DAT3 project proposals 2007

　

　

#1 Peer-to-peer bidding system

　

Introduction

　

Traditional automatic bidding system such as that of eBay operates in browser/server mode. The user as an employer can publish and invite tenders for her items on the web. The user as a buyer can bid for the items offered by the employers. During the bidding session all relevant information are collected by the server. Based on these information the server makes the comparisons, the final decisions, and the one-by-one notifications to the buyers.

　

Despite the many advantages of traditional browser/server bidding such as a large variety of goods, there are still some disadvantages. One is that in traditional browser/server system you are usually required to be registered as an affiliated member by providing credit card information. Thus you cannot acquire or abandon a membership very freely and easily. Another is that traditional browser/server bidding system may charge a processing fee, such as the insertion fee and the final value fee. Still another is that in traditional browser/server system, successful transactions heavily rely on the proper functioning of the bidding system at the server side.

　

To overcome the aforementioned disadvantages, we propose to use a distributed peer-to-peer real-time on-line bidding system. By 'distributed' we mean there is no central administrative authority that makes the comparisons, decisions, and one-by-one notifications. By 'peer-to-peer' we mean that each participant has the same privilege, obligation, and responsibility in the bidding session. By 'real-time' we mean that the updated bidding information can propagate to other nodes in a timely way.

　

Project

　

The main objective of this project is to design and implement a real distributed system. Another emphasis will be laid on the study of distributed algorithms, especially on how distributed consensus can be efficiently achieved.

　

　

　

#2 Distributing and sharing multimedia resources

　

Introduction

　

Nowadays there are many free multimedia resources on the web. The websites youtube, mofile, myspace, to name just a few, can provide a huge variety of video or audio clips. Despite the many amusements and entertainments that they bring us, there are still some limitations. One is that these websites provide only low-priority, limited-bandwidth download service for non-VIP users, or do not provide download service at all, therefore we cannot save the videos for later watching. Another is that when the server is down or there is heavy on-demand load with some very hot video clips, we cannot watch them on-line smoothly. Besides, we might also have experienced the situation that we do not have enough space on our local disks to store the videos. Altogether these indicate that it could be a good idea to build a distributed multimedia library, so that we can have easy access to and share the video clips.

　

Project

　

This project involves the construction of a distributed file system in a peer-to-peer network. To ensure the availability and the robustness of the system and the quality of service, data replication techniques will be used.

　

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Reading Materials

　

Here are some survey articles on p2p file sharing, p2p content sharing, and overlay networks:

·         Tom Chothia, Konstantinos Chatzikokolakis. "A Survey of Anonymous Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing". LNCS 3823, 2005.

·         Ragib Hasan, Zahid Anwar, William Yurcik, Larry Brumbaugh, Roy Campbell. "A Survey of Peer-to-Peer Storage Techniques for Distributed File Systems". Proc. ITCC, 2005.

·         Stephanos Androutsellis-Theotokis, Diomidis Spinellis. "A survey of peer-to-peer content distribution technologies". ACM Computing Surveys, 2004.

·         Srikumar Venugopal, Rajkumar Buyya, Kotagiri Ramamohanarao. "A Taxonomy of Data Grids for Distributed Data Sharing, Management, and Processing". ACM Computing Surveys, 2006.

·         Ying Cai, Ashwin Natarajan, Johnny Wong. "Scheduling of Peer-to-Peer Video Services". IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 25, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007.

·         Yi-Cheng Tu, Jianzhong Sun, Mohamed Hefeeda, Sunil Prabhakar. "An Analytical Study of Peer-to-Peer Media Streaming Systems". ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications, Vol. 1, No. 4, November 2005, Pages 354–376.

·         Eng Keong Lua, Jon Crowcroft, Marcelo Pias, Ravi Sharma, Steven Lim. "A Survey and Comparison of Peer-to-Peer Overlay Network Schemes". IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEY AND TUTORIAL, MARCH 2004.