Finally! We have a thesis topic!

After deliberating, thinking, pondering over and over again for more than a month, Cliff and I have reached the final decision.

Our thesis topic is on: An Optimized Routing Solution for Streaming Media.

Thesis advisers: Dr. Pierre U. Tagle, William Yu

Managerial aspects (for MIS project): Peter Martin Gomez

Technical adviser: Wilson Chua, President of Bitstop Networks

Evidently, this is not a very descriptive topic title and may lead one to think of the lack of credulity and concreteness that would lead to a substantial project proposal. With a lot at stake (mine, Cliff’s and Martin’s graduation!), heavy research required, and an actual on-site location to test, makes it an interesting and a challenging thesis project. That’s what attracted it to me in the first place. /grin/

Optimized routing solution can be a lot of things. Mainly, it will be a server-side application or an interface for a web app. It is somewhat similar to a load-balancing application and should use similar algorithms but with added stuff like support for streaming media (video and web radio), and nodes on different locations, but with server load also in consideration. Basically it should find the shortest and less-load server (the node) based on the client’s location and redirect the client’s request to that. This project will be implemented to serve on 5 telco networks. That is, if it is a success (and it should be because our graduation depends on it!).

IP addresses and DNS’s to be mostly worked in with, BGP routes (?!), IP tables, etc. But I think it will be more than that. Martin says Sir Yu is interested. Perhaps in connection with programming parallel algorithms for load balancing? Should be similar to Akamai but simpler and must support for streaming media.

First, I want to know in complete detail, the intricacies of how streaming media works. There are a lot of web radio portals already and are more popular than streaming video because obviously video over the net is really slow. Protocols used for streaming and buffering may vary depending on software use. Assume Windows Media Player.

Read up for some background relevant for initial proposal:
Priestman, Chris – Web Radio: Radio Production for Internet Streaming
Shirazi, Behrooz – Scheduling and load balancing in parallel and distributed systems

There is no turning back and I must not regret this decision. Work, work, work! /sigh/