Multimedia Communications

Network Topologies Evolution

– LAN: Local Area Network

– WAN: Wide Area Network

– WLAN: Wireless Local Area Network

Network Topologies Evolution
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LAN
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A LAN is a high­speed data network that covers a 
relatively small geographic area. eg. home, office etc 
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 LANs offer computer users many advantages, 
including shared access to devices and applications, 
file exchange between connected users, and 
communication between users via electronic mail and 
other applications.
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LAN data transmissions fall into three classifications: 
unicast, multicast, and broadcast. 
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LAN Topologies: bus, ring, star, and tree. 
 BUS TOPOLOGY

• Bus networks: A bus network topology is a network

architecture in which a set of clients are connected via a shared
communications line, called a bus.
• Bus networks are the simplest way to connect multiple clients,
but often have problems when two clients want to transmit at
the same time on the same bus.
• Thus systems which use bus network architectures normally
have some scheme of collision handling or collision avoidance
for communication on the bus, quite often using Carrier Sense
Multiple Access
BUS NETWORK
Ring networks,

• A ring network is a network topology in

which each node connects to exactly two
other nodes, forming a circular pathway for
signals: a ring. Data travels from node to
node, with each node handling every packet.
• Because a ring topology provides only one
pathway between any two nodes, ring
networks may be disrupted by the failure of a
single link. A node failure or cable break
might isolate every node attached to the ring.
Ring network
Tree topology
Tree Topology is a combination of the bus and the Star Topology. The
tree like structure allows you to have many servers on the network and
you can branch out the network in many ways.
WAN

A WAN is a data communications network that covers a

relatively broad geographic area i.e., any network
whose communications links cross metropolitan,
regional, or national boundaries .
Point-to-Point Links: A point-to-point link provides a
single, pre-established WAN communications path
from the customer premises through a carrier network,
such as a telephone company, to a remote network.
Circuit Switching
Switched circuits allow data connections that can be
initiated when needed and terminated when
communication is complete. This works much like a
normal telephone line works for voice communication
Packet Switching
Packet switching is a WAN technology in which users
share common carrier resources.
Wireless LAN
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A wireless LAN or WLAN is a wireless local area
network, which is the linking of two or more computers
without using wires.
●
WLAN utilizes radio waves to enable communication
between devices in a limited area, also known as the
basic service set.
●
This gives users the mobility to move around within a
broad coverage area and still be connected to the
network.
Multimedia Communication System

– Interactive Multimedia Design

– Interlacing

– Interleaved

– Linear Multimedia
– Non-Interactive Multimedia
– Nonlinear Multimedia
Interactive Learning System for Conceptualization
Interlace is a technique of improving the picture quality
of a video signal by removing flicker without consuming
any extra bandwidth.
This animation demonstrates the interline twitter
effect. The two interlaced images use half the bandwidth
of the progressive one.
Interleaving in disk storage
The primary purpose of interleaving was to adjust the timing
differences between when the computer was ready to transfer data,
and when that data was actually arriving at the drive head to be read.
Interleaving was used to arrange the sectors in the most efficient
manner possible, so that after reading a sector, time would be
permitted for processing, and then the next sector in sequence is ready
to be read just as the computer is ready to do so.
Interleaving is used in digital data transmission technology to protect
the transmission against burst errors. These errors overwrite a lot of
bits in a row, so a typical error correction scheme that expects errors
to be more uniformly distributed can be overwhelmed. Interleaving is
used to help stop this from happening.
Linear Multimedia

Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear and non-

linear categories. Linear active content progresses
without any navigation control for the viewer such as a
cinema presentation. Non-linear content offers user
interactivity to control progress as used with a computer
game or used in self-paced computer based training.
Non-linear content is also known as hypermedia content.
 Non-Interactive Multimedia.
If the sequence and timing of the multimedia elements
can be controlled by the user, then one can name it as
Non-Interactive Multimedia.
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Streaming Audio
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RealPlayer
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Streaming Video
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quick time
Multimedia Networks
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Technical Issues
– Admission control:Admission control is a network Quality of 
Service (QoS) procedure. 
– Admission control determines how bandwidth and latency are 
allocated to streams with various requirements. 
– An application that wishes to use the network to transport traffic 
with QoS must first request a connection, which involves 
informing the network about the characteristics of the traffic and 
the QoS required by the application. 
– This information is stored in a traffic contract. The network 
judges whether it has enough resources available to accept the 
connection, and then either accepts or rejects the connection 
request. This is known as Admission Control.
Multimedia Networks
– Scheduling: Scheduling is a key concept in computer 
multitasking and multiprocessing operating system design, 
and in real­time operating system design. It refers to the way 
processes are assigned priorities in a priority queue. This 
assignment is carried out by software known as a scheduler.
– Different computer operating systems implement different 
scheduling schemes. Unix implementations use a scheduler 
with multilevel feedback queues. 
–  Windows 3.1 and Macintosh OS 9 use a simple non­
preemptive scheduler which requires programmers to 
instruct their processes to "yield"  in order for other processes 
to gain some CPU time. Windows NT 4.0­based operating 
systems use a multilevel feedback queue.
Multimedia Networks
– Congestion Control: A congestion control system 
typically monitors various factors like CPU 
occupancy, link occupancy and messaging delay. 
Based on these factors it takes a decision if the 
system is overloaded. If the system is overloaded, it 
initiates actions to reduce the load by asking front 
end processors to reject traffic. 
Multimedia Networks
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Resource management
–  resource management is the efficient and effective 
deployment of an organization's resources when 
they are needed. 
– Resource Management and Scheduling Strategies 
collectively addresses multiple issues including 
QoS, throughput, responsiveness and efficiency.
INTERNET
The Internet is a global network of interconnected
computers, enabling users to share information along
multiple channels.
Internetworking
• Despite the incompatibilities among network
technologies, researchers devised a scheme
for providing universal service among
heterogeneous technologies called
internetworking.
• Hardware is used to interconnect a set of
physical networks and common software on
all the attached computers provides universal
service. The resultant system is known as an
internetwork or internet.
Connection to Internet
There are many ways to connect to the Internet from a personal
workstation:
1. Dial-Up:With a dial-up connection, the Internet user can
connect to the Internet via his or telephone line and an Internet
service provider.
Broadband connections offer another way to connect to the
Internet. In this category are cable and DSL connections.
cable connection, the user must subscribe to a cable-
television/Internet service.
DSL (Digital Subscriber Line): DSL offers much faster speeds
than those available with dial-up modems.
Satellite Internet service is another form of high-speed
Internet connection .It employs telecommunications satellites to
allow users to connect to the Internet

