CS 6385 - NETWORKING FOR MULTIMEDIA

Spring 1999

PROFESSOR

Mostafa Ammar
Room 219 - GCATT Building
Ext. 4-3292, e-mail: ammar@cc.gatech.edu
Office Hrs:   by appointment

TEACHING ASSISTANT

Aparna Pappu

Office Hours: MW 11-12 in CoC Commons Area.

PREREQUISITE

1- CS 4380, or CS 6380 or EE 6092 or some other
   introductory course in networking. 
2- Knowledge of C and Unix
3- Knowledge of Sockets Programming 
***Note that these are very important prerequisites. We will make no
allowance for people without the appropriate pre-requisites.

COURSE ORGANIZATION
Grading

		Assignments		35%
		Class Participation     25%
		Term Paper              40%

Recommended Book P. Ferguson and G. Huston, "Quality of Service: Delivering QoS on teh Internet and in Corporate Networks" Wiley.

Assignments

There will be four assignments:

1. Assignment 1: (5%) A demonstration exercise in setting up a multimedia video conference using the Internet tools (sd, vic, wb, vat),
2. Assignment 2: (10%) A programming assignment working with audio playout on a SUN workstation. (If you have done this assignment already in CS7100 you will be given a video compression assignment instead.)
3. Assignment 3 (10%): A written assignment
4. Assignment 4 (10%): A Video Programming assignment.

Note: Auditing this class is discouraged. Students auditing the class are required to do the HW assignments and participate in the classroom discussion but will not be required to do the term paper.

All work in this class is to be done individually and independently, code and/or solution sharing is not allowed.

For CoC students the programming assignments can be done on any CoC Sun, for other students OIT-maintained Suns can be used or you can setup a temporary CoC account upon request. Please check with the course's TA for information on how to set up a CoC account.

Course Objective

This course deals primarily with the problems that arise when carrying multimedia traffic across networks. Since this is a relatively new area with a lot of on-going research, no text on the topic is available. We will be primarily reading a number of papers and handouts on the topic. The course will cover the following set of topics:

• An overview of the multimedia networking problem and various architectures for networks that can carry multimedia traffic.
• A discussion of video compression and coding. Although we will not be experts on video coding techniques it is necessary to have some understanding of how digital video looks like when submitted to a network.
• Issues in Real-Time Networking. We will look in some detail at various techniques proposed for networks to carry real-time multimedia traffic.
• Issues in Multimedia Multipoint communication. Multimedia communication relies heavily on the multipoint communication paradigm. We will explore this in general and address some specific issues dealing with multimedia communication.

WWW Page and News Group

The course will have a web page where we will maintain all the documentation (including this handout) and source code. You can access the web page at:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Mostafa.Ammar/6385/

We will also maintain a news group (git.cc.classes.6385) We will read and respond to postings to this newsgroup regularly.

CS 6385 - Networking for Multimedia
Spring 1999
Term Paper Decription

(Note: This is a departure from how we were doing this class in the past.)

Each student (individually) will choose a paper related to multimedia issues. The student will then prepare a presentation on the paper to be given in front of the class and write a 3-page summary of the paper and its conclusions.

Choosing the paper: The paper must be related to multimedia networking and chosen from one of the following sources: IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, ACM Multimedia Systems Journal, IEEE INFOCOM Proceedings, ACM SIGCOMM Proceedings, ACM Multimedia conference proceedings, or Proceedings of IEEE ICNP, for the years 96,97,98 or 99 only. Papers choices must be approved by the instructor. Only one student may choose a particular paper and a FCFS order will be enforced on paper choices. You may not choose a paper co-authored by Ammar or a paper that you have co-authored. You also may not choose a paper that you have used or are using as the basis of a term project in another course. Paper choice is due no later than the Tuesday after drop date but for best flexibility make your choice as early as possible.

The Presentation: Each presentation will be at most 12 minutes. Students may use overhead projectors or laptops to present the paper. No blackboard presentations will be allowed. The timing will be strictly enforced. A 3-minute question period will follow each presentation. The order of presentations will be decided by a lottery. Students may exchange positions with others.

Class Participation: All students will be asked to grade each presentation in various dimensions and will be asked one or two simple questions regarding the paper being presented. Each student is required to hand in at least 25 presentation forms. The class participation grade will be determined in large part by the forms being handed in.

Paper Summary: You should hand in a 3-page summary of the paper you are presenting. The summary should be typewritten. It shoudl discuss ata minimum 1) the general problem area of the paper, 2) the specific problem being addressed in the paper, 3) the explicit contributions that the paper makes towards a solution to the problem and 4) your own opinion of the importance of the work described in the paper.

Important Dates

1. April 3-8: Mbone Tools Demo Week (Assignment 1)
2. April 15: Assignment 2 given
3. April 22: Assignment 2 due
4. April 30: Last Day to drop a course
5. May 1: Deadline for paper choice
6. May 4: Lottery for presentation order
7. May 4: Assignemnet 3 given
8. May 11: Assignment 3 due.
9. May 18: Assignment 4 given
10. May 27: Assignment 4 due.
11. May 13, 18, 20, 25, 27, June 1, 3: Paper Presenattions
12. June 7: 3-Page paper summary due (Note: Graduating Students need to make their presentations and hand in their 3-page summary no later than June 1)