O segmento das comunicações, já há alguns anos, vem passando por significativas transformações exigindo a interação entre ambientes tecnológicos convergentes heterogêneos, com qualidade na continuidade de serviços, para se manter competitivo, pois é este mercado que exige, constantemente, que mais recursos tecnológicos lhe sejam colocados à disposição. O ineditismo da proposta desenvolvida neste trabalho é a elaboração de um modelo para assegurar a continuidade da qualidade de serviço percebida pelo usuário final através de handover (ou handoff) vertical, o que caracteriza-se como uma necessidade de solução global, isto é, o modelo é genérico e independente da tecnologia, o que permite sua adoção em qualquer ambiente de rede existente aproveitando a capilaridade já disponível das redes legadas. É analisada também a situação na qual um usuário final esteja acessando simultaneamente serviços gerenciados por Provedores de Serviço distintos, o que conduz a duas situações possíveis: a) o usuário está acessando serviços distintos contratados a Provedores de Serviço diferentes; b) o usuário está acessando o mesmo serviço contratado a Provedores de Serviço distintos. Nesta última situação pode surgir a necessidade de disparar um processo de handover exigindo a decisão de qual dos Provedores o executará, de acordo com o SPHDA Service Providers Handover Decision Agreement. A metodologia adotada para o desenvolvido do modelo foi a RM-ODP - Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing, por abranger todos os aspectos técnicos e comerciais necessários à sua construção. / The sector of communications, for some years, has undergone significant changes requiring interaction between converging heterogeneous technology environments, with quality and continuity of services to stay competitive, because this market is that requires constantly more technological resources available. The novelty of the proposal developed in this work is the development of a model to ensure the continued quality of service perceived by end users via vertical handover (or handoff), which characterizes itself as a need for a global solution, i.e., the model is generic and technology independent, allowing its adoption in any network environment taking advantage of the capillary already available from legacy networks. It is also analyzed the situation in which an end user is simultaneously accessing services managed by different Service Providers, which leads to two possible situations: a) the user is accessing different services contracted to different Service Providers; b) the user is accessing the same service contracted to different Service Providers. In this last situation may be necessary to trigger a handover process requiring the decision of which the Providers shall execute it in accordance with the SPHDA - Service Providers Handover Decision Agreement. The methodology adopted for the model development was the RM-ODP - Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing, as it includes all technical and commercial aspects necessary for its construction.

Atualmente, os usuários desejam obter, fornecer, compartilhar e interagir com informações e serviços com conteúdo multimídia em qualquer lugar, a qualquer momento e com qualquer dispositivo. Para que isso seja possível, um dos grandes desafios é assegurar a QoS (Quality of Service) fim a fim (entre o usuário final e a organização provedora de serviço) para a disponibilização de serviços móveis e interativos com conteúdo multimídia para os usuários finais. Em geral esse tipo de serviço têm maior exigência de QoS, pois além dos parâmetros de redes, possuem parâmetros específicos para áudio, imagem e vídeo, além de exigirem sincronização de áudio e vídeo, e a QoS fim a fim deve considerar parâmetros de QoS sob a percepção do usuário final. Com isso, o objetivo deste trabalho é propor um método para o levantamento de parâmetros de QoS para o estabelecimento de USLAs (User Service Level Agreements - Acordo do Nível de Serviço do Usuário) entre a organização provedora de serviço e o usuário final para serviços móveis e interativos com conteúdo multimídia em um ambiente de convergência tecnológica. O método consiste em quatro passos: 1. identificação do serviço a ser oferecido ao usuário final e elaboração de um grafo em árvore, que tem como objetivo identificar outros serviços que podem compor o serviço a ser oferecido ao usuário final; 2. mapeamento dos parâmetros de QoS em um metamodelo; 3. validação do metamodelo, para que se possa extrair do metamodelo os parâmetros de QoS; 4. elaboração do USLA. Este trabalho propõe um primeiro passo para solucionar a falta de métodos padronizados para o estabelecimento de USLA para serviços móveis e interativos com conteúdo multimídia sob a percepção do usuário final. Além de facilitar a identificação e composição de serviços e parâmetros, por meio de um metamodelo que proporciona a integração de classes de serviços que podem ser facilmente reutilizadas e customizadas, de acordo, com o tipo de serviço oferecido pela organização provedora de serviço e pela necessidade do usuário final. / In these days the final users wish to obtain, to furnish and to interact using interactive services with multimedia content anywhere, anytime and with any kind of user device. One of the biggest challenges is to assure the End-to End Quality of Service (E2E QoS) in the delivering of the interactive and multimedia services for moving users. In general, this kind of users have more strict requirements needs, because, besides of the computer network parameters, they need specify specific parameters like sound, image and video and their synchronization, on the users\' point of the view - perceived QoS. The main objective of this thesis is to present the application of a method for eliciting the E2E QoS parameters aiming the establishment of the User Service Level Agreement - USLA between the service provider and the final user applied to interactive and mobile services with multimedia content, inserted on a technological convergence environment. The method is a four steps method that consists of (1) an identification of the service to be offered to the final user and the elaboration of a tree graph aiming the identification of the composition of the service by other services (2) mapping the QoS parameters in a metamodel (3) validation of the metamodel, and extraction of the E2E QoS parameters (4) elaboration the USLA. This thesis proposes a first step to solve the lack of standardized methods for the establishment of the USLA for interactive and mobile services with multimedia content under the users\' perception. Besides of facilitating the identification and the composition of services and parameters, using a metamodel, that provides the integration of classes of services, that can be easily reused and customized, according, with the type of service offered for the service provider to the final user.