4.
Multimedia Internet Protocols
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Multimedia over TCP: TCP in connection­oriented protocol that is
reliable including flow control and supports byte-stream in full
duplex mode.
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The multicast method to send data to more than one client is
not supported by the TCP protocol.
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Delays is exactly what we do not want in real-time data
transmissions.
●
For example in a video transmission, we just drop the lost
packet and display the previous packet a second time. For the
human eye this little trick does not affect the quality. So
reliable transmission on transport layer is not exactly what we
need for multimedia transmissions.
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TCP is not a good basis to transport multimedia real-time data
over a network, to summarize the usability of TCP.
Multimedia over UDP

UDP is a connectionless protocol that tries

best effort delivery with no flow-control and
included message support.
UDP is not reliable and that is one of the
key advantages for real-time
transmissions.
UDP also supports multicast methods.
This protocol does not support flow-
control and that is actually very
important for real-time applications.
RTP
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Real­time Transport Protocol (RTP) provides support for 
the transport of real­time data such as video and audio 
streams.
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RTP needs support from lower layers that actually have 
control over resources in switches and routers
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RTP/RTCP provides functionality and control mechanisms 
necessary for carrying real­time content.
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RTP/RTCP itself is not responsible for the higher­level 
tasks like assembly and synchronization. These have to be 
done at application level.
RTCP
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Real­Time Control Protocol extends RTP
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In an RTP session, participants periodically send RTCP packets to convey 
feedback on quality of data delivery and information of membership.
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Packets defined for carrying control information:
– SR: Sender report, for transmission and reception statistics from 
session participants that are
– active senders.
– RR: Receiver report, for reception statistics from session participants, 
that are not active
– senders.
– SDES: Source description items, including CNAME
– BYE: Indicates end of participation
– APP: Application specific functions
Multimedia Internet Protocols
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SAP: Session Announcement Protocol:used to assist the advertisement of 
multicast multimedia conferences and other multicast sessions, and to 
communicate the relevant session setup information to prospective 
participants.
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 SDP: Session Description Protocol  protocol for multimedia sessions. A   
common mode of usage is for a client to announce a conference session  by 
periodically multicasting an announcement packet to a well known   
multicast address and port using the Session Announcement Protocol
●
MBONE Tools:MBONE stands for "Multicast Backbone", a virtual 
network. The network originated from an effort to multicast audio and 
video from the "Internet Engineering Task Force" (IETF) meetings. 
MBONE today is used by several hundred researchers for developing 
protocols and applications for group communication
– SDR(Sesion directory tool), VIC(Video Tool), VAT (Audio tool)and 
RAT(Robust audio tool).
Multimedia Internet Protocols
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RSVP:The Resource ReSerVation Protocol designed to reserve resources 
across a network for an integrated services Internet.
– Network control protocol
– Allows data receiver to request a special end­to­end quality of service 
for its data flows.
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RTSP:Real Time Streaming Protocol which allows a client to remotely 
control a streaming media server, issuing VCR­like commands such as 
"play" and "pause", and allowing time­based access to files on a server.
– A client­server multimedia presentation protocol to enable controlled 
delivery of streamed multimedia data over IP network.
– Aims to provide the same services on streamed audio and video just as 
HTTP does for text and graphics. 
Multimedia Communications
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High­Density File Transfers . 
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Graphics File Transfers: using ftp
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Audio File Transfers 
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Video File Transfers
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Audio Communication
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Computer­Based Telephony
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Computer­Based Audio Conferencing
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Streaming Audio
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Video Communication
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Video Conferencing
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Streaming Video