System management addresses the provision of functions required for controlling, planning, allocating, monitoring, and deploying the resources of a network and of its services in order to optimize its efficiency and productivity and to safeguard its operation. It is also an enabler for the creation and sustenance of new business models and value chains, reflecting the different roles the service providers and users of a network can assume. Ambient Network represents a new networking approach and it aims to enable the cooperation of heterogeneous networks, on demand and transparently, to the potential users, without the need for pre-configuration or offline negotiation between network operators. To achieve these goals, ambient network management systems have to become dynamic, adaptive, autonomic and responsive to the network and its ambience. This paper discusses relationships between the concepts of autonomous and self-manageability and those of ambient networking, and the challenges and benefits that arise from their employment.

Ambient Networks Management Challenges and Approaches

This paper proposes to integrate security parameters into the Service Level Specification (SLS) template proposed in the Tequila project to improve SLA-based management of QoS [8], [21]. Integrating those parameters in the QoS part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) specification is essential in particular for secure multimedia services since the QoS is negotiated when the multimedia service is deployed. Security mechanisms need to be negotiated at deployment time when sensible multimedia information is exchanged. In this paper we show that including security parameters in the SLA specification improves the SLA-based management of QoS and therefore the negotiation, deployment and use of the secure multimedia service. The parameters this paper proposes to integrate have the advantage to be understandable by both the end-users and service providers.

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Improving the SLA-Based management of qos for secure multimedia services

Video streaming over the Internet is a challenging task since the Internet is a shared environment offering only best effort service. That is, it offers no quality of service and no guarantee of resources in term of (1) bandwidth, (2) transfer delay, (3) delay variation (jitter), and (4) packet losses. Then, network stability and traffic fairness become critical issues. To solve these problems some source rate control and adaptation should be introduced for UDP traffic as well, in such a way that this traffic becomes TCP-compatible “TCP-friendly”. In this article we propose an adaptive streaming framework for unicast MPEG-4 streams over TCP/IP networks. Based on Audio-Visual Content (AVOs) classification and network congestion feedback, video sources dynamically adds and drops MPEG-4 AVO to the streamed multiplex to conform to the TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) mechanism. Using a content classification model, TFRC automatically adjusts the number of AVOs to be streamed to adapt to network congestion while given much attention to the quality of the service perceived by the end-user. To achieve such a dynamic output rate and video quality adjustment, MPEG-4 AVOs are classified and multiplexed according to both application-level QoS parameters and AVOs semantic descriptors. AVOs requiring same QoS from the network are automatically classified and mapped to one of the available IP DiffServ PHB (Per Hop Behaviors). Performance evaluation shows that transmitted video gracefully adapts to network bandwidth variations while optimizing user perceived quality.

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IP Video Streaming With Fine-Grained TCP-Friendly Rate Adaptation

In video streaming applications over the Internet, TCP- friendly rate control schemes are useful for improving network stability and inter-protocol fairness. However it does not always guarantee a smooth quality for video streaming. To simultaneously satisfy both the network and application requirements, video streaming applications should be quality-adaptive. In this paper, we propose a new quality adaptation mechanism to adjust the quality of congestion controlled video stream by controlling the frame rate. Based on the current network condition, it controls the frame rate and sending rate of video stream. Through the simulation, we prove that our adaptation mechanism appropriately adjusts the quality of video stream while improving network stability.

Quality Adaptation with Temporal Scalability for Adaptive Video Streaming

For the last few years, many classifications and marking strategies have been proposed with the consideration of video streaming applications. According to IETF recommendation, two groups of solutions have been proposed. The firts one assumes that applications or IP end points pre-mark their packets. The second solution applies the router which is topologically closest to video source. It should perform Multifield Classification and mark all incomming packets. This paper investigates the most popular marking strategies belonging to both mentioned above groups of solutions. The pre-marking strategies based on H264 coder extensions are simulated based on NS-2 network simulator and Evalvid-RA framework. The results are compared with the IETF recommendations for video traffic shaping in the IP networks and marking algorithms proposed by other researchers.

Efficiency of IP Packets Pre-marking for H264 Video Quality Guarantees in Streaming Applications

This paper summarizes the research work that has been conducted in the context of the RTIPA project on policy-based QoS (Quality of Service) and security management for distributed multimedia services. It presents an architecture allowing the derivation of policies from the service level down to the network level. It is a step towards an end-to-end QoS and security management for distributed multimedia services running on the new generation of IP networks.

Kevin C. Almeroth

Papers

Management of Multimedia on the Internet