Experimental results and performance evaluations (3)

In case of multicast distribution of the same VoD flow to multiple clients, the ubiQoS middleware can significantly reduce the network traffic by exploiting the location awareness typical of the MA programming paradigm.
In traditional VoD systems over networks that do not support IP multicast, the VoD server is forced to generate N flows, one for each requesting client. The ubiQoS processors can ascertain whether there are several receivers interested in the same VoD flow within their served localities, can split VoD flows only when necessary and can downscale the VoD quality depending on the maximum QoS requirements in their distribution sub-tree. In a usage scenario with clients that requested the same QoS level, ubiQoS achieves the same traffic reduction of network-layer multicast support, without requiring compliant hardware, e.g., IP-multicast routers. In case of different QoS level requests, ubiQoS can even generate less network traffic than IP-multicast solutions. In fact, instead of distributing one multicast flow for any different QoS request, the ubiQoS infrastructure uses one unified VoD flow and dynamically downscales it at the proper node in the active path, by exploiting its awareness of the QoS levels requested in any distribution sub-tree.
A significant estimate of the network traffic generated by multicast distribution is the overall traffic BT, defined as the total number of bytes exchanged between any pair of adjacent nodes (client stubs-processors-server stubs in ubiQoS, clients-routers-servers in traditional provision scenarios) along the VoD distribution tree. We measured BT for different values of the number N of intermediate nodes and with different locations of 9 multicast clients requesting the same VoD content. Our testbed assumed that 3 clients requested the VoD flow with gold QoS (original VoD format), 3 with silver QoS (50% bandwidth saving via frame rate reduction), 3 with bronze QoS (90% bandwidth saving via reduction of both frame rate and resolution).

Figure 4b shows the average results for BTnorm = BT / BTnoMulti
where BTnoMulti is the BT value for distributing the flow over a single path segment with no multicast support.

The figure reports the experimental results in case of VoD distribution with/without IP-multicast and by exploiting the ubiQoS infrastructure. On the average, for N greater than 3, ubiQoS reduces BT more than three times if compared with non-IP-multicast distribution.

Figure 4b. ubiQoS multicast network traffic.

 

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ubiQoS v1.0 (SOMA v4.0 included)
Secure Open Mobile Agent (SOMA) v4.0
Java Media Framework (JMF) v2.1.1
Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) v1.3

(The full code -java source included- of the ubiQoS middleware and of the SOMA programming environment has been written in collaboration with external partners and cannot be distributed freely. However, contact us, specifying your name, your affiliation and the full code you are interested in, and we will try to provide you a copy only for educational purposes and non-commercial use)


 
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