PRUNO: Prospects for Realizing User-centric Network Orchestration

Summary

To overcome the current limitations of the Internet, several different approaches are existing which can be mainly distinguished into network-aware applications and application-aware networks. Bringing together both approaches, network-application interfaces are to be deployed to realize smart mediation of application data through the Internet. In this context, content mediation includes resource management as well as traffic management. For smart applications and services in the Internet, however, the application and the mediation network should directly communicate with each other and exchange information adequately, such that the end user experiences a good quality. To this end, Quality of Experience (QoE) of different applications is considered within the project. In particular, we consider A) streaming services like YouTube video streaming with high video quality playback demands and B) interactive services like social networks with high security and privacy demands.

The main goal of the project is to investigate prospects for realizing user-centric network orchestration. The conceptual prospects may include network virtualization, service composition as well as the forwarding on gates approach. These architectural concepts dynamically react on user and application requirements. To achieve this goal, the following methodology is proposed. First, subjective user studies are required to develop appropriate QoE models taking into account the key QoE influence factors quantitatively. This allows deriving the user requirements based on the QoE model, which can be translated into certain application-specific requirements. Second, such detailed requirements need to be passed to the network stack, which is not possible with today’s APIs. Therefore, new application-mediation interfaces, providing the information needed by composition and forwarding services, have to be designed. As a result of this project, the different prospects for realizing this user-centric network orchestration are evaluated and compared qualitatively.

The aim of the proposed specific EuroNF project is to model user perceived quality and user behaviour for web traffic. To be more precise, our main objectives are:

• Q1: How to translate user and application requirements into network mediation requirements for a) video streaming e.g. YouTube and b) interactive services, e.g. social networks with authentication? Which information has to be exchanged between mediation and application for user-centric service composition?
• Q2: How to implement an application-mediation interface? How to exchange the information between an application and a network? Is the interface generic enough so that YouTube and the social network application requirements can be specified?
• Q3: Which functional elements are required to satisfy the quality demands of the user (in terms of video quality and security, respectively)? How can these elements be composed in the network stack to realize user-centric network orchestration? Is there a methodological difference when considering streaming and interactive services?
• Q4: What are conceptual differences between the realization prospects? What are the differences in terms of socio-economic assessment, QoE, costs, and performance, but also from the methodological point of view?

Meetings and Phone Conferences

Phone conference, Monday 21.11.2011, 14:30-16:30, minutes

Phone conference, Monday 12.12.2011, 11:00-12:00, minutes

Meeting at FTW in Vienna, 19.-20.12.2011, meeting location, agenda, minutes

Meeting at University of Würzburg, Friday 20.01.2012, 9:00-16:00, Computer Science Building, "Am Hubland", 2nd floor, room A205, discussion on demonstrator, minutes

Short research stay by Tobias Hossfeld with Markus Fiedler at BTH Karlskrona from Feb 20 - Mar 9, 2012

 

Other Stuff

project proposal

restricted access to the shared web repository.

8th Euro-NF Conference on Next Generation Internet NGI 2012, June 25-27 2012, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden.

Description of the project in the public Euro-NF knowledge map

 

Further Dissemination Activities

Tutorial on "Waiting Times and QoE" by Sebastian Egger, Tobias Hossfeld, Raimund Schatz, Markus Fiedler at QoMEX 2012, 5-7 July, Yarra Valley, Australia

Talk by Thomas Zinner at NGI’2012 on “Prospects for Realizing Application Network Orchestration”

Poster by Rahamatullah Khondoker, “Analytic Hierarchy Process for Communication Service Selection”, Summer School, March 28 – 04 April, Würzburg, Germany

Talk by Rahamatullah Khondoker, “Usage of Analytic Hierarchy Process for Communication Service Selection”, 7th KuVS Workshop on Future Internet, 27th January 2012, Nokia Siemens Networks, Munich, Germany

Lecture on summer school "Modeling and Analysis of Novel Mechanisms in Future Internet Applications" in Würzburg, 28.3.-4.4.2012 on “Measurement and Modeling of Internet Applications” (incl. YouTube QoE)

Lecture on summer school "Modeling and Analysis of Novel Mechanisms in Future Internet Applications" in Würzburg, 28.3.-4.4.2012 on “Teletraffic models for QoE assessment” (incl. QoE for authentication)

Talk at BTH on “Towards YouTube QoE via Crowdsourcing” by Tobias Hoßfeld, 7.3.2012