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                   B O S T O N   U N I V E R S I T Y
                                       
                      Computer Science Department
                                       
                          C O L L O Q U I U M
                                       
Cooperative Solutions to the Dynamic Management of Communication Resources

			     Robin Kravets

			  College of Computing

		    Georgia Institute of Technology


			   Monday, March 1st
                                       
				11:00am
		       (Coffee served at 10:45pm)

                                       
			 Seminar Room / MCS 135
                                       

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        Support for large-scale distributed interactive applications
	demands resource management infrastructures that understands the
	relationship between application requirements and the services
	available from the network.  To provide such support, we have
	designed and implemented an end-to-end communication layer which
	mediates between an application and a network service.  By using
	a dynamic communication framework, the communication layer can
	adaptively configure an application's communication parameters
	as demanded by changes in both service requirements and resource
	availability.  Adaptation decisions maximize the perceived
	benefits a specific communication configuration offers to the
	application, by permitting applications to provide dynamic
	service quality requirements to the communication layer in the
	form of ``payoff functions''.  As a result, the communication
	layer supports precisely the cost-quality tradeoffs the user is
	willing to make.

        The effectiveness of these techniques is demonstrated with three
	different cost-quality tradeoff scenarios.  The first scenario
	explores the use of a variable reliability framework that
	realizes reduced transfer delays by exploiting tradeoffs with
	respect to the reliability of message communication.  The second
	scenario involves power management for mobile computers,
	including techniques for saving energy during active
	communication, as well as during idle periods.  The
	communication layer exploits certain aspects of mobile
	communication protocols to understand the tradeoffs between
	energy consumption and transfer delays.  The third scenario
	adapts communications performed within distributed virtual
	environments. For the multiple simultaneous data streams used in
	such environments, the communication layer must consider the
	effects of changes in the quality of one stream on the quality
	of other streams, as well as the effects on the performance of
	the application itself.

Host: Mark Crovella

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