Traffic analysis of peer-to-peer IPTV communities

The Internet is currently experiencing one of the most important challenges in terms of content distribution since its first uses as a medium for content delivery: users from passive downloaders and browsers are moving towards content producers and publishers. They often distribute and retrieve multimedia contents establishing network communities. This is the case of peer-to-peer IPTV communities.In this work we present a detailed study of P2P IPTV traffic, providing useful insights on both transport- and packet-level properties as well as on the behavior of the peers inside the network. In particular, we provide novel results on the (i) ports and protocols used; (ii) differences between signaling and video traffic; (iii) behavior of the traffic at different time scales; (iv) differences between TCP and UDP traffic; (v) traffic generated and received by peers; (vi) peers neighborhood and session duration. The knowledge gained thanks to this analysis is useful for several tasks, e.g. traffic identification, understanding the performance of different P2P IPTV technologies and the impact of such traffic on network nodes and links, and building more realistic models for simulations.¹     

Introducing QoS awareness in distributed programming: QTcl

A number of distributed applications require communication services with quality of service (QoS) guarantees. Building global‐scale distributed systems with predictable properties is one of the great challenges for computer systems engineering in the new century. Work undertaken within the Internet Engineering Task Force has led to the definition of novel architectural models for the Internet with QoS support. According to these models, the network has to be appropriately configured in order to provide applications with the required performance guarantees. In next‐generation networks, enabling applications to interact with the underlying QoS services is of primary importance. Hence, several special‐purpose application programming interfaces (APIs) have been defined to let applications negotiate QoS parameters across QoS‐capable networks. However, so far, none of these APIs are available in different operating environments. We believe that such features should be embedded in programming environments for distributed applications. In this work we present how we included QoS control features in Tcl, a programming language that has been widely adopted for the development of distributed multimedia applications. Our work has led to the implementation of QTcl, an extended Tcl interpreter that provides programmers with a new set of primitives, in full compliance with the standard SCRAPI programming interface for the RSVP protocol. QTcl in highly portable, in that it enables standard QoS negotiation to be performed in a seamless fashion on the most common operating systems. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managing service level agreements in Premium IP networks: a business-oriented approach

This paper presents a market-enabling framework where users, content providers and network operators can interact in the seamless, transparent sale and delivery of a wide range of services. The framework allows for dynamic creation, configuration and delivery of services with quality assurance, via automated management of Service Level Agreements (SLAs). We propose an approach relying on a systemic treatment of business, service and network layer issues, which translates into a layered architecture where components belonging to different levels interact on the basis of a mediation paradigm. We use mediation as a generic term for a combination of negotiation, brokerage and state notification, jointly concurring to the realization of the entire life-cycle of a service.     

Deforming Time in a Nonadditive Discount Function

The aim of this paper is to present a methodology to generate a partially subadditive (respectively superadditive) discount function starting from an entirely subadditive (respectively superadditive) discount model. To do this, we are going to use the concept of deformation of time in a discount function, focusing on Stevens' power law. A deformation of time is a function that mathematically represents the perception from an individual or a group of individuals about how the calendar time evolves. This approach will be important when describing the treatment of addictions and other diseases in patients who show a certain degree of impulsivity in their intertemporal choice.     

ECT benchmark results for 3D defect signatures in industrial applications

This paper is focused on the Eddy Current Testing (ECT) method applied to important industrial applications such as the inspection of tubes in nuclear power plants and the inspection of planar surface from aeronautical industry. Specifically, we consider the prediction of the signatures produced by small defects through two fully three-dimensional numerical models developed for ECT. In particular we consider the responses to small defects described in two experimental benchmarks from nuclear power industry and one experimental benchmark from aeronautical applications. Despite of the small size of the defects that, in some cases, is of the order of few millimetres, the numerical models reproduce correctly the experimental responses provided in the benchmarks, including the challenging case of a defect (in a tube) close to the support plate.     

Distributed advance reservation of real-time connections

The ability to reserve real-time connections in advance is essential in all distributed multiparty applications (i.e., applications involving multiple human beings) using a network that controls admissions to provide good quality of service. This paper discusses the requirements of the clients of an advance reservation service, and a distributed design for such a service. The design is described within the context of the Tenet Real-Time Protocol Suite 2, a suite being developed for multiparty communication, which will offer advance reservation capabilities to its clients, based on the principles and the mechanisms proposed in the paper. Simulation results providing useful data about the performance and some of the properties of these mechanisms are also presented. We conclude that the one described here is a viable approach to constructing an advance reservation service within the context of the Tenet Suites as well as that of other solutions to the multiparty real-time communication problem.     

An eddy current integral formulation on parallel computer systems

In this paper, we show how an eddy current volume integral formulation can be used to analyse complex 3D conducting structures, achieving a substantial benefit from the use of a parallel computer system. To this purpose, the different steps of the numerical algorithms in view of their parallelization are outlined to enlighten the merits and the limitations of the proposed approach. Numerical examples are developed in a parallel environment to show the effectiveness of the method. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.