CS 638: Multimedia Networking and Operating Systems

Spring 2022

Overview and Objectives:

This course explores the latest developments and open research problems in multimedia networking and operating systems, with several example case studies such as YouTube, Netflix, and Zoom.

The topics to be covered (tentatively) include:

  1. Multimedia applications, such as video streaming, video conferencing, and virtual reality, their requirements, and user quality of experience
  2. Multimedia formats and compression, e.g., H.264, AAC
  3. Multimedia network traffic characteristics and traffic engineering, and protocols to transport multimedia traffic and control congestion, e.g., QUIC, DASH, RTP
  4. Content distribution networks and edge clouds, e.g., Akamai
  5. End system resource management, e.g., real-time CPU scheduling
  6. Multimedia over WiFi and cellular networks (4G LTE, 5G)

Upon completion of this course, students will grasp key multimedia networking and operating systems concepts, requirements, and challenges, and several current and recently proposed solutions.

Days/Time:

TTh 4:30--5:45 PM

Room:

LWSN B134

Instructor:

Sonia Fahmy, office: LWSN 2142H, e-mail: last name @purdue.edu
Please e-mail me if you wish to set up an appointment to meet online or in-person.

Prerequisites:

CS 503 or CS 536 or consent of the instructor

Credit:

03

Policies:

Please review the policies page maintained by Professor Gene Spafford for information about course policies.

Readings:

We will cover some material from the following books, but they are not required, i.e., your class notes will suffice:

We will also discuss a few important or recent papers on multimedia in top networking and operating systems conferences, journals, and magazines.

Discussion Lead and Reviews: Each student will lead the discussion of one of the assigned papers. The presentation should discuss the main ideas of the paper, in addition to pointing out their significance/novelty, applications, limitations, and relationship to other work. The student leading the discussion is expected to prepare original slides on the strengths and weaknesses of the paper, with suggestions for improvement/extension. Please credit the source of any slide or figure you use that is not original.

Since one of the aims of this course is to learn to critique research papers, students will complete reviews of assigned papers before their discussion. This means that students should read these assigned papers critically and carefully. Please be prepared to discuss your review in class.

Tentative Grading Plan:

Homeworks and (best 6) paper reviews 35%
Paper presentation 15%
Project plan and updates 10%
Project report 25%
Project presentation 10%
Class participation 5%

Tentative Schedule:

Date Topic/Reading(s) Due
Jan. 11 Course overview; Examples (Netflix; Google Networking)
Jan. 13 Multimedia units and streams, real-time systems, Quality of Experience (QoE) and Quality of Service (QoS)
Jan. 18 Review of key operating systems and networking concepts
Jan. 20 Review of key operating systems and networking concepts (cont'd)
TCP throughput; Fairness index; Fairness/efficiency
Jan. 25 Audio, video, and real-time protocols
A. Durresi and R. Jain, RTP, RTCP, and RTSP.
Henning Schulzrinne and Jonathan Rosenberg, Internet Telephony: Architecture and Protocols-- An IETF Perspective, Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, vol 31, no 3, pp. 237-255, February 1999.
Prof. Schulzrinne's page
Jan. 27 Audio, video, and real-time protocols (cont'd)
Feb. 1 Audio, video, and real-time protocols (cont'd); Network traffic management
Feb. 3 Network traffic management (cont'd) Homework 1 due by 8 PM
Feb. 8 Network traffic management (cont'd)
Feb. 10 Content distribution networks and peer-to-peer systems Project plan due by 8 PM
Feb. 15 Content distribution networks and peer-to-peer systems (cont'd)
Feb. 17 QUIC
The QUIC Transport Protocol: Design and Internet-Scale Deployment. SIGCOMM '17. Slides
Feb. 22 QUIC (cont'd)
Feb. 24 Multimedia and real-time operating systems
Scheduling algorithms for multiprogramming in a hard-real-time environment 		Homework 2 due by 8 PM
Mar. 1 Multimedia and real-time operating systems (cont'd)
Mar. 3 Multimedia and real-time operating systems (cont'd)
Mar. 8 Neal Cardwell, Yuchung Cheng, C. Stephen Gunn, Soheil Hassas Yeganeh, and Van Jacobson. 2016. BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control: Measuring bottleneck bandwidth and round-trip propagation time. Queue 14, 5 (September-October 2016), 20-53. Discussion lead: Akhil; Paper review due by 4:30 PM
Mar. 10 Fangfan Li, Arian Akhavan Niaki, David Choffnes, Phillipa Gill, Alan Mislove. Large-Scale Analysis of Deployed Traffic Differentiation Practices. In SIGCOMM '19: 2019 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication, August 19-23, 2019. Discussion lead: Chandrika; Paper review due by 4:30 PM
Mar. 22 X. Yin, A. Jindal, V. Sekar, B. Sinopli, A Control-Theoretic Approach for Dynamic Adaptive Video Streaming over HTTP SIGCOMM '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Special Interest Group on Data Communication August 2015 Pages 325-338. Discussion lead: Bilal; Paper review due by 4:30 PM
Mar. 24 Vijay K. Adhikari, Yang Guo, Fang Hao, Volker Hilt, Zhi-Li Zhang, Matteo Varvello, and Moritz Steiner. Measurement Study of Netflix, Hulu, and a Tale of Three CDNs. IEEE/ACM TRANSACTIONS ON NETWORKING, VOL. 23, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2015. Discussion lead: Xianqi; Paper review due by 4:30 PM
Mar. 29 Gaetano Carlucci, Luca De Cicco, Stefan Holmer, and Saverio Mascolo. Analysis and design of the Google congestion control for Web real time communication (WebRTC). In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Multimedia Systems (MMSys '16). Article 13, 1-12. Discussion lead: Samuel; Paper review due by 4:30 PM
Mar. 31 Panoramic videos and volumetric videos Project update due
Apr. 5 Virtual reality. Guest speaker: Professor Voicu Popescu
Apr. 7 Kyungjin Lee, Juheon Yi, Youngki Lee, Sunghyun Choi, and Young Min Kim. 2020. GROOT: a real-time streaming system of high-fidelity volumetric videos. Proceedings of the 26th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 57, 1-14. Discussion lead: Yufeng; Paper review due by 4:30 PM
Apr. 12 Zhaowei Tan, Yuanjie Li, Qianru Li, Zhehui Zhang, Zhehan Li, and Songwu Lu. Supporting Mobile VR in LTE Networks: How Close Are We? Proc. ACM Meas. Anal. Comput. Syst. 2, 1, Article 8 (March 2018). Discussion lead: Umakant; Paper review due by 4:30 PM
Apr. 14 Wireless Networking for Personalized and Collaborative Virtual Reality. Guest speaker: Professor Bin Li, Penn State University
Apr. 19 A Variegated Study of 5G Services: Challenges, Opportunities, and Application Innovations for VR/MR. Guest speaker: Professor Feng Qian, University of Minnesota
Apr. 21 Review
Apr. 26 Project presentations: Umakant, Yufeng, Xianqi
Apr. 28 Project presentations: Bilal/Samuel, Akhil/Chandrika Final project report due May 4th, 2022 by 8 PM