Internet Content Distribution: Developments and Challenges

The paper reports on recent developments and challenges focused on multimedia distribution over IP. These are subject for research within the research project ”Routing in Overlay Networks (ROVER)”, recently granted by the EuroNGI Network of Excellence (NoE). Participants in the project are Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) in Karlskrona, Sweden, University of Bradford in UK, University of Catalunia in Barcelona, Spain and University of Pisa in Italy. The foundation of multimedia distribution is provided by several components, the most important ones being services, content distribution chain and protocols. The fundamental idea is to use the Internet for content acquisition, management and delivery to provide, e.g., Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) infrastructure with Quality of Service (QoS) facilities. Another important goal is to offer the end user the so-called Triple Play, which means grouping together Internet access, TV and telephone services in one subscription on a broadband connection. Other important issues are billing, copyright, encryption and authentication. The research project is considering the recently advanced IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), which is a set of technology standards put forth by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and two Third Generation Partnership Project groups (3GPP and 3GPP2). IMS offers a wide range of multimedia services over a single IP infrastructure with authentication facilities and, for wireless services, roaming capabilities. Furthermore, the research project is also considering overlay routing as an alternative solution for content distribution.