Mediating Multimedia Traffic with Strict Delivery Constraints

Internet multimedia traffic currently occupies more than half of the total Internet traffic and it continues to expand tremendously. Targeting to meet strict constraints imposed by the requirements of real-time multimedia applications appropriate error-correction techniques should be implemented within the data dissemination network. We propose to introduce multipurpose relay nodes called Mediators into several positions within the tree networks typical for multicasting and broadcasting scenarios. By utilizing the error-correction domain separation paradigm in combination with selective insertion of the supplementary data from parallel networks, when the corresponding content is available, the proposed mechanism reduces the total network load and improves scalability of multicast/broadcast transmission. We share our view on how the existing application frameworks could benefit from the incremental deployment of the proposed mechanism. Experimental results confirm suitability and applicability of our assumptions.