A Resource Prediction Engine for Efficient Multimedia Services Provision

Introduction

The continuously increasing users’ network activities and the escalating amount of information that they generate within the Internet have set the basis for the convergence between networks and media, paving the way towards the Future Media Internet (“Consumer Internet Traffic 2012-2017,” 2014). As a result of this on-going convergence, citizens are already witnessing profound transformations on the way they communicate and interact among each other, as well as with various entities that constitute their living/working environments. For the first time, human relationships that were fostered in face-to-face interactions – which predominantly provided the building blocks of social structure – are nowadays complemented by communications that occur in virtual environment (cyberspace) at a much faster pace. Driving forces are the recent advances in connected media technologies and social networks, supported by the widespread deployment of broadband infrastructures and Cloud Computing facilities, along with a new breed of user-equipment that integrates communication and computation capabilities. All of them are rapidly transforming the environment(s) that citizens are surrounded by, as they introduce new kinds of interactions between humans and objects. Hence, in this evolving Future Media environment, it is normal for citizens to demand the kind of experiences that they are accustomed to in their daily/real lives, i.e., no longer interact with only their own media in a “user-centric” approach, but be able to form groups in an ad-hoc manner and interact each other for sharing their experiences in a “community-centric” approach. Altogether, a community-centric media ecosystem emerges as a cross-breeding of networked/connected media and social networks, where citizens can create, share, or even trade their experiences (be called “Media Events”), within different contexts (e.g., home, business, mobile, etc.) and with maximum possible (i.e., better-than-best-effort) Quality of Experience (QoE).

Within the term “Media Event”, it is anticipated not only real-world events that citizens experience in their daily lives (i.e. entertainment, sports, educational, emergency, cultural services/applications, etc.), but also implicitly and possibly automatically generated virtual ones, stemming from citizens’ social network activity (within cyberspace), which may often be highly correlated with their real-life experiences. In this respect, every Media Event is the synthesis of a number of content, service, network/IT and social elements – each one with its intrinsic rules and characteristics – which citizens administrate and coordinate through an interactive process. Towards conveying Media Events following a user/community-centric approach with maximum possible Quality of Experience, Media Delivery plays a key role. Media Delivery is the assembly of communication protocols and mechanisms, through which Media Events are delivered over a given medium. Media Delivery calls for new architectures, associated technologies (i.e. functionalities and mechanisms) supporting their synergy, in order to meet emerging requirements and increase the quality that citizens experience, either individually or as part of a community group.