Adaptive Networking for Tele-Immersion

Abstract

Abstract. Tele-Immersive applications possess an unusually broad range of networking requirements. As high-speed and Quality of Service-enabled networks emerge, it will becoming more difficult for developers of Tele-Immersion applications, and networked applications in general, to take advantage of these enhanced services. This paper proposes an adaptive networking framework to ultimately allow applications to optimize their network utilization in pace with advances in networking services. In working toward this goal, this paper will present a number of networking techniques for improving performance in tele-immersive applications and examines whether the Differentiated Services mechanism for network Quality of Service is suitable for Tele-Immersion. IntroductionTele-Immersion is the integration of collaborative virtual reality (VR) with audio and video conferencing in the context of data-mining and significant computation. The ultimate goal of Tele-Immersion is not only to reproduce a real face-to-face meeting in every detail, but to provide the "next generation" interface for collaborators, world-wide, to work together in a virtual environment that is seamlessly enhanced by computation and large databases. When participants are Tele-Immersed, they are able to see and interact with each other in a shared virtual environment. They are able to query and visualize data stores and steer complex scientific and engineering simulations [1].One of the challenges of Tele-Immersion is that it poses diverse requirements of the underlying networks ( Figure 1). For example, to convey audio and gestures of virtual participants (avatars,) low network latency is required; to distribute state updates, low latency but reliable data transmission is preferred; and to distribute data sets high-speed bulk data transfer is needed. In this paper, we will present our most recent work in exploiting advanced networking techniques to optimize data distribution in Tele-Immersion. We will describe our experiences in using Quality-ofService-enabled high-speed networks for supporting Tele-Immersion. We will structure this work by proposing an adaptive networking framework to allow application developers to map their data distribution requirements to suitable networking services. We believe that as networking technology becomes more complex, application developers will have to rely increasingly on intelligent adaptive systems to make decisions on how to optimally distribute their data over them. The work discussed in this paper serves as a starting point toward that ultimate goal. Adaptive Networking for Tele-ImmersionWe propose an intelligent adaptive networking system ( Figure 2) consisting of a Strategy Selector, Adaptive Controller and three supporting services: a Resource Monitor, a Quality of Service (QoS) Provisioner and a collection of network transport mechanisms. The Strategy Selector's role is to take application-specified data delivery requirements (e.g. bandwidth, latency, jitter, reliability, etc) and translate them into networki...

Multimedia streaming using multiple TCP connections

“…When it is TCP1's turn again and if TCP1 is not blocked, it would send packet 5. This is similar to socket striping technique in [14].…”

Dynamic adaptive mesh streaming for real-time 3D teleimmersion

“…In the literature, the only work we found to be related to TI network protocols was [Leigh et al 2001]. In the respective paper, the use of Forward Error Correction (FEC) codes over UDP for realtime tele-immersion is suggested.…”

On Consistency and Network Latency in Distributed Interactive Applications: A Survey—Part I

“…These reflect the diverse applications of this paradigm and the different research emphasis of each research group: shared workspaces, networked games, distributed whiteboards, group editors, distributed architectural design, education, telemedicine and simulations (Bhola, Banavar and Ahamad 1998;Sun, Jia, Zhang, Yang and Chen 1998;Bouras, Hornig, Triantafillou and Tsiatsos 2001;Fujimoto 2001;Riva and Gamberini 2001;Tawfik and Fernando 2001;McCoy, Delaney and Ward 2003;Frecon 2004). Several research teams have developed experimental distributed virtual environment platforms; some examples include RING (Funkhouser 1995), NPSNET (Macedonia, Zyda, Pratt, Barham and Zeswitz 1994;Capps, McGregor, Brutzman and Zyda 2000), MASSIVE (Greenhalgh and Benford 1995;Greenhalgh, Purbick and Snowdon 2000), PaRADE (Roberts, Sharkey and Sandoz 1995;, SPLINE (Barrus, Waters and Anderson 1996), CAVERNSoft (Leigh, Yu, Schonfeld, Ansari, He et al 2001), VELVET (de Oliveira and Georganas 2002), PARADISE (Holbrook, Singhal and Cheriton 1995;Singhal 1996), DIVE (Frécon and Stenius 1998;Frécon 2003;Frécon 2004), QUICK (Capps 2000), VPark (Joslin, Molet, Thalmann, Esmerado, Thalmann et al 2001), MOVE (Garcia, Montala, Pairot, Rallo and Skarmeta 2002), ATLAS (Lee, Lim and Han 2002), EQUATOR (MacColl, Millard, C. and Steed 2002) and PING (Roberts 2004). …”