The multimedia multicasting problem

This paper explores the problems associated with the multicasting of continuous media to support multimedia group applications. The interaction between multicasting and the delivery of multiple time-correlated continuous-media streams with real-time delay requirements poses various new and interesting problems in research on communication protocols and architectures. We describe these problems, and identify where the opportunities are for effective solutions, all in the context of providing an overview of the current state of research in multimedia multicasting. The issues we discuss include quality of service, resource reservations, routing, error and traffic control, heterogeneity, and the use of hierarchical coding and open-loop control techniques.     

Link Layer Adaptation for Shared Wireless Links

While traditional link layer protocols assume that they fully control the underlying link, in contemporary wireless networks the link may be dynamically shared by sessions belonging to different users and/or applications. To assess the impact of link sharing, we measure the File Transfer and Web Browsing throughput achieved over a Selective Repeat (SR) protocol, with or without contention from Media Distribution. Our results indicate that the optimal protocol settings strongly depend on the level of contention for the link. We therefore present two link layer protocols that adapt to the available bandwidth, our Adaptive Selective Repeat (ASR) protocol which dynamically modifies its retransmission timeouts, and the Radio Link Control (RLC) protocol specified for use by Universal Mobile Telecommunications System networks which does not employ retransmission timers. We first repeat our performance measurements to determine the optimal settings for each protocol, and then compare the fine tuned versions of all protocols with respect to their File Transfer and Web Browsing throughput, as well as to the delay induced to the contending Media Distribution packets. Our results indicate that while both RLC and ASR are more stable than SR, the complex RLC does not match the performance of our simpler ASR.     

The multimedia broadcast/multicast service

This article provides an overview of the multimedia broadcast/multicast service (MBMS) for universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) networks. We first outline the features of UMTS networks as defined by the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) in order to provide a background for the discussion to follow. We then present the overall MBMS architecture, the services that it provides to the users and the differences between the broadcast and multicast options. The implementation details of MBMS are explained in terms of the modifications needed to the network, the new signaling procedures required and the impact of MBMS on the radio part of the network. We then describe how the security architecture of UMTS is used to support content protection and key distribution for MBMS groups. We evaluate the prospects of MBMS by comparing it first with IP multicast and then with DVB‐H, considered by many to be the closest competitor of MBMS. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the technical and business challenges still faced by MBMS. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TCP performance issues over wireless links

This article discusses the problems arising when the TCP/IP protocol suite is used to provide Internet connectivity over existing and emerging wireless links. Due to the strong drive toward wireless Internet access through mobile terminals, these problems must be carefully studied in order to build improved systems. We review wireless link characteristics using wireless LANs and cellular communications systems as examples. We then outline the performance problems of the TCP/IP protocol suite when employed over those links, such as degraded TCP performance due to mistaking wireless errors for congestion. We present various proposals for solving these problems and examine their benefits and limitations. Finally, we consider the future evolution of wireless systems and the challenges that emerging systems will impose on the Internet protocol suite     

Improving video QoE with IP over ICN

Information‐centric networking (ICN) has long been advocating for radical changes to the Internet, but the upgrade challenges that these entail have hindered its adoption. To break this loop, the POINT project proposed a hybrid, IP‐over‐ICN, architecture: IP networks are preserved at the edge, connected to each other over an ICN core. This exploits the key benefits of ICN, enabling individual network operators to improve the performance of their IP‐based services, without changing the rest of the Internet. This paper first provides an overview of POINT and outlines how it can improve upon IP in terms of performance and resilience. It then describes a trial of the POINT prototype in a production network, where real users operated actual IP‐based applications. As part of the trial, we carried out experiments to evaluate the quality of experience (QoE) for video services offered via either HLS or IPTV, using either IP or POINT as a substrate. The results from the trial verify that the IP‐over‐ICN approach of POINT offers enhanced QoE to the users of these video services, compared with traditional IP, especially under exceptional network conditions.     

