COMET-ENVISION workshop on Future Media Distribution Networks

10-11 November 2011, O2, Slough, UK

Programme -- Registration -- Travel and accommodation

Call for Participation

The Internet is becoming the de facto medium for distributing an ever widening range of content, applications and services. Demand is increasing rapidly and the infrastructure is struggling to supply the resources needed to deliver advanced content in the quantities demanded at the expected Quality of Service. A range of solutions have been proposed to mitigate some of today's problems, including caching and load-balancing techniques in CDNs; and various research initiatives are investigating alternative approaches, including native information-centric network technologies, dynamic adaptation of content and optimisation of overlay networks. The goal of this workshop is to explore the range of solutions offered by state-of-the-art research initiatives and to seek answers to questions such as:

Should content access, storage and delivery be decoupled from the network-layer or are there significant advantages in a more tightly coupled content-aware network infrastructure?

Do the advantages offered by an information-centric network layer outweigh the costs of deploying a new infrastructure? Are there hybrid solutions that achieve the performance and usability gains without impacting today's network? Do we need a new clean slate approach or is current IPv4/IPv6 sufficient?

To what degree should applications and overlay networks cooperate with underlying networks to optimise content delivery, reducing infrastructure cost and improving Quality of Experience for the user?

How should content be pushed closer to end-users to reduce inter-domain traffic and other delivery costs? How can CDNs interwork and cooperate with one other to balance load and extend geographical reach?

The workshop is split over 1.5 days (10.30-17.00 on 10 November and 9.30-13.30 on 11 November) with sessions dedicated to presenting and discussing leading-edge research in both evolutionary and revolutionary approaches to information-centric networking; overlay-network cooperation; and content distribution networks. There will also be open discussion sessions on future research directions in media access and delivery with the goal of answering the question of which are the most promising techniques for future media distribution.

The workshop will take place at the O2 Bath Road Campus in Slough, UK. Slough is to the west of London with convenient transport links from central London (15 minutes by train from Paddington station) and Heathrow airport (30 minutes by bus, 15-20 minutes by taxi).

Entrance is free, but registration is required as places are limited. Coffee breaks on both days and lunch on 10 November will be provided. The deadline for registration is 28 October 2011.

COMET and ENVISION are EU FP7 research projects:

COMET (COntent Mediator architecture for content-aware nETworks - http://www.comet-project.org) considers current, evolutionary and revolutionary network approaches for unified content location, access and distribution. COMET introduces a global naming scheme and optimises both content source selection and distribution, by mapping the content to the appropriate network resources based on transmission requirements, user preferences, and network state.

ENVISION (Enriched Network-aware Video Services over Internet Overlay Networks - http://www.envision-project.org) proposes a cross-layer solution where the problem of supporting demanding services is solved cooperatively by service providers, ISPs, users and the applications themselves. The consortium is promoting the ENVISION CINA interface (Collaboration Interface between Networks and Applications) as a standardised means for cooperation between applications and ISPs for realising demanding multimedia services.

COMET is an ICT project funded by the European Commision under the EU Framework Programme 7 (FP7).