Overview

 

MUM

The wide spreading of distributed computing along with the continuous diffusion of wireless networks, such as IEEE 802.11a/b/g (Wi-FI), Bluetooth (BT), and cellular 3G networks, enable new service provisioning scenarios where users want to access services anywhere at anytime according to their profiles. The Mobile agent based Ubiquitous multimedia Middleware (MUM) was designed and implemented with the intent of studying novel middleware-based solution suitable in this highly dynamic environment. In particular, MUM focuses on continuous services, i.e., applications that distribute time-continuous flows with Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, to assist and support service delivery by tailoring the service depending on context information, by granting Quality of Service (QoS) and by maintaining service continuity when users move.

 

 

 

All these issues call for novel approaches to service and middleware design. MUM realizes an original proxy-based infrastructure aimed to assist mobile clients over the fixed network with the introduction of active mobile proxies. So far some solutions have been proposed to assist nomadic users rather than roaming devices, or code downloading rather than service path configuration, but to our knowledge none considers these issues altogether, as different aspects of the same problem that is adding mobility capabilities to the traditional C/S based services, making them feasible to use in a more dynamic scenario. In particular, MUM adopts an original mixed solution based both on Client/Server (C/S) and MAs to dynamically deploy new middlware components only when and where needed. MAs are dynamic, asynchronous and autonomous, therefore suitable in such a challenging scenario.

For more information about MUM specific subsystems, please click on the following links:

MUM Architecture;
Multimedia Service Configuration;
Session Continuity for Nomadic Users;
Proactive Wi-Fi Handoff Management;
QoS Management.

 

MUMOC

MUM Open Caching is a distributed caching active infrastructure that significantly extends MUM with the possibility of caching both multimedia contents and their metadata descriptions in a highly interoperable way.

MUMOC services can improve VoD streaming over the best-effort Internet, to primarily support online stream caching, i.e., the caching of VoD flows at intermediate traversed nodes, to allow fast playback startup, i.e., the reduction of user-perceived VoD startup delays in the case of cache hit in the active infrastructure, and to achieve interoperability, by adopting standards to represent the description of the provided VoD data so to simplify the interworking with legacy systems and services.

For more information about MUMOC specific aspects, please click on the following links:

Prefix Caching
Metadata Representation and Distributed Storage

 


 
Page updated
on May 2005
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