Week 3 Day 5 P4 (2010)

Throughout this week, we have constantly testing out both IP Cameras with the cisco switch. Base on our findings, we managed to capture the video live feed. However, to configure the switch, we need a putty software which we still failed to do it. It keeps on stating "Connection REFUSED" We are still working out on this and finding the solution as soon as possible.
Changing of IP Address of the IP Camera seems to have a problem too. We did refer to the previous batch manual but it still revert back to the old IP Address. Similiarly, we will do more research in helping us to solve this issue. For this week, we have also started to do abit of the customer report, needed by Mr Lam.


:)
Saberina & Hanifah

Day 1 Week 4 (2010 P4)

Managed to stream 2 live video and one video at the same time

Thomas to the rescue :D

Managed to complete the phase 1 and 2 sucessfully. Our next tast will be, researching more about the scripts for IxChariot.

:)

Saberina & Hanifah

SaaS (Software as a Service)

● Direct consumption of an application by end users

● No inherent relationship to IaaS or PaaS but underlying infrastructure affects reliability and scalability of service

● Examples: Salesforce.com, Google Apps

PaaS (Platform as a Service)

● Typically additional services/abstraction layered on IaaS foundation

● Simplify development (e.g. app server services)

● Simplify operations (e.g. scaling with grid)

● Examples: Google App Engine, Force.com

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

● Provision processing, storage, networking, and other computing resources

● Deployer configures and maintains operating systems, other software, and logical application “wiring”

● Examples: Private Clouds, Amazon EC2, IBM Business Test/Dev Cloud

Types of Cloud Computing's Clouds

1. Public Clouds: Service Provider owned and managed Access Over Web typically by per-per-use.

2. Private Clouds: Privately owned and managed with restricted Access (but could be hosted externally).

3. Hybrid Clouds: Interoperable combination of public and private clouds.

There are 3 cloud service types, namely:
SaaS: Software-As-A-Service (Applications, Processes, Information/Knowledge as a service)
PaaS: Platform-As-A-Service (virtualised optimised middlewares such as Operating systems, etc, etc)

IaaS: Infrastructure-As-A-Service (virtualised servers, storage and networks, etc).

AN “OFFICIAL” CLOUD DEFINITION

“...a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

- U.S. National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)

Day 5 Week2 (P4 2010)

Tested out the IP Cameras, apparently the Arecontvision camera is not functioning due to the switch that does not support PoE. The D-Link camera was working, just that the video content does not displayed at the Server PC but it was sucessfully stream to the Client PC. Throughout the process, we encountered some problems with the IP Address. The Server PC and the Client PC uses the private IP Addresses which cannot have access to the internet. The D-Link camera installation needs the internet connection to proceed. According to Kenneth, we need to use the Putty software in order to access to the internet, which we will give it a try on next monday.

:)

Saberina & Hanifah

Week 2 Day 2 (P4 2010)

Went to the library to find books that might help in our research since we want to know more about RTP Protocols in details. It was indeed a great idea as we managed to find few good books. The books that we borrowed are

Video Over IP : Author : Wes Simpson
The Streaming Media Handbook : Eyal Menin
Scalable Video On Demand : Adaptive Internet-based distribution : John Wiley

We also did tried the phase 1 which is streaming from server PC to Client PC. We managed to follow the steps, however we do encounter some problems. We are still trying to figure out the solution.


:)
Saberina & Hanifah

Week 1 Day 4 (P4 2010)

Referring to the blog entry on Friday 3rd December 2010, we have concluded that the server PC is using the VLC media to capture live feed from the IP Camera. The encoder, which is the Broadband Bonding Network Appliance (BBNA) will encrypt the video which will be then send over to the internet using the 3G lines by M1, Singtel and Starhub. Over to the Client site, the BBNA will decrypt the video and stream it to the Client PC.


:)
Saberina & Hanifah

Week 1 Day 3

We found out that the previous batch of FYP students have used the real-time protocols which is the Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) and the Real-Time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP). We will be using these protocols for our project. For the compression of the video, we will be using the H.264 codec also known as the MPEG-4 Part 10.

Software used will be IxChariot, a software-based assessment tool to measure key performance metrics such as throughput, jitters, delays and latency. Wireshark is a packet analyzer, used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communication protocol development and education. Lastly is the VLC media player.

Hardware used is the IP cameras. We are waiting for some equipments that will be here next week.

=)
Saberina and Hanifah

Week 1 Day 2

We found out about the definition of video streaming. It is basically the delivery of video from a website or server to the end user. The end user is able to view the video playback while the video content itself it still being downloaded to the end user’s computer. Smooth video streaming experience depends on numerous factors.

