NeTS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Modeling, Design and Emulation of P2P Real-Time Streaming Networks

新出现的趋势表明，互联网流量的很大一部分将来自实时流媒体应用。然而，考虑到任何内容的受欢迎程度的不可预测性以及用户需求的显著波动，提供可以保证实时流传输所需的严格服务质量约束的集中式内容分发系统是一项非常困难的任务。 因此，本计画研究以点对点（P2P）方式利用终端使用者资源进行即时串流的模式化范例与系统设计。其基本原理是，P2P网络可以动态地适应不断变化的网络条件和服务需求更容易比集中式的内容distribution systems.This研究工作需要一个整体的方法，其中，一方面，我们研究的基本性能限制对等流和设计分布式算法来实现这些限制。另一方面，我们使用这些算法作为构建块，构建实际的协议，实现和验证的仿真试验台。我们汇集了一套丰富的分析工具，从随机过程，优化和控制理论，将它们与现实生活中的视频编码，丢帧和转码以及实际实施问题的多媒体问题。除了为日益网络化的世界开发可行的视频流思想的技术影响外，我们的项目还通过课程开发，推广和融合代表性不足的群体来告知和教育学生和更广泛的社会。

Emerging trends suggest that a significant share of Internet traffic will be due to real-time streaming applications. However, given the unpredictable nature of popularity of any content and the significant swings seen in user demand, provisioning a centralized content distribution system that can guarantee the strict quality of service constraints needed for real-time streaming is a very difficult task. Therefore, this project studies modeling paradigms and systems design for utilizing end-user resources for real-time streaming in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion. The rationale is that P2P networks can dynamically adapt to changing network conditions and service requirements more easily than centralized content distribution systems.This research effort takes a holistic approach in which, on one hand, we study fundamental performance limits of peer-to-peer streaming and design distributed algorithms to achieve these limits. On the other hand, we use these algorithms as building blocks to construct practical protocols that are implemented and validated on an emulation testbed. We bring together a rich set of analytical tools drawn from stochastic processes, optimization and control theory to merge them with real-life multimedia issues of video coding, frame dropping and trans-coding as well as practical implementation issues. Besides the technological impact of developing viable video-streaming ideas for an increasingly networked world, our project also informs and educates both students and the broader society with curriculum development, outreach and integration of under-represented groups.