Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics

The main purpose of the subject is learning the applications of the media communication perspectives of the Internet. The students will obtain fundamental knowledge of the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication and the basic applications as the files sharing and application-level multicast, too.

Term week 1: Overview of the Internet-based communication, and the basics of the computer networking. The IP unicast routing methods. Transport level protocols for media streaming: UDP, TFRC and other TCP-friendly protocols.

Term week 2:The multicast communication model. Comparison of the IP multicast and the application-level multicast.

Term week 3: The Internet Group Management Protocol and its different versions. The Source Discovery Protocol and its different versions.

Term week 4: The IP multicast routing algorithms. The primitive methods (flooding, spanning tree). The source based multicast trees. The forward shortest path algorithm.

Term week 5: The reverse shortest path algorithms: Reverse Path Forwarding, Reverse Path Broadcast, Truncated Reverse Path Broadcast, Reverse Path Multicasting

Term week 6: The shared multicast trees. The core based tree.

Term week 7: The multicast routing protocols. The sparse mode and dense mode multicasting. The various multicast service models: any source multicast, source-filtered multicast, source specific multicast

Term week 8: The detailed introduction of the PIM-SM multicast routing protocol.

Term week 9: The reliable IP multicast transmission. The so-called multicast transport protocols. The common properties of the multicast transport protocols.

Term week 10: The various transport or session level multicast reliability mechanisms.

Term week 11: Media servers. The media server based streaming. The RTP/RTCP based media streams. The joint operation of the RTP/RTCP and the HTTP. The methods of the conferencing tools, especially the messenger services.

Term week 12: Comparison of the peer-to-peer and the client/server communication models.

Term week 13: The unstructured overlay networks and its applications. The structured overlay networks and the grid computing.

Term week 14: The future trends of the Internet-based communication, review of the emerging software and hardware technologies.

4 hours/week lectures and computer based demonstration with practical examples and case studies. Occasionally, there will be on-line presentation as well.

a.  In the term: one mid-semester check. Requirement for granting the signature: >= 2 (satisfactory). The signature is valid for the next semester, too.

b. In the exam period: Way of examination: oral

c. Exam before the examination period: Possible.

On mid-semester check.

If a student fails to turn up at any mid-semester checks, the failed mid-semester check can be repeated in the term.
The failed mid-semester check can be repeated in the repeat period only once.

By appointment with the lecturer.

Mandatory curriculum

Periodically updated on-line materials: MS Power Point presentations, created by Dr. Gábor Hosszú.

Gábor Hosszú: “Current Multicast Technology” chapter in book, Encyclopedia of Information Science and Information Technology, Vol. I-V., Editor: Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, Idea Group Reference, Hershey, USA, 2005, ISBN: 1-59140-553-X, pp. 660-667.

Gábor Hosszú: “Introduction to Multicast Technology” chapter in book, Multimedia Networking: Technology, Management & Applications, Editor: Syed Mahbubur Rahman, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, USA, 2001, ISBN: 1-930708-14-9, pp. 369-411.

Optional, auxiliary resources

Gábor Hosszú & Zoltán Czirkos: “Reliability Issues of the Multicast-Based Mediacommunication” chapter in book, Encyclopedia of Multimedia Technology and Networking, Second edition (3 Volumes, 1756 p.), Editor: Margherita Pagani, Information Science Reference, Hershey, USA, 2009, Vol. III, pp. 1215-1223, ISBN13: 9781605660141.

Zoltán Czirkos & Gábor Hosszú: “Application of the P2P Model for Adaptive Host Protection” chapter in book, Encyclopedia of Multimedia Technology and Networking, Second edition (3 Volumes, 1756 p.), Editor: Margherita Pagani, Information Science Reference, Hershey, USA, 2009, Vol. I, pp. 54-60, ISBN13: 9781605660141.

Dr. Hosszú Gábor: Az internetes kommunikáció informatikai alapjai, Novella Kiadó, Budapest 2005, ISBN 963 9442 51 8.