(New Question) Motivation
As the leading Study Group on multimedia applications, terminals and systems,
including ubiquitous applications, SG 16 continues to make advances in
multimedia communication and has been successfully in producing numerous
Recommendations which address topical areas such as multimedia terminal design,
home networking, multimedia architecture, audiovisual communications, multimedia
conferencing, media coding, multimedia content, multimedia service description,
etc.
For all these multimedia service systems, there might be some extra
multimedia functions deployed to improve service delivery and service
implementation, such as quality of service (QoS) guarantee, service usability
and efficiency, security and so on. These functions normally are not fundamental
components of the multimedia service/application and are sometimes independent
of a particular multimedia system. Therefore, these functions could be provided
by comparatively common entities or stand-alone systems.
Deep-packet inspection (DPI) is one of this kind of functions. DPI can
inspect the packet/flow and then identify service/applications types to make
identification, control and statistics for the various applications possible, to
guarantee bandwidth consuming efficiency or quality of experience (QoE) of the
subscribed services, and so on. Another case is a network-based multimedia
delivery function, which can be used to accelerate media distribution by
delivering media flow more efficiently e.g. for IPTV, visual surveillance, and
e-learning. Multimedia NAT control and firewall traversal function is also
considered in the scope of this kind of functions.
With the current continuous growing of multimedia services and the
diversification of the users’ demands, the multimedia functions mentioned above
become more and more important to improve service quality and assist multimedia
service deployment. In the future, more similar multimedia functions are
expected to be used both in the NGN environment and in other networks, hence
this Question will focus on the study of the various multimedia functions to
guarantee multimedia service implementation.
Study items
Study items to be considered include, but are not limited to:
- Network-based multimedia delivery function deployed in the network: to
distribute, cache, store and deliver the content. They handle the media control
messages for controlling media flows.
- Multimedia inspection function: to identify service/application types.
- Multimedia discovery and selection function: to advertise complex descriptions
of available or already running services, while customers use this function to
compose complex queries for locating a particular network service or service
provider out of hundreds of thousands of accessible services and service
providers.
- Context awareness adaptation: multimedia service system is required to be
aware of and adapt to frequent changes in the environment, such as variable
bandwidth, transport delay, device capability and instability etc when the user
accesses the system from different sites/statuses.
- Transcoding: to convert video and audio codec between different formats (in
coordination with the media coding Questions)
- Multimedia location function: to support multimedia service which can provide
location information of the user or use this kind of information for enhanced
user experience
- Multimedia traceability function: to collect information of location change to
allow individual routing, and information of distribution site identifications
- Legacy service emulation/simulation: to realize traditional service
capabilities in IP networks so that a user can have the identical experience as
provided by traditional services
- Other multimedia functions in NGN and other networks
- Considerations on how to help measure and mitigate climate change
The functions to be studied in this Question are intended to be
service-agnostic. For different service systems, some customized study may be
needed to account for the different specific context. If some function has been
studied deeply and this Question cannot cover it, a new Question may be created
to address all the aspects for that function.
Tasks
Tasks include, but are not limited to:
- Requirements of some functions
- Develop architecture specifications, such as the inspection technology,
inspection policy, delivery function, network topologies, robustness etc (1Q
2009)
- Detailed development of some functions
- Other new multimedia functions (2010+)
An up-to-date status of work under this Question is found in the SG 16 work
programme (http://itu.int/ITU-T/workprog/wp_search.aspx?isn_sg=554).
Relationships
Recommendations:
- F, G, H, I, Q, T, V, X, Y series Recommendations under the responsibility of
SG 16
Questions:
- 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 21, 22/16
Study Groups:
- ITU-T SGs 11 and 13, for NGN, IPTV and other matters
- ITU-T SGs dealing with IPTV
Other Bodies:
- 3GPP and related consortia
- IETF
|