NOTTS – Next generation over the top multimedia services
In March 2016, the NOTTS project on Next generation Over-The-Top multimedia Services ended after three years of successful work. The project has provided technological solutions for all the involved stakeholders in the Over-the-top (OTT) arena, and as a result a NOTTS ecosystem has been provided.
Through this, NOTTS supplies the European OTT service providers with opportunities to take revenue from the improved business. The project has also investigated business models in which traditional network operators can be part of the OTT business. NOTTS contributes to this objective with a combination of technical network solutions and business development. Besides, the advanced methods for content distribution and technology for monitoring and controlling QoE (Quality of Experience) of OTT services that we have developed have a direct impact on the end users. Given that the contents and services they demand will be offered with a better quality, it directly impacts on customers’ satisfaction.
NOTTS provides a scalable and robust video-streaming solution based on different components able to deliver adapted contents to heterogeneous devices and networks that include quality assurance technology to improve customer satisfaction has been developed.
Components of the NOTTS solution include:
- Optimization of CDN (Content Delivery Networks) for OTT contents: New media distribution architectures, including peer-assisted solutions and local caching, have been analyzed using real traffic from our partners. Novel cross-disciplinary approaches to optimize the distribution of OTT contents.
- OTT Traffic Analysis: User demand patterns have been analyzed & impact of new consumption patterns have been investigated in terms of OTT traffic analysis.
- Quality Assurance: Methods for QoE estimation and Quality Assurance monitoring tools for CDN/OTT have been developed.
NOTTS performed the following main innovation activities:
- Definition of service architectures to support OTT contents with the best available quality levels, and determination of the impact of OTT service architecture on E2E (End-to-End) latency services, such as live OTT TV.
- New media distribution architectures, including peer-assisted solutions and local caching, have been analyzed using real traffic data from our partners. User demand patterns have been analyzed and impacts of new consumption patterns have been investigated.
- Methods for QoE estimation and Quality Assurance monitoring tools for CDN and OTT have been developed. QoE modelling for CDN services and adaptive video streaming, as well as user profile analysis.
A total number of 27 products have been impacted by the project. The high overall quality of the scientific work and innovation results are shown by the large amount of papers accepted (77) in most relevant international symposiums, journals and conferences, including 4 contribution to standards (ISO MPEG/DASH, DASH Industry forum, VQEG and TM Forum). In addition, 33 reports (21 deliverables and 12 milestones) have been completed; some of them open to public in order to disseminate the produced results. The high quality outcome of the project has also been manifested in the positive feedback received during the six exhibitions and booths carried out (Celtic Events, Qualinet Summer School, NEM summit, ITU Workshop on QoS/QoE, IWQM’14, etc.).
Future research in this area will extend its scope to monitoring and control of QoE in large scale media distribution architectures under the EIT-Digital NFMD and Eureka Celtic Plus MONALIS, where NOTTS partners are continuing the activities in this research line.
About NOTTS
The consortium gathers the main European companies involved in network management and Quality of Experience from Finland, France, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Project partners represent a fair mix between large industry enterprises (4), service providers (3), academics/research centres (5) and SMEs (8).
Further information is available at http://projects.celticplus.eu/notts/index.php/Main_Page
