Multicast Proxy for Dynamic Multimedia Delivery - Assignment Example

Multicast Proxy for Dynamic Multimedia Delivery Name: University: Date: Table of Contents Running head: MULTICAST PROXY FOR DYNAMIC MULTIMEDIA DELIVERY 1 1 Multicast Proxy for Dynamic Multimedia Delivery 1 Name: 1 MULTICAST PROXY FOR DYNAMIC MULTIMEDIA DELIVERY 13 2 Table of Contents 2 Multicast Proxy for Dynamic Multimedia Delivery 3 1.0 Introduction 3 2.0 Multicast Proxy 3 3.0 Dynamic Multimedia Delivery 6 4.0 Multimedia Transport through the Network 7 5.0 Mac Layer Protocols Functions for Multicast Proxy for Dynamic Multimedia Delivery 8 6.0 How Multicast Proxy Affects the Dynamic Multimedia Delivery 9 7.0 Conclusion 10 References 11 Multicast Proxy for Dynamic Multimedia Delivery 1.0 Introduction Different multimedia applications are benefiting from technology for scalable and bandwidth-efficient multimedia delivery. The multimedia’s long-lived nature as well as high bandwidth requirements has made this medium predominantly resource-intensive, invigorating research into bandwidth-efficient distribution methods in the network and server. This report focuses on the multicast proxy for dynamic multimedia delivery and also multimedia transport through the network. 2.0 Multicast Proxy Multicast according to Wu, Zhu, and Shu (2005) is a crucial technique capable of distributing popular multimedia contents to various users while consuming minimal bandwidth. Basically, multicast could be utilised for video conferencing, broadcasting hot event, delivering audio/video, and dissemination of new software. Wu, Zhu, and Shu (2005) posit that multicast remove the networks’ ‘‘hot spots’’ when the majority of users are accessing a similar multimedia content, particularly when streaming live contents. Therefore, the multicast proxy is espoused as an overlay network that includes proxies set that is integrated in the substrate network. According to Wu, Zhu, and Shu (2005), the substrate network can be described as a set of routers that are connected through links. In this case, a routing algorithm is used to build a multicast tree of proxies, which could be multi-sourced or single-sourced. In their study, Chawathe, Fink, McCanne, and Brewer (1998) proposed the Reliable Multicast proXy (RMX) framework. As shown in Figure one, the RMX model is split into two sub-sessions: the proxied session and the reliable multicast (RM) session. As indicated by Chawathe, Fink, McCanne, and Brewer (1998), the RM agent acts as the main multicast session’s interface while the protocol adapter was used as the RMX core and utilises transformation engines to facilitate the conversion of the data store between the proxied session and the main session formats. In addition, the protocol agent acts as the proxied session’s interface. Their RMX prototype exhibited the Application Level Framing (ALF) ability to enable the proxy in end-client’s performance optimisation by integrating tightly every level between the client and the proxy. Figure 1: The RMX Model (Chawathe, Fink, McCanne, & Brewer, 1998) Another study by Abiona, Anjali, Onime, and Kehinde (2008) proposed a cyclic multicast proxy server which can effectively deliver web pages through reliable unicast and cyclic multicast. When a client sends a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection request, Abiona, Anjali, Onime, and Kehinde (2008) posits that the requests are not processed immediately but they are queued until the point where they can be processed by the server. Basically, before the server process the requests, it creates a Transmission Control Protocol connection that facilitates the transmission of the requests made by the clients. The requested page popularity is used as the basis for making a delivery decision. The proposed model according to the others can effectively deliver heavy and most popular requested pages. More importantly, the model (see figure two) can simultaneously deliver multiple pages by means of numerous multicast groups. Fig Two: Cyclic Multicast Proxy Model (Abiona, Anjali, Onime, & Kehinde, 2008) Mcproxy as mentioned by Schmidt, Wolke, and Wahlisch (2014) is an open source multicast proxy daemon implementation for Linux. Its implementation results in instances of numerous proxies in parallel on one machine. All the instances are connected with different Linux kernel’s routing tables for the activation of isolated fast forwarding. In addition, the proxy brings about a data filter that is dynamically configurable at kernel level in order to effectively manage multiple peering interfaces as well as upstream interfaces. 