A network aware adaptable application using a novel content scheduling and delivery scheme

• Main Author: Abdul Rahman, Abdul Muin
• Published: University of Salford 2006
• Subjects: 004.36; Adaptable network applications.
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.490474

The aim of this research is to investigate techniques or methodologies that will allow networked applications to adapt to network conditions between end nodes in order to maintain a reasonable Quality of Service and to design, develop and test techniques for achieving such adaptability through the use of a novel content scheduling and delivery scheme. In order to achieve this adaptation, information regarding network conditions, both static and dynamic, has to be first gathered. Since various parties have already conducted substantial research in this area, the task was to review those network measurement techniques and adopt a suitable one for use in the subsequent research. Hence the research is concerned more on how to realize these techniques in practical terms and make those network parameters accessible to applications that are going to adapt based on them. A network measurement service utilizing a standard measurement tool was proposed, developed, tested and subsequently used throughout the project. In this way the research project implementation has help in trying to understand the impact of network measurement on the overall performance of the system and what network metrics are essential in order to help the application make better adaptation decision. The project proceeded further to develop and show case an adaptable network application using a novel scheme in which content was restructured and its delivery rescheduled taking account of the available bandwidth, the content structure, size and order of importance and user specified deadlines, which made use of the network measurement service. In so doing, the project sought to show how and when adaptation can be applied and its potential benefits or otherwise as compared to conventional applications based on best effort systems. The project has proved that by adapting according to the abovementioned scheme in the event of poor network performance, user specified deadlines can be satisfied by reducing the load with contents of high importance being delivered first while contents of less importance being delivered during idle time or user's reading time or ignored if the deadline could not be met. In most cases content of high importance are delivered faster in the adaptable system as compared to the conventional best effort system.