Fostering Cooperation between Overlay Applications and Underlying Networks

Considering the demanding nature of future HD and 3D video communications, application overlays need increased awareness of the underlying network capabilities. We propose a new cross-layer solution to enhance overlay-ISP interactions by providing a comprehensive, media-aware, open and standardised interface between ISPs and application overlays. We further discuss how the cooperation between the layers will be improved and describe an example use-case to demonstrate the benefit of such interworking. (head 1) Introduction Future networked media environments will be high-quality, multi-sensory, multi-viewpoint and multi-streamed and relying on HD and 3D video [2]. For ISPs, however, this will place unprecedented demands [3] on networks for high capacity, low-latency, low-loss and reliable communication paths. Because the traditional solution of pre-provisioning / over-provisioning of sufficient network resources everywhere is not economically viable [2, 9] given the huge capacities required, we propose a fundamentally different approach, via a specific interface, targeting improved cooperation of ISPs with application overlays so that: · · · intelligent overlay applications are optimised for end-to-end performance at global scale, being aware of the actual capabilities of multiple underlying ISPs; specialised network services such as multicast distribution or in-network caching are dynamically invoked in the underlying ISPs by the applications; content, the way it is generated, accessed and distributed is adapted on-the-fly to what the networks are able to deliver and according to terminal capabilities.