3.0 Dynamic Multimedia Delivery In their study, Rong and Burnett (2004) observed that the MPEG-21 provides a complete as well as broad multimedia framework which allows for the multimedia content consumption and delivery. This framework triumphs over various critical issues that the other standards face by offering every needed ingredient for a multimedia transaction that is secure and highly automated. In addition, the MPEG-21 allows the service providers and content creators to effectively customise the multimedia content and also offer the clients different media choices. According to Famaey, Latre, Wauters, and Turck (2012), the bandwidth availability has increased; thus, the contemporary communication networks have been turned into popular platforms for delivering multimedia content. Scores of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast and Verizon have started provided such services while Netflix, Hulu, and the other providers of the over-the-top (OTT) content have begun providing live television and Video-on-Demand services. When ISPs provide multimedia content to their network users they offer warranty with regard to the Quality of Service (QoS) they are delivering. Still, they must get licenses from owners of the copyrights and also compose their own content catalogue. The OTT content providers, on the other hand, can offer their services to a large number of internet users but they normally deliver their content over the ISP’s infrastructure; thus, making the ISP network to become heavily loaded. In view of this, Zhang et al. (2013) indicated that the multimedia contents must be adapted by the ubiquitous multimedia system to different limitations associated with user preferences as well as networks and terminals while offering the end users a quality service. The quality of the multimedia content delivery according to Zhang et al. (2013) can be viewed from two aspects: semantic quality and perceptual quality. The former is considered to be the level of information that the users are getting from the delivered multimedia content while the latter determines the satisfaction of the users to the content. In many cases, adapted content’s perceptual quality could be undesirable or its semantic quality could be very poorer poor. To solve this problem, the modality of contents should be converted. In their study, Zhang et al. (2013) propose a scalable multimedia delivery model which could facilitate the delivery of rich media content in a computing environment deemed to be pervasive (see figure three). This model guarantees quality pervasive services that are feasible, particularly from the service providers’ viewpoints. Fig Three: Scalable multimedia delivery model (Zhang et al., 2013) 4.0 Multimedia Transport through the Network The objective of multimedia transport protocols is to facilitate the transmission of multimedia signals from one point to another. In general, the original signals of multimedia are encoded with the objective of reducing the bit rate. The transport protocols are used to packetize and deliver the encoded stream to a different location within the network. The reconstruction of the encoded multimedia stream, at the other side, happens from the delivered packets’ stream and is later decoded in order to generate a multimedia signal that us useful to be stored for further use or be played back. The Transport Control Protocol (TCP) is considered is designed purposely for the transmission of data and is used extensively in the Internet services. Still, the TCP is considered inappropriate for real-time applications given that the retransmissions could result in high delay which consequently reduces the quality of the multimedia content. For this reason, User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is utilised for real-time transmission of multimedia but does not guarantee that the packet would arrive; therefore, it is the responsibility of the higher level protocols or the application to take care of the transported date. According to Ravindran and Steinmetz (1993), the delivery of multimedia services of different features and characteristics through wide area networks (WANs) like fibre optic networks is a technological mission in both communications and computing. The transport of multimedia data in the applications that are continuously evolving brings about requirements for multifaceted transport capabilities. Generally, the multimedia application transport requirements could be mapped into a transport capabilities’ instance offered by the communication systems. 5.0 Mac Layer Protocols Functions for Multicast Proxy for Dynamic Multimedia Delivery MAC layer protocols according to Ahmed and Khurram (2014) offer the efficiency and reliability for delivery of multimedia content. The MAC protocols regulate how the shared multimedia content is accessed. In their study, Zhang, Yang, and Zhu (2005) observed that the quality of media delivery is influenced differently by every MAC layer; therefore, the media delivery quality can be improved by different layers using different approaches. The end users can improve the perceived media quality over wireless Internet as well as the quality of service supports could be addressed in a number of layers, which include link layer, transport layer, and application layer. Zhang, Yang, and Zhu (2005) propose a cross-layer design framework that reduces the number of multimedia sources that are admitted devoid of affecting the quality of existing sources in the Wireless Multimedia Sensor networks. Basically, this architecture utilises data link layer, routing layer as well as application layer to interactively adapt with each other in order to facilitate the delivery of multimedia content. The cross-layer design is very important for multicast proxy for dynamic multimedia delivery since it can interact effectively with the application layer in order to select the suitable Group of Picture size based on the conditions of the network. 