Error and congestion control for wireless sensor networks

In the wireless sensors network (WSN) field, a wide variety of sensors produce a heterogeneous traffic mix, targeting diverse applications with different reliability requirements. We focus on emergency response scenarios, where a mobile rescuer moves through a, possibly disconnected, network, trying to talk to diverse sensors. We assume two types of sensors, event sensors triggered by an event and periodic sensors activated at predefined time intervals, as well as two types of transmission, either using the highest bit rate available or using predefined bit rates. Our reliable transport protocol for sensor networks with mobile sinks (RT‐SENMOS) takes into account all these parameters and tries to provide the best possible user experience under the current circumstances of the network, using a sink‐driven approach where an application‐specific sink is combined with generic sensors. RT‐SENMOS was implemented and tested over a real network with emulated losses and compared against rate‐controlled reliable transport (RCRT), a well‐known sink‐driven protocol. The results show that RT‐SENMOS fully exploits the available bandwidth in all cases, while RCRT only manages to exploit 60% to 90% of it. Furthermore, RT‐SENMOS adapts much faster to prevailing network conditions, while its protocol overhead, in terms of control messages exchanged, is much lower than that of RCRT.     

IP multicast for mobile hosts

We present alternative designs for efficiently supporting multicast for mobile hosts on the Internet. Methods for separately supporting multicasting and mobility along with their possible interactions are briefly described, and then various solutions to the combined problem are explored. We examine three different multicast delivery mechanisms and compare them based on their efficiency and impact on host protocol software. We describe proposals for integrating multicasting and mobility in the Internet architecture. We first present IP extensions for host mobility and other extensions for multicasting. We then examine local multicasting mechanisms, focusing on a group membership protocol that is optimized for wireless point-to-point links. Next, we examine the problems of sending and receiving multicast datagrams in a wide area network. For multicast reception, we describe three alternative proposals and compare them by examining both their applicability and their performance, as well as possible tradeoffs among the two     

Support of multiple content variants in the multimedia broadcast/multicast service

The Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS) was designed to enable the mass distribution of multimedia content in 3rd Generation and beyond cellular networks. If such services are to become commercially viable, they must be able to efficiently support widely heterogeneous user requirements, for example, due to terminal limitations and cost constraints. This paper presents an MBMS extension that allows multiple variants of the same content to be economically distributed to heterogeneous receivers, explicitly taking into account the possibility of using either dedicated or common radio channels. We describe our extended multiple content variant MBMS model by explaining the modifications that it imposes on the standard MBMS model, as well as the manner in which it can be combined with layered coding. We also present an analytical evaluation of our approach against alternatives based on the standard MBMS in terms of control and user plane overhead, and compare the analytical predictions with detailed simulation results. Both the analysis and the simulations indicate that our proposal can indeed satisfy heterogeneous user requirements, while consuming considerably lower resources than the standard‐based alternatives. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Internet protocol performance over networks with wireless links

This article discusses the problems that arise when standard Internet protocols such as TCP are used over wireless links. We review wireless link characteristics with case studies drawn from commercial wireless LANs and cellular telephony systems. We discuss problems with Internet protocols when employed over these systems, such as degraded TCP performance when wireless errors are interpreted as congestion losses. We survey various proposed approaches to mitigating such problems and examine their applicability. Finally, we look at the future of wireless systems and the new challenges that they will create for Internet protocols, and state some goals for further protocol enhancement and evolution, pointing out the need for better protocol integration across layers     

Handling mobility in future publish-subscribe information-centric networks

Future information-oriented Internet architectures are expected to effectively support mobility. PSIRP, an EU FP7 research project, designed, prototyped, and investigated a clean-slate architecture for the future Internet based on the publish-subscribe paradigm. PURSUIT, another EU FP7 research project, is further developing this architecture, which we refer to as Ψ, the Publish Subscribe Internet (PSI) architecture, extending it in various directions, including a deeper investigation of higher (transport and application) and lower layers (e.g., various link technologies, such as wireless and optical). In this paper we present the basics of the Ψ architecture, including the built-in multicast and caching mechanisms, with particular focus on mobility support. We discuss how the native, clean-slate, Ψ instantiation of the information-centric model can support mobility and also present an overlay variant of Ψ we have developed in order to provide an evolutionary path to adoption. Based on analysis and simulation we demonstrate the advantages of the proposed architecture compared to well established solutions such as Mobile IPv6.