Multimedia Communications and Service on the Internet (ETE 436) Lecture 05

Prime University
2A/1, Darus Salam Road, Mirpur-1, Dhaka-1216, Bangladesh Faculty of Engineering Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering Course Conducted by: Shuvodip Das Multimedia Communications and Service on the Internet ETE 436 Lecture 05

Broadband Multiservice Networks Broadband Multiservice Networks were designed to public switched networks to support a wide range of multimedia communication applications. As a Broadband network it provides bit rate of more than 2 Mbps which is higher than ISDN. Thats why sometimes its called Broadband ISDN (B-ISDN). In the initial era of video communication ISDN couldnt provide higher bit rate required and B-ISDN was used mainly for video communication. B-ISDN uses Cell Switching Network. Cell Switching Network provides flexibility of using different bit rates for different multimedia applications.

Fig: Example of an ATM Broadband Multiservice Network

To achieve this flexibility, all the different media types associated with a particular multimedia applications are 1st converted in digital form. These are then integrated together and the resulting binary stream is divided into multiple fixed-sized packets called Cells. This mode of operation of varying rate of transfer of cells is known as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). As we can see in the figure, Broadband Multiservice Network consisting of ATM-MAN and ATM-LAN and traditional high speed LAN. Here, ATM-MAN is being used as a high-speed backbone network to interconnect a number of LANs. Multimedia Applications: i. ii. iii. Interpersonal Communications Interactive Applications over the Internet Entertainment Applications.

Multimedia Communications and Service on the Internet (ETE 436) Lecture 05

Interpersonal Communication: Interpersonal Communications involve speech, image, text or video. Speech only Interpersonal Communication: Example of Speech only Interpersonal Communication is Telephony service in which telephones are connected to PSTN/ISDN/Cellular phone network or a PBX. To initiate telephone calls through the PC it requires a telephone interface card and associated software known as Computer Telephony Integration or CTI. Advantages of using PC instead of conventional telephone are its simplicity and efficiency, ability to provide additional services as voice mail and teleconferencing voice-mail beside telephony. Voice mails are stored in voice mail server. PC to PC telephony service is supported through Internet. Telephony over the Internet is also known as packet voice or because the network protocol associated with the Internet that is why its often be called the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). PC connected to the Internet can call to a telephone that is connected to a PSTN/ISDN, needs an interworking unit known as telephone gateway.

Fig: Speech-only interpersonal communications: public and private switched telephone networks. Q. What is Teleconferencing Call? Ans.: Teleconferencing calls involve multiple interconnected telephones/PCs. Each person can hear and talk to all of the others involved in the call. This type of call is known variously as a conference call or since it involves a telephone network, a teleconferencing call is sometimes called Audio Conferencing
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Multimedia Communications and Service on the Internet (ETE 436) Lecture 05

call. It requires a central unit known as an audio bridge which provides the necessary support to set up a conference call automatically.

What are the procedures of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)? Ans.: Internet can be used to support the service Telephony. Telephony over the Internet is also known as packet voice or because the network protocol associated with the Internet that is why its often be called the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP involvesi. ii.

PC to PC telephone call and PC to telephone connected in PSTN/ISDN. PC to PC telephone call: In PC to PC telephone call, the standard addresses that are used to identify individual computers connected to the Internet are used in the same way as for a data transfer applications.

PC to telephone connected in PSTN/ISDN: When a PC connected to the Internet needs to make a call to a telephone that is connected to a PSTN/ISDN, because they both operate in circuit mode, an interworking unit known as a telephony gateway is used. PC 1 st sends a request to make a call to pre-allocated telephony gateway using the latters Internet address. Then gateway verifies the authentication of user to use the service. Gateway requests the source PC the telephone number of the called party. On receipt of this, the source gateway initiates a session (call) with the telephony gateway nearest to the called party using the Internet address of the gateway. The called gateway then initiates a call to the recipient telephone using its telephone number and the standard call setup procedure of the PSTN/ISDN. When the called party answers then called gateway signals back to the PC user-through the source gateway-then the call can commence. A similar procedure is followed to clear the call on completion.