6.0 How Multicast Proxy Affects the Dynamic Multimedia Delivery There are various multicast techniques for multimedia delivery such as ‘server-push’ and ‘client-pull’. The ‘client-pull; is considered to be the simplest technique that can be used to deliver separate multimedia content upon all the requests made by the clients. Some types of client-pull technique like patching and batching exploit the multicasting capabilities of the underlying network to reduce the resource requirements of the network and server. On the other hand, the ‘server-push’ techniques are considered to be beneficial because they efficiently use the network and server resources. However, this efficiency according to Gao, Zhang, and Towsley (2004) is achieved when the service latency increases. In their study, Gao, Zhang, and Towsley (2004) present an efficient and new architecture to efficiently use network and central server resources, while simultaneously taking advantage of proxy servers to considerably decrease service latency that the clients often experience (see figure four). Fig Four: A proxy-assisted architecture for video delivery (Gao, Zhang, & Towsley, 2004) As observed by Wang, Sen, and Towsley (2003), the capability of multicast between proxies and server fundamentally couple the proxies as one: Therefore, a requested transmitted by any proxy could result in multimedia stream that can serve numerous proxies. This normally results in the issues of optimally allocating the proxy cache. 7.0 Conclusion In conclusion, this report has focused on the multicast proxy for dynamic multimedia delivery and also multimedia transport through the network. The techniques that were utilised in the past such as stream merging, patching and batching, utilise broadcast and multicast connections innovatively in order to lessen network and server loads. This techniques have been extended to distribution systems for streaming multimedia content that involves proxies and remote servers, whereby some multimedia content are cached by the proxies locally which also enables the clients to use the server while streaming videos. References Abiona, O. O., Anjali, T., Onime, C., & Kehinde, L. O. (2008). Analysis of a Cyclic Multicast Proxy Server Architecture. International Journal of Communications, Network and System Sciences , 4, 285-385. Ahmed, H., & Khurram, M. (2014). Performance Analysis of MAC Layer Protocols in Wireless Sensor Network. I.J. Information Engineering and Electronic Business , 5, 44-52. Chawathe, Y., Fink, S. A., McCanne, S., & Brewer, E. A. (1998). Proxy Architecture for Reliable Multicast in Heterogeneous Environments. MULTIMEDIA '98 Proceedings of the sixth ACM international conference on Multimedia, (pp. 151-159). New York, NY. Famaey, J., Latre, S., Wauters, T., & Turck, F. D. (2012). An SLA-Driven Framework for Dynamic Multimedia Content Delivery Federations. 13th IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS - 2012) (pp. 1241 - 1247). Piscataway, NJ, USA: IEEE. Gao, L., Zhang, Z.-L., & Towsley, D. (2004). Proxy-assisted techniques for delivering continuous multimedia streams. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking , 11 (6), 884 - 894. Ravindran, K., & Steinmetz, R. (1993). Transport-level Abstractions for Multimedia Communications. ICCC Multimedia Communications, (pp. 101-125). Banff, Canada. Rong, L., & Burnett, I. (2004). Dynamic multimedia adaptation and updating of media streams with MPEG-21. Proceedings of the First IEEE Conference on Consumer Communications and Networking (CCNC 2004) (pp. 436-441). IEEE. Schmidt, T. C., Wolke, S., & Wahlisch, M. (2014). Peer my Proxy – A Performance Study of Peering Extensions for Multicast in Proxy Mobile IP Domains. 2014 7th IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC), (pp. 1-8). Wang, B., Sen, S., & Towsley, M. A. (2003). Using Multicast for Streaming Videos across Wide Area Networks. University of Massachusetts. Amherst: Department of Computer Science. Wu, M.-Y., Zhu, Y., & Shu, W. (2005). Placement of proxy-based multicast overlays. Computer Networks , 48, 627–655. Zhang, H., Nguyen, H., Graciá, E. M., Solano, P. A., Zhang, D., & Guo, N. C. (2013). Scalable multimedia delivery with QoS management in pervasive computing environment. The Journal of Supercomputing , 65 (1), 317–335. Zhang, Q., Yang, F., & Zhu, W. (2005). Cross-Layer QoS Support forMultimedia Delivery overWireless Internet. 207–219 , 2, EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing. Read More