Recently there is an emergence of many Internet applications such as multimedia, video conferencing, distributed interactive simulations (DIS), and high-performance scientific computations like Grid computing. These applications require huge amount of bandwidth and a viable communication paradigm to coordinate with multiple sources and destinations. Optical networks are the potential candidates for providing high bandwidth requirement. Existing communication paradigms include broadcast, and multicast. Hence supporting these paradigms over optical networks is necessary. Multicasting over optical networks has been well investigated in the literature. QoS policies implemented in IP does not apply for Wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) or optical burst switched (OBS) networks, as the optical counterpart for store-and-forward model does not exist. Hence there is a need to provision QoS over optical networks. These QoS requirements can include contention, optical signal quality, reliability and delay. To support these diverse requirements, optical networks must be able to manage the available resources effectively. Destinations participating in the multicast session are fixed (or rather static). Due to the random contention in the network, if at least one or more destination(s) is not reachable, requested multicast session cannot be established. This results in loss of multicast request with high probability of blocking. Incorporating wavelength converters (WCs) at the core nodes can decrease the contention loss, however WCs require optical-electrical-optical (O/E/O) conversion. This increases the delay incurred by optical signal. On the other hand all-optical WCs are expensive and increase the cost of the network if deployed. Goal of this thesis is, to provide hop-to-hop QoS on an existing all-optical network (AON) with no WC and optical regeneration capability. In order to minimize the request vi Abstract vii lost due to contention in AON, we propose a variation of multicasting called Quorumcasting or Manycasting. In Quorumcasting destinations can join (or leave) to (or from) the group depending on whether they are reachable or not. In other words destinations have to be determined rather than knowing them prior, as in the case of multicasting. Quorum pool is minimum number of destinations that are required to be participated in the session for successful accomplishment of the job (k be the size of quorum pool). Providing QoS for manycasting over OBS has not been addressed in the literature. Given the multicast group (with cardinality m > k) and the number of destinations required to be participated, the contribution of this work is based on providing necessary QoS. In this thesis we study the behavior of manycasting over OBS networks. In OBS networks, packets from the upper-layer (such as IP, ATM, STM) are assembled and a burst is created at the edge router. By using O/E/O conversion at the edge nodes, these optical bursts are scheduled to the core node. Control header packet or burst header packet (BHP) is sent to prior to the transmission of burst. The BHP configures the core nodes and the burst is scheduled on the channel after certain offset time. In the first part of the thesis, we explain the different distributed applications with primary focus on Grid over OBS (GoOBS). We study the loss scenario due contention and inadequate signal quality for an unicast case in OBS network. We further extend this to manycasting. We modify the BHP header fields to make the burst aware of not only contention on the next-hop link, but also bit-error rate (BER). By using recursive signal and noise power relations, we calculate the BER (or q-factor) of the link and schedule the burst only if the required BER threshold is met. Thus all the bursts that reach the next-hop node ensure that contention and BER constraint are met. This are called “Impairment-Aware (IA) Scheduling”. Burst loss in the network increases due to BER constraint. Hence we propose algorithms to decrease the burst loss and simultaneously providing the sufficient optical signal quality. We propose three algorithms called IA-shortest path tree (IA-SPT), IA-static over provisioning (IA-SOP), and IA-dynamic membership (IA-DM). In IA-SPT destination set is sorted in the non-decreasing order of the hop-distance from source. First k of them are selected and bursts are scheduled to Abstract viii these destinations along the shortest path. In IA-SOP we select additional k0(_ m − k) destinations where k0 is the over provisioning factor. Over provisioning ensures that burst at least reach k of them, decreasing the contention blocking. However as the burst has to span more destinations, the fan-out of the multicast capable switch will be more and the BER could be high. In IA-DM destinations are dynamically added or removed, depending on contention and BER. Destination is removed and new destination is added based on the two constraints. Our simulation results shows that IA-DM out performs the other two