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.