a simple, yet effective approach for designing clustered media servers.     

Constant bit rate network transmission of variable bit rate continuous media in Video-On-Demand servers

Multimedia computing is rapidly emerging as the next generation standard for human-computer interaction. One class of multimedia applications that has been gaining much attention is the real-time display of continuous media data such as video and audio, commonly known as Video-On-Demand (VOD) service. Although advances in computer and network technologies have made VOD service feasible, providing guaranteed quality, real-time video delivery still poses many technical challenges. One such challenge involves the transmission of continuous media traffic over high-speed networks.In this paper, we present an algorithm for determining the minimum buffer requirement for avoiding overflow or underflow at the client video display process, allowing the network scheduler at the VOD server to enforce a constant bit rate delivery of variable bit rate encoded continuous media. This strategy results in reduced congestion and cell loss at the network switch, and in simplified admission control parameters. Initial results indicate that buffer requirements for typical video streams range from 3.7 to 14.6 Megabytes, which is acceptable by today's multimedia PC standards. Further, we show that this approach increases the number of streams that can be multiplexed by a factor of 4.6 to 9.9 times when compared to peak and 90%-of-peak bandwidth allocation strategies.ECE Dept., Syracuse University, Syracuse, USACIS Dept., Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA     

Proxy-assisted periodic broadcast for video streaming with multiple servers

Large scale video streaming over the Internet requires a large amount of resources such as server I/O bandwidth and network bandwidth. A number of video delivery techniques can be used to lower these requirements. Periodic broadcast by a central server combined with proxy caching offers a significant reduction of the aggregate network and server I/O bandwidth usage. However, the resources available to a single server are still limited. In this paper we propose a system with multiple geographically distributed servers. The problem of multiple servers for periodic broadcast is quite different from the problem of object location for multiple web servers. Multiple servers offer increased amount of resources and service availability and may potentially allow a further reduction of network bandwidth usage. On the other hand, the benefit of periodic broadcast mostly comes from high demand videos. With multiple servers holding a video, the demand of the video at each server is reduced. Therefore, it is a challenge to use multiple servers efficiently. We first analyze the dependence of the resource requirements on the number and locations of the servers. Based on the character of the function describing such a dependence, we formulate and solve the problem of video location and delivery, in a way that minimizes resource usage. We explore a trade-off between network and I/O bandwidth requirements. We evaluate our proposed solutions through a number of tests.

Design a progressive video caching policy for video proxy servers

Proxy servers have been used to cache web objects to alleviate the load of the web servers and to reduce network congestion on the Internet. In this paper, a central video server is connected to a proxy server via wide area networks (WANs) and the proxy server can reach many clients via local area networks (LANs). We assume a video can be either entirely or partially cached in the proxy to reduce WAN bandwidth consumption. Since the storage space and the sustained disk I/O bandwidth are limited resources in the proxy, how to efficiently utilize these resources to maximize the WAN bandwidth reduction is an important issue. We design a progressive video caching policy in which each video can be cached at several levels corresponding to cached data sizes and required WAN bandwidths. For a video, the proxy server determines to cache a smaller amount of data at a lower level or to gradually accumulate more data to reach a higher level. The proposed progressive caching policy allows the proxy to adjust caching amount for each video based on its resource condition and the user access pattern. We investigate the scenarios in which the access pattern is priorly known or unknown and the effectiveness of the caching policy is evaluated.     

Buffer-Sharing Techniques in Service-Guaranteed Video Servers

Advances in networking and storage technology have made it possible to deliver on-demand services over networks such as the emerging video-on- demand (VOD) applications. Although a variety of studies have been focused on designing video servers suitable for VOD applications, the number of concurrent on-demand services supported by such servers is often limited by the I/O bandwidth of the storage systems. Recently, several researchers have focused on providing guaranteed services instead of on-demand services in a VOD system. A service is said to be guaranteed if every viewer can be served within a specified waiting time after the video has been subscribed. This paper describes a model called a buffer-sharing autonomy, which combines batching and bridging techniques to provide guaranteed services to VOD systems. We also describe how buffer-sharing techniques can be used in this model to provide the same services with fewer buffer resource through the use of playback-rate alteration. Additionally, in order to make buffer sharing efficient, it is important to group appropriate video streams together to share buffer resource. Four grouping policies are proposed for this purpose and the benefits yielded are also analyzed and compared. Finally, the results of our experiments show that the proposed buffer-sharing techniques promise the provision of guaranteed video services at low cost.     

使用特殊复合距离的选播路由算法

选播成员都是等价的服务器,服务数据的服务质量比作为请求的选播数据报更为重要.使用特殊复合距离的选播路由算法（ASCD）使用跳数、逆向传输延迟、逆向可用带宽以及服务器负载合成的距离来选择路径.不同于其他算法,ASCD使用度量在路径逆向上的值,即从选播数据报目标节点（服务器）到选播数据报源节点（客户）方向,而不是常规从选播数据报的源节点到目的节点方向. ASCD定位的路径和选播成员使选播数据报请求的服务数据能够得到更多路径资源. ASCD还能够在一定程度上平衡服务器负载.     

基于博弈论的多服务器多用户视频分析任务卸载算法

在过去的近10年中,人工智能相关的服务和应用大规模出现,它们要求高算力、高带宽和低时延.边缘计算目前被认为是这些应用最适合的计算模式,尤其是视频分析相关应用.研究多服务器多用户异构视频分析任务卸载问题,其中用户选择合适的边缘服务器,并将他们的原始视频数据上传至服务器进行视频分析.为了有效处理众多用户对有限网络资源的竞争和共享,并且能够获得稳定的网络资源分配局面,即每个用户不会单方面地改变自己的任务卸载决策,该多服务器多用户异构视频分析任务卸载问题被建模为一个多玩家的博弈问题.基于最小化整体时延的优化目标,先后研究非分布式视频分析场景和分布式视频分析场景两种情形,分别提出基于博弈论的潜在最优服务器选择算法和视频单元分配算法.通过严格的数学证明,两种情形下提出的算法均可以达到纳什均衡,同时保证较低的整体时延.最后,基于真实数据集的大量实验表明,所提方法比其他现有算法降低了平均26.3%的整体时延.     

分布式视频会议服务器媒体管理系统

由于其方便易用及可靠性,又得益于网络的普及,基于TCP/IP的视频会议已经成为目前市场主流,因此搭建可靠的视频会议服务器也成为了需要解决的主要需求。视频会议服务器不同于普通的流媒体服务器,视频会议服务器需要较高的实时性,而且其接受的上传/下载速度比要比普通的流媒体下载/在线观看服务器高得多。视频会议服务器的媒体服务器主要负责流媒体的接收保存及同步转发。本文借鉴HDFS的最基本原则,提出了一种可靠的分布式结构用于解决视频会议服务器的媒体存储问题。