Scalable Architectures for Multimedia Communications in Education and Entertainment

Abstract

Edutainment is the synergy of education and entertainment in media creation, presentation, anddelivery. With respect to the evolving network and storage architectures, and the World-Wide Web, information delivery for edutainment is now consumer-centered than provider-centered. New information model or practice has to be in place to support structured distributed information at anytime and anywhere. Scalable solutions to serve large user community become prominent issues to pursue.This work has four focused areas of study in view of scalable system. First, a model for the network-based learning environment was developed for many previously unknown or unclear issues. The study further addresses the cost-effective service architectures for continuous media delivery, which is the key ingredient of multimedia. It then focuses on scaling edutainment with adaptive load sharing & scheduling schemes for continuous media delivery with short duration. A new application framework, virtual network laboratory, was developed as a proof of concept for consumer-centered information delivery.An effective network-based learning environment provides synchronous and asynchronous education to learners. An intriguing aspect is how to model a lecture in terms of pre-, in-, and post-class information. The proposed lecture model is regarded as an activity consisting of three elements: materials, presentation, and interaction. A lecture specification defines the activity and reference relationship.This study then explores the modularity and scalability of the storage, host I/O, and network subsystems. A particular on-demand service called Karaoke-on-Demand forms the base of study. An approach using hierarchical architecture is presented in view of 1) distributing media data at different storage levels based on popularity, 2) modularizing the server system as well as service hierarchy, and 3) expanding service levels to reduce potential hot-spot access.To address the performance and readiness of scalable service, the author proposed and evaluated a few adaptive load sharing policies for continuous media, which coupled with the proposed Two-phase List Scheduling scheme.The last part addresses the concept and develops a framework for creating a remotely accessible virtual network laboratory. It can expand student access and eliminate many of the time, geographical, and cost constraints that currently exist.