First, the end user’s internet connection speed,
Second, the website or streaming server’s speed and load to serve out the video stream.
And lastly, the way the video is encoded to optimize the video streaming effectiveness.

There are a number of codecs used to compress video file. One of them is the H.264 also known as MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding). It is a standard for video compression, it offers significantly greater compression than its predecessors. The H.264 standard can provide DVD-quality video at under 1 Mbps, and is considered promising for full-motion video over wireless, satellite, and ADSL Internet connections.

H.264 video streams need to be packetized for transportation over networks. The transport protocol for H.264 streams is the Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP). Since the Real Time Transport Protocol is the transport protocol for H.264 video streams, the H.264 packets are encapsulated by RTP frames.

=)
Saberina & Hanifah

yesterday marks the end of FYPp310

FYPp310. another of my fondest memories, fun times in a lab with friends which people say boring?? .

gonna miss everyone in the lab, starting from those who never went to China, to those who accompanied me to Lunch, to those who come so early in the morning to stare at me from outside, to those who waited outside L641 for lunch, to those who taught me at L641, to those that were in L312, L309, L313, L314, L310, L335 and especially my team members, Peng Chin and Thomas and my Supervisor Mentor Mr Lam Wee Wah!

L31212 computer byebye, hope you like my stickers and post-it. don't be laggy.
L31212 chair, stop dropping so much hair!
L31212 drawer; come on, let loose a bit!

Thank you very Much!

Final Year Project

Project Objectives

Our project objective is to test and evaluate the Quality of Service using Broadband Bonding Network Appliances to stream Live Video.
What we need to:
- Research on IXIA Testing and analysis
- IP camera testing
- IXIA Loop Test with broadband (with live test)
- Make sure everything complete
- IXIA Loop Test
- Broadband
- Encoder/Decoder and IP Cam
- Data Analysis and documentation

Project Specifications

Basically, our project is to set up this network above, so that, we can actually test the quality of service using IXIA software, IxChariot to generate out the required results like throughput, jitter, delays.

Firstly, we used VLC player on server PC to capture the live feed from the IP camera. Then, the server PC will streams the live feed video to the client PCs via internet. The encoder which will be the Broadband Bonding Network Appliance, the Mushroom Network Truffle 6401 will actually encrypt the video and sends in different parts using Broadband Modules by individual Internet Service Providers (ISP) such as M1, Starhub, and SingTel over the internet. The client Broadband Bonding Network Appliance and Broadband Modules will receive all the parts and decrypt the video.

Finally, the client PC receives the live feed streams directly from the server PC. We are using IxChariot as a controller which test the quality of service of the video streamed to the client PC, whether the same quality received is the same as the video running on the server PC and analyses the results.

Project Implementation

Phase 1

The server PC streams a video file over the switch to client PC. On the server PC, a video file will be run on VLC player and start to stream using a multicast/unicast address. On the client PC, the multicast/unicast codes will be enter in the VLC player and start to play. The client PC can view the same video the server PC is viewing but there are some delays in between like around 5 seconds of delays.

Phase 2

Firstly, vlc player will capture the live feed from IP camera by entering the correct url according the model of IP camera. The IP camera we using is AreCont AV5105DN.

To retrieve the live feed from this IP camera is rtsp://ip_address/h264.sdp? res=half&x0=0&yo=0&x1=0&y1=0&qp=26&ssn=1&doublescan=0&bitrate=2048&fps=1.

The live feed will be capture into the VLC player and can start to stream the video to the clients by using multicast/unicast address. The client will successfully receive the streaming video from the server. On the client PC, there is 5 seconds of delay when compare the view on the server PC.

Phase 3

For phase 3, IXIA software, IxChariot is installed on the controller PC. When the server PC streams the live feed to the client, we’ll use IxChariot the test the quality of service on both endpoints device which is the server PC and client PC. Then we use the IxChariot to retrieve the throughput, jitter and delay.

Phase 4

Firstly, the servers PC retrieve the live feed from IP camera and streams to the client PC. Before the client PC receives, the video will be encrypted by the encoder which is Broadband Bonding Network Appliance and sends using the 3G lines.

There will be 3 Internet Service Providers such as SingTel, Starhub and M1. Then, the data will be transmitting over the internet. The client's decoder will receives all the data using their 3G lines and decrypt into the original video file.

Finally, the client will successfully receive the live feed and can be view at the same time. Other than that, the controller will use IxChariot to test the quality of services from both endpoints and generate the graph of throughput, jitter and delays.