algorithms in terms of request blocking. We show that IP-based many casting has poor performance and hence there is a need for supporting many casting over OBS networks. We verify our simulation results with the proposed analytical method. In the next part, we focus on provisioning QoS in many casting. QoS parameters considered for analysis include, signal quality i.e., optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR), reliability of the link and, propagation delay. In this work we consider application based QoS provisioning. In other words, given the threshold requirements of an application, our aim is to successfully schedule the burst to the quorum pool satisfying the threshold conditions. We use a de-centralized way of the scheduling the burst, using BHP. With the help of local-network state information, the burst is scheduled only if it satisfies multiple set of constraints. Corresponding reception of burst at the node ensures that all the QoS constraints are met and burst is forwarded to the next hop. QoS attributes are either multiplicative or additive. Noise factor of the optical signal and reliability factor are multiplicative constraints, where as propagation delay is additive. We define a path information vector, which provides the QoS information of the burst at every node. Using lattice theory we define an ordering, such that noise factor and propagation delay are minimum and reliability is maximum. Using path algebra we compute the overall QoS attributes. Due to multiple set of constraints, the request blocking could be high. We propose algorithms to minimize request blocking for Multiple Constrained Many cast Problem (MCMP). We propose two algorithms MCM-SPT and MCM-DM. We consider different set of service thresholds, such as real time and data service thresholds. Real time services impose restriction on signal quality and the propagation delay. On the other hand Abstract ix data services require high reliability and signal quality. Our simulation study shows that MCM-SPT performs better than MCM-DM for real-time services and the data services can be provisioned using MCM-DM.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:47:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FelipeAPP_DISSERT.pdf: 2094888 bytes, checksum: 2f662bc70058d8584f0a23ab28517f43 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-01-19 / Distributed multimedia systems have highly variable characteristics, resulting in new requirements while new technologies become available or in the need for adequacy in accordance with the amount of available resources. So, these systems should provide support for dynamic adaptations in order to adjust their structures and behaviors at runtime. This paper presents an approach to adaptation model-based and proposes a reflective and component-based framework for construction and support of self-adaptive distributed multimedia systems, providing many facilities for the development and evolution of such systems, such as dynamic adaptation. The propose is to keep one or more models to represent the system at runtime, so some external entity can perform an analysis of these models by identifying problems and trying to solve them. These models integrate the reflective meta-level, acting as a system self-representation. The framework defines a meta-model for description of self-adaptive distributed multimedia applications, which can represent components and their relationships, policies for QoS specification and adaptation actions. Additionally, this paper proposes an ADL and architecture for model-based adaptation. As a case study, this paper presents some scenarios to demonstrate the application of the framework in practice, with and without the use of ADL, as well as check some characteristics related to dynamic adaptation / Sistemas multim?dia distribu?dos possuem caracter?sticas bastante vari?veis, podendo implicar em novos requisitos ? medida que novas tecnologias s?o disponibilizadas ou na necessidade de adequa??o de acordo com a quantidade de recursos dispon?veis. Dessa forma, tais aplica??es devem ser capazes de realizar ajustes e adapta??es din?micas, permitindo alterar sua estrutura e comportamento. Com o objetivo de prover capacidades de autoadapta??o nesses sistemas, este trabalho apresenta uma abordagem de adapta??o baseada em modelos. ? proposto um framework reflexivo e baseado em componentes para a constru??o e suporte de sistemas multim?dia distribu?dos autoadaptativos, fornecendo v?rias facilidades para o desenvolvimento e evolu??o de tais sistemas, como adapta??o din?mica. A proposta do framework ? manter um ou mais modelos de representa??o do sistema em tempo de execu??o, de modo que alguma entidade externa possa realizar uma an?lise desses modelos identificando problemas e tentando resolv?-los. Esses modelos integram o metan?vel reflexivo das aplica??es atuando como uma autorrepresenta??o do sistema. Para isso, o framework define um metamodelo para a descri??o de aplica??es multim?dia distribu?das autoadaptativas, o qual ? capaz de representar componentes e seus relacionamentos, pol?ticas para especifica??o de QoS e a??es de adapta??o. Adicionalmente, ? proposta uma ADL e uma arquitetura para adapta??o baseada em modelos. Como estudo de caso o trabalho apresenta alguns cen?rios buscando exemplificar o uso do framework na pr?tica, com e sem o uso da ADL, bem como verificar algumas caracter?sticas relacionadas ? adapta??o din?mica

