COMP 249 -- Fall 1997

MULTIMEDIA NETWORKING

MW 11:00 - 12:15, SN 325
Kevin Jeffay
jeffay@cs.unc.edu
August 20, 1997

Course Overview

This course covers the concepts and principles that underlie the transmission of continuous media such as digital audio and video across packet-switched computer networks. The emphasis will be on technologies and techniques for satisfying the requirements of applications requiring real-time, low-latency delivery of media. Course topics include the representation of audio and video as a basic data type, compression methods, and techniques for effective management of multimedia data in a distributed system. Students will study the evolving Internet integrated services network architecture for real-time communications and its allied protocols RSVP, and RTP, and learn how they can be used to establish and maintain levels of quality-of-service in a network. Technologies for wide-area dissemination of multimedia data including multicasting, multicast routing and the MBONE multicast network backbone will also be studied. Finally we will consider the impact of multimedia traffic on the Internet in general and on TCP-based applications in particular.

The course will have a laboratory component in which over the course of the semester students will develop a simple Internet telephone and measure its performance over the Internet.

Prerequisites

Students should have a general background in networking and distributed systems that includes a basic understanding of packet switching and internetworking based on the IP protocol suite. A first course in operating systems will be a hard prerequisite for all students.

UNC courses sufficient for satisfying these prerequisites include COMP 143/INLS 186 (TCP/IP Networks and Networking Programming) and COMP 243 (Distributed Systems).

Students lacking the proper background may enroll in the course with the consent of the instructor but will be expected to acquire the necessary background on their own through readings outside of class.

Course Materials

The primary source of reading material for this course will come from papers in the literature. Copies of papers will be distributed in class throughout the course. A $25, non-fundable, course fee must be paid by all students to cover the costs of duplicating papers. The fee can be paid to Candice McDaniel at the front desk of Sitterson Hall.

In addition, there are several optional texts that students may find useful for a more introductory treatment of some of the material covered in this course. An excellent reference text, and the recommended (but not required) text for this course is:

For a more introductory treatment of multimedia computing and communications, consider: A more in-depth reference for the sections on routing, try

Grading and Course Credit

Course grades will be based on the degree of completion and quality of programming assignments (50% of course grade), performance on one or more midterm examinations (15%), final examination (25%), and class participation (10%). These percentages are only approximate.

The first (and possibly only) in-class midterm examination is tentatively scheduled for Monday, October 6. The final examination is scheduled for Friday, December 12, at 4 PM.

This is a 3 credit hour course. However, graduate students from Departments other than Computer Science may elect to take this course for 1 credit hour and skip the programming assignments. All students in the course will be required to take the midterm and final examinations.

Course Outline

0. Introduction to multimedia

1. Audio and video as a data type

2. The multimedia networking problem 3. Best-effort multimedia networking 4. Quality-of-service based networking