Ch-8.2.

Multimedia Communication System

8.2.1. Application Subsystem

8.2.1.1. Collaborative Computing

Network connectivity and end-point integration of multimedia provides with a

collaborative computing environment. There are many tools for collaborative
computing, such as electronic mail, bulletin boards, screen sharing tools, text-based
conferencing systems, telephone conference systems, conference rooms and video
conference systems.

Here we discuss about a framework for collaborative computing and general related
issues exemplified by different systems and tools.

Collaborative Dimensions

Electronic collaboration can be categorized according to three main parameters: time,

user scale and control.

 Time
With respect to time, there are two modes of cooperative work: asynchronous
and synchronous. Asynchronous cooperative work specifies processing activities
that do not happen at the same time: the synchronous cooperative work
happens at the same time.
 User Scale
The user scale parameter specifies whether a single user collaborates with
another user or a group of more than two users collaborate together. Groups can
be further classified as follows:
 A group may be static or dynamic during its lifetime. A group is static if its
participating members are pre-determined and membership does not
change during the activity. A group is dynamic if the number of group
members varies during the collaborative activity, i.e. group members can
join or leave the activity at any time.
 Group members may have different roles in the Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work (CSCW), e.g. a member of a group, a participant of a
group activity, a conference initiator, a conference chairman, a token
holder or an observer.
  Control
Control during the collaboration can be centralized or distributed. Centralized
control means that there is a chairman (e.g. main manager) who controls the
collaborative work and every group member (e.g. user agent) reports to him or
her. Distributed control means that every group member has control over his/her
own tasks in the collaborative work and distributed control protocols are in place
to provide consistent collaboration.

Group Communication Architecture

Group communication (GC) involves the communication of multiple users in a

synchronous or asynchronous mode with centralized or distributed control.

The group communication architecture consists of a support model, system model and
interface model. The GC support model includes group communication agents that
communicate via a multi-port multicast communication network. Group
communication agents may use the following for their collaboration:

 Group Rendezvous
Group rendezvous denotes a method which allows one to organize meetings,
and to get information about the group, ongoing meetings and other static and
dynamic information. There are synchronous and asynchronous methods for
group rendezvous:
  Synchronous Rendezvous Methods
These methods use directory services and explicit invitations. Directory
services access information stored in a knowledge base about the conference,
such as the name of the conference, registered participants, authorized users
and name and role of the participants.
The explicit invitations method sends invitations either point-to-point or
point-to-multipoint to conference participants.
 Asynchronous Rendezvous Methods
These methods may be implemented through e-mail or bulletin boards. The
e-mail based mechanism encapsulates in the body message enough
information about a group session establishment.
Bulletin boards on the internet already announce seminars, classes,
conferences and other open meetings of a school or institution.

 Application Sharing Approach

Sharing applications is recognized as a vital mechanism for supporting group
communication activities. Sharing applications means that when a shared
application program (e.g. editor) executes any input from a participant, all
execution results performed in the shared object (e.g. document text) are
distributed among all the participants.
An important issue in application sharing is shared control. The primary design
decision in sharing applications is to determine whether they should be
centralized or replicated:
 Centralized Architecture
In a centralized architecture, a single copy of the shared application runs at
one site. All participants’ input to the application is forwarded to the local
site and the application’s output (shared object) is then distributed to all
sites.
 Replicated Architecture
In a replicated architecture, a copy of the shared application runs locally at
each site. Input events to each application are distributed to all sites and
each copy of the shared application is executed locally at each site.
 Conferencing
Conference supports collaborative computing and is also called synchronous
tele-collaboration. Conferencing is a management service that controls the
communication among multiple users via multiple media, such as video and
audio, to achieve simultaneous face-to-face communication.

More precisely, video and audio have the following purposes in a tele-
conferencing system:
 Video is used in technical discussion to display view-graphs and to indicate
how many users are still physically present at a conference. For visual
support, workstations, PCs or video walls can be used.
 Audio is an important component in tele-conferencing for describing and
clarifying visual information. Therefore, quality audio, with true full-duplex
 communication and echo cancellation, and possibly enhanced with spatial
queues, is necessary.