Fig: Telephony over the Internet Text Only Interpersonal Communication: Example of Text only Interpersonal Communication is electronic mail (email). For that the most widespread network is Internet. User at home can get access to Internet through ISP and
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Multimedia Communications and Service on the Internet (ETE 436) Lecture 05

PSTN/ISDN and business users can access either through an enterprise network or a site/campus network. Associated with each network is a set of one or more server computers called Email Server. These servers collectively contain a mailbox for each user connected to that network. A user can both create and deposit mail into his/her mailbox and read mail from it. Both the email servers and the internetwork gateway operate using the standard Internet communication protocols.

Fig: Text only E-mail Interpersonal Network

Fig: Email message format Speech and Video Interpersonal Communication: An example of speech and video interpersonal communication that integrates speech and video is called Video Telephony. For home use, terminal is dedicated to provide video phone service. For office, terminal used to provide the video phone service together with a range of other services. Multimedia system includes video, camera, microphone, speaker and display screen. The network must provide a two-way communication channel between the two parties of sufficient bandwidth to support the integrated speech and video generated by each terminal/PC. Offices use Desktop video conferencing call involving multiple geographically distributed sites. In order to support video conferencing, there is a central unit called a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) or sometimes called Video Conferencing Server. For Desktop conferencing, multiple integrated speech and video communication channels, one for each participant, would require. Therefore, more bandwidth will be required. To solve the problem MCU is introduced. Integrated speech and video information stream from each participant is sent to the MCU
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Multimedia Communications and Service on the Internet (ETE 436) Lecture 05

which then selects just a single information steam to send to each participant. For example, with a voice activated MCU, whenever the MCU detects a participant speaking, it relays the information stream from that participant to all the other participants. In this way, only a single two way communication channel between each location and MCU is required thereby reducing bandwidth needed. For Multicasting, two way simultaneous integrated speech and video information streams to/from all parties are established.

Fig: Speech and video interpersonal communications: a) 2 party video telephone call b) video conferencing using an MCU c) Videoconferencing using a broadcast network.

Interactive Applications over the Internet: In addition to a range of interpersonal communication applications, Internet is also used to support a range of interactive applications; the most widely used application is the World Wide Web (WWW) or web Server. Total information is stored on all the servers. Each document comprises a linked set of pages and the linkages between the pages are known as Hyperlinks. These are pointers or references that refer to either other pages of the same document or to any other document within the total web. Documents comprising only text are created using hypertext, while those comprising multimedia information are created using Hypermedia. In WWW, each document has a unique address called Uniform Resource Locator (URL). URL identifies both the location of the server on the Internet where the first page of the document is stored and also the file reference on the server. The first page of a document is known as the homepage and all the hyperlinks on this and the other pages have similar URLs associated with them. For writing document, a standard format is used called Hypertext Markup Language (MTML). However, a client function is called a Browser and there are a number of user-friendly browsers available to explore the contents of the web.

Multimedia Communications and Service on the Internet (ETE 436) Lecture 05

Fig: Interactions with a Wide Web Server (Schematic)

Fig: Hypertext text linkages between the pages of a set of documents. Media Types:

Communication Mode:

Fig: Communication modes a) unicast b) broadcast and c) multicast.

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Multimedia Communications and Service on the Internet (ETE 436) Lecture 05

Network QoS: The operational parameters associated with a communication channel through a network are known as the Network Quality of Service (QoS) parameter and collectively they determine the suitability of the channel in relation to its use for a particular application. QoS parameters of Circuit Switched Network: QoS parameters associated with a constant bit rate channel that is setup through a circuit switched network includes: i. ii. iii. The bit rate The mean bit error rate and The transmission error rate.

If Probability of BER = P Number of bits in a block = N Then assuming random error, Probability of a block containing a bit error, PB is given by: PB = 1 (1 P)N QoS Parameter of Packet Switched Network: QoS parameter associated with a packet-switched network includes: i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. Application QoS: The network QoS parameters define what the particular network being used provides rather than what the applications requires. The application has its QoS parameters associated with it. In an application involving images, QoS parameters may include a minimum image resolution and size. On the other hand, applications involving videos, QoS parameter may include digitizing format and refresh rate may be defined. The application QoS parameters that relate to the network include:
i.

The maximum packet size The mean packet transfer rate The mean packet error rate The mean packet transfer delay The worse-case jitter and The transmission delay.

ii. iii. iv. v.

The required bit rate or mean packet transfer rate The maximum startup delay The maximum end-to-end delay The maximum delay variation/jitter. The maximum round-trip delay.

Media Types used in applications:

Multimedia Communications and Service on the Internet (ETE 436) Lecture 05

Network Types: