CS 638: Multimedia Networking and Operating Systems

Spring 2004

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/fahmy/cs638/

Overview:

This course focuses on the latest developments and open research issues in multimedia networking and operating systems. Special emphasis will be given to research areas where there has been a lot of recent activity in the Internet and telecommunication communities. The topics to be covered (tentatively) include:

Multimedia formats and compression

Multimedia network traffic characteristics, measurements and resource management

Congestion control for multimedia traffic

End system resource management and scheduling

Synchronization and content processing

Multicasting at the network layer and at the application layer

Peer-to-peer systems and content distribution

Multimedia applications

Multimedia in wireless and ad hoc networks

Security problems and protocols.

Objectives:

Upon completion of this course, the student will grasp the latest multimedia networking and operating systems problems and proposed solutions.

Each student will choose to either write an original survey paper on a topic of his/her choice, or conduct an implementation/simulation/analysis research project and write a short report describing it. The students will give brief presentations on their review/comparison papers or projects. Students can choose to work alone or in teams of 2-3.

Click here for the list of suggested projects and the project plan format

In addition to the project, students will present some of the assigned papers. The presentation should discuss the main ideas of the paper, in addition to pointing out their significance, applications, limitations, and relationship to other work.

Readings:

Assigned from the literature. These will mostly be recent papers in top networking conferences, journals, and magazines (in addition to a few classic papers), and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or various forum documents.

Click here for the list of papers

Since one of the main aims of this course is to discuss papers, everyone is expected to read them by their assigned dates and be prepared to discuss them in depth. This means you should read the assigned papers critically and carefully, paying special attention to novel results, potential applications and possible flaws.

There are a number of networking and performance analysis books that you will find useful, most of which you can borrow from the library or from my office. I can recommend specific books based upon your background in networking. There are also some good tutorials in my office and online.

The following books are highly recommended:

Ralf Steinmetz, Klara Nahrstedt. Multimedia Fundamentals. Volume 1: Media Coding and Content Processing. Prentice-Hall, 2002. ISBN: 0-13-031399-8
Ralf Steinmetz, Klara Nahrstedt. Multimedia Systems. Springer-Verlag, 2004. ISBN: 3-540-40867-3