Conference control includes several functions:

 Establishing a conference, where the conference participants agree upon a

common state, such as identity of a chairman (moderator), access rights
(floor control) and audio encoding. Conference systems may perform
registration, admission, and negotiation services during the conference
establishment phase.
 Closing a conference.
 Adding new users and removing users who leave the conference.

The GC system model is based on a client-server model. Clients provide user interfaces
for smooth interaction between group members and the system. Servers supply
functions for accomplishing the group communication work, and each server
specializes in its own function.

The GC interface model includes two kinds of protocols for exchanging information
within the GC support model: user presentation protocols and group work
management protocols. User presentation protocols perform interactions among the
clients, such as opening a conference, closing a conference, dynamic joining and leaving
of a meeting and floor passing. Group work management protocols specify the
communication between the clients and the servers. Services such as registration of
active conferences and queries for further conference information are supported by
these protocols.

8.2.1.2. Session Management

Session management is the core part which separates the control, needed during the
transport, from the actual transport.

Architecture

A session management architecture is built around and entity-session manager which

separates the control from the transport.
  Session Manager
Session manager includes local and remote functionalities. Functionalities may
include (1) membership control management (2) media control (3) conference
control (4) configuration control (5) floor control
 Media Agents
Media agents are separate from the session manager and they are responsible
for decisions specific to each type of media. This allows a replacement of agents.
Each agent performs its own control mechanism over the particular medium,
such as mute, unmute, change video quality, start sending, stop sending, etc.
 Shared Workspace Agent
The shared workspace agent transmits shared objects (e.g. telepointer
coordinate, graphical or textual object) among the shared applications.

Control

 Floor Control
– Provides access to the shared workspace
– Maintains data consistency
 Conference Control
– This service provides the management of multiple users for communication
with each other using multiple media.
 Media Control
– Includes mainly a functionally for the synchronization of media streams.
  Configuration Control
– Includes a control of media quality, QoS handling, resource availability and
other systems components to provide a session according to user’s
requirements.
 Membership Control
– Includes services for invitation to and registration into a session as well as
modification of the membership during a session.

8.2.2. Transport Subsystem

Requirements
Multimedia applications demand high requirements on network protocols:
1. High data throughput
– deliver as much data as possible
– Audio and video data resemble a stream-like behavior
– In a workstation or network several of those streams may exist concurrently
– Telephone services or video conferencing demand real-time computing of the data
streams
2. Fast data forwarding
– deliver data as fast as possible
– End-to-end delay is limiting in the end by the speed of light but also by the
intermediate network nodes (router)
– Different applications require data movement ranging from normal error free data
transmission to time-constrain traffic
– Fast data delivering forces intelligent acknowledgment mechanisms, because send-
and-wait strategies are not suitable.
3. Service guarantees
– deliver data with the negotiated policies
– To achieve service guarantees, resource management must be used – without this in
end-systems and switches/routers, multimedia systems cannot provide reliable QoS to
their users because transmission over unreserved resources may lead to dropped or
delayed packets.
4. Multicasting
– 1:n and n:m point communication
– Multicasting is important for multimedia-distributed applications in terms of sharing
resources like the network bandwidth
– Many multimedia applications, such as video conferencing, have multicasting
characteristics
Transport Layer
Transport protocols, to support multimedia transmission, need to have new features
and provide the following functions: timing information, semi-reliability, multicasting
and rate control.

Internet Transport Protocols

 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
TCP provides a reliable, serial communication path, or virtual circuit, between
processes exchanging a full-duplex stream of bytes. Each process id assumed to
reside in an Internet host that is identified by an IP address.

 User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

UDP is a simple extension to the Internet network protocol IP that supports
multiplexing of datagrams exchanged between pairs of Internet hosts. It offers
only multiplexing and checksumming, nothing else.

Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP)

RTP is an end-to-end protocol providing network transport functions suitable for
applications transmitting real-time data, such as audio, video or simulation data over
multicast or unicast network services. RTP is primarily designed to satisfy the needs of
multi-party multimedia conferences, but it is not limited to that particular application.

