Speaker: Sherlia Shi, Post Doc, Department of Computer Science
Place  : Alltel Room, on the 1st floor of Hardymon Building
Time   : Thursday, Novermber 21, 2:30-3:30pm

Design of Overlay Networks for Internet Multicast

In this talk I will present a part of my dissertation research on overlay
multicast network design, conducted at the Applied Research Lab,
Washington University in St. Louis. Here is an excerpt from my
dissertation abstract:

Overlay multicast holds promise for the realization of large scale
Internet multicast services. An overlay network is a virtual topology
constructed on top of the Internet infrastructure. The concept of overlay
networks enables multicast to be deployed as a service network rather than
a network primitive mechanism, allowing deployment over heterogeneous
networks without the need of universal network support. This dissertation
addresses the network design aspects of overlay networks to provide
scalable multicast services in the Internet. The resources and the network
cost in the context of overlay networks are different from that in
conventional networks, presenting new challenges and new problems to
solve. Our design goals are the maximization of network utility (from the
service provider's point of view), and improved service quality (from the
end user's point of view). As the overall network design problem is
extremely complex, we divide the problem into three components: the
efficient management of session traffic (multicast routing), the
provisioning of overlay network resources (bandwidth dimensioning) and
overlay topology optimization (service placement). The combined solution
provides a comprehensive procedure for planning and managing an overlay
multicast network.