VIDIOS - VIdeo DIstribution Over MPLS networks

The converging ICT sector brings about changes and new opportunities in the Multimedia and Networking sector. Despite the economic downturn, Broadband Accesses are a growing market. Internet Service Providers, IP backbone carriers and Multimedia vendors recognise the impact and chances resulting from Media Content Creation, Transport and Distribution over Internet backbones and broadband access networks. The VIDIOS (VIdeo DIstribution Over MPLS networks supporting heterogeneous format environments) project develops, integrates and tests all parts of the "media chain" over wireless and wired broadband Internet access networks and Multiple Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) backbones.

As a project supported by the European EUREKA's cluster project CELTIC (Telecommunication Solutions through Collaborative Research) Initiative and Deutsche Telekom T-Systems, VIDIOS develops, integrates and tests a complete media chain from Media Content Creation to Transport and Distribution over Internet backbones and broadband access networks.

By applying application-oriented state-of-the-art technology, VIDIOS innovations create opportunities for maximising the investment returns of the capital starved telecommunication industry. Multimedia contents so far are produced and distributed across rather reliable and error free communication networks. VIDIOS designs and validates an architecture delivering end-to-end Quality of Service for multimedia transmissions across error prone networks such as Internet backbones and mobile access networks. MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding, combined with robust and scalable coding techniques are applied by VIDIOS for robust transport over an MPLS backbone. The MPLS backbone further protects the application stream by QoS based on already implemented standards. In a first step, an Internet Service Provider will simply invoke application agnostic network services while he delivers videos to the end users. In a second step, Bandwidth on Demand services are introduced enabling multimedia contribution and personal video-conferencing. All solutions will be demonstrated by VIDIOS using real production facilities to the utmost extent. VIDIOS is a serious contribution in keeping the European Multimedia ICT sector at the forefront of global development.

In this project Dr. Xiaoming Fu is the project coordination committee member and principal investigator on behalf of the University of Göttingen. Technically, we are the main contributor to the design, development and evaluation of the VIDIOS bandwidth-on-demand network architecture and protocols. Another interesting aspect is application-layer and overlay multicast, as network layer multicast solutions may take long to get materialized in the Internet scale. We are currently studying the state-of-the-art overlay and network-layer multicast solutions, and investigating the potentially alternative approaches.

Team:

• Xiaoming Fu (project leader)
• Dieter Hogrefe
• Ingo Juchem
• Jun Lei
• Deguang Le
• Bernd Schloer

Related information:

• SIGNET Project at the University of Goettingen
• An Implementation of QoS Network Signaling Protocol
• Aggregated Multicast project at UCLA
• End System Multicast project at CMU
• SplitStream at Microsoft Research
• NICE at University of Maryland
• IETF NSIS and TSVWG working groups
• IRTF SAMRG research group