Xpress Transport Protocol (XTP)

XTP was designed to be an efficient protocol, taking into account the low error ratios
and higher speeds of current networks. XTP integrates transport and network protocol
functionalities to have more control over the environment in which it operates.

Network Layer
The requirements on the network layer for multimedia transmission are a provision of
high bandwidth, multicasting, resource reservation and QoS guarantees, new routing
protocols with support for streaming capabilities and new higher-capacity routers with
support of integrated services.
Internet Services and Protocols

 Internet Protocol (IP)

IP provides for the unreliable carriage of datagrams from source host to
destination hosts, possibly passing through one or more gateways and networks
in the process. Some of its properties are as follows:
 Types of Service (TOS): TOS specifies (1) precedence relation and (2) services
such as minimize delay, maximize throughput, maximize reliability, minimize
monetary cost and normal service.
 Addressing and Multicasting: addressing helps to establish a global address
space that allows every network in the Internet to be uniquely identified. By
the help of multicasting only a subset of the end-points on the LAN are
targeted to receive a particular transmission. This capability allows an
application to send a single message to the network and have it delivered to
multiple recipients.
 Interconnectivity Between Internet Protocol and Underlying Networks
 Routing: this process helps routers to exchange information.

 Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP)

IGMP is a protocol for managing Internet multicasting groups. It is used by
conferencing applications to join and leave particular multicast group. The basic
service permits a source to send datagrams to all members of a multicast group.

 Resource reservation Protocol (RSVP)

RSVP is a protocol which transfers reservations and keeps a state at the
intermediate nodes. It does not have a data transfer component. RSVP messages
are sent as IP datagrams, and the router keeps “soft state”, which is refreshed by
periodic reservation messages. In the absence of the refresh messages, the
routers delete the reservation after a certain timeout.
8.2.3. Quality of Service and Resource Management

Quality of Service (QoS) is a concept for specifying how “good” the offered networking
services are. QoS can be characterized by a number of specific parameters.

QoS layering

To discuss further QoS and resource management, we need a layered model of the
Multimedia Communication System (MCS) with respect to QoS. The MCS consists of
three layers: application, system and devices.

User

Application

System
(Operating and Communication system)

MM Devices Network

Figure: QoS-layered model for the MCS.

QoS Parameter Values and Types of Service

The specification of QoS parameter values determines the types of service. There are at
least three types of service distinguished: guaranteed, predictive and best-effort
services.

Guaranteed services provide QoS guarantees, as specified through the QoS parameter
values either in deterministic or statistical representation. The deterministic values can
be given through a single value (average value, threshold value, target value, etc), a
pair of values (minimum and average value, lowest quality and target quality) or an
interval of values (lower bound and upper bound). Statistical value specifies error rate.

A predictive service is based on past network behavior, hence the QoS parameters are
estimates of past behavior which the service tries to match.
Best-effort services are based on either no guarantees, or on partial guarantees. There
is either no specification of QoS parameters required, or some bounds in deterministic
or statistical forms are given.

Resource

A resource is a system entity required by tasks for manipulating data. Each resource has
a set of distinguishing characteristics:

 There are active and passive resources. An active resource is, for example, the
CPU or a network adapter for protocol processing; it provides a service. A passive
resource is, for example, the main memory or bandwidth; it denotes some
system capabilities required by active resources.
 A resource can be either used exclusively by one process or shared between
various processes.
 A resource that exists only in the system is known as a single resource otherwise
it is a multiple resource.

Resource Management Architecture

Resources are managed by various components of a resource management subsystem

in a networked multimedia system.
Main goal of Resource Management:
– providing guaranteed delivery of multimedia data
Three main actions:
– reserve and allocate resources (end-to-end) during establishment
– provide resource according to QoS specification
– adapt to resource changes during data processing

Relations between QoS and resources:

– QoS parameters ↔ resource quantity allocated to the service and resource scheduling
 Resource Management handles different mappings between QoS parameters
and their corresponding resources