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are a class of infrastructure less network architecture which are formed by a collection of mobile nodes that communicate with each other using multi-hop wireless links. They eliminate the need for central management, hence each node must operate cooperatively to successfully maintain the network. Each node performs as a source, a sink and a router. Future applications of MANETs are expected to be based on all-IP architecture, carrying a multitude of real-time multimedia applications such as voice, video and data. It would be necessary for MANETs to have an efficient routing and quality of service (QoS) mechanism to support diverse applications. This thesis proposes a set of cooperative protocols that provide support for QoS routing. The first is the on-demand, Non-Disjoint Multiple Routes Discovery protocol (NDMRD). NDMRD allows the establishment of multiple paths with node non-disjoint between source and destination node. It returns to the source a collection of routes with the QoS parameters. The second part of the protocol is the Node State Monitoring protocol for the purpose of monitoring, acquisition, dissemination and accumulation of QoS route information. The third part of the protocol implements the QoS route selection based on a Genetic Algorithm. The GA is implemented online with predetermined initial population and weighted-sum fitness function which operates simultaneously on the node bandwidth, media access delay, end to end delay and the node connectivity index (NCI). The term node connectivity index is a numerical value designed to predict comparatively the longest time a node-pair might be connected wirelessly.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:55:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CarlosMDV.pdf: 1914852 bytes, checksum: a7e99d6b563c17f13d6bf2747cf54976 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-07-03 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / This paper presents the performanee analysis of traffie retransmission algorithms pro?posed to the HCCA medium aeeess meehanism of IEEE 802.11 e standard applied to industrial environmen1. Due to the nature of this kind of environment, whieh has eleetro?magnetic interferenee, and the wireless medium of IEEE 802.11 standard, suseeptible to such interferenee, plus the lack of retransmission meehanisms, refers to an impraetieable situation to ensure quality of service for real-time traffic, to whieh the IEEE 802.11 e stan?dard is proposed and this environment requires. Thus, to solve this problem, this paper proposes a new approach that involves the ereation and evaluation of retransmission al-gorithms in order to ensure a levei of robustness, reliability and quality of serviee to the wireless communication in such environments. Thus, according to this approaeh, if there is a transmission error, the traffie scheduler is able to manage retransmissions to reeo?ver data 10s1. The evaluation of the proposed approaeh is performed through simulations, where the retransmission algorithms are applied to different seenarios, whieh are abstrae?tions of an industrial environment, and the results are obtained by using an own-developed network simulator and compared with eaeh other to assess whieh of the algorithms has better performanee in a pre-defined applieation / Este trabalho apresenta a an?lise de desempenho de algoritmos de retransmiss?o de tr?fego propostos para o mecanismo de acesso ao meio HCCA do padr?o IEEE 802.11 e aplicados ao ambiente industrial. Devido ? natureza deste tipo de ambiente, que pos?sui interfer?ncias eletromagn?ticas, e ? do meio de transmiss?o sem fio do padr?o IEEE 802.11, suscept?vel a tais interfer?ncias, em conjunto com a aus?ncia de mecanismos de retransmiss?o, remete a uma situa??o impratic?vel para garantias de qualidade de servi?o ao tr?fego de tempo real, ao qual o padr?o IEEE 802.11 e se prop?e e este tipo de ambiente requer. Desta forma, para resolver este problema, este trabalho prop?e uma nova abordagem que engloba a cria??o e avalia??o de algoritmos de retransmiss?o com o intuito de garantir um nivel de robustez, confiabilidade e qualidade de servi?o ? comunica???o sem fio presente em tais ambientes. Assim, de acordo com esta abordagem, em caso de erros na transmiss?o, o escalonador de tr?fego poder? gerenciar retransmiss?es para que os dados perdidos possam ser recuperados. A avalia??o da abordagem proposta ? realizada atrav?s de simula??es, onde os algoritmos de retransmiss?o s?o aplicados a diferentes cen?rios, que s?o abstra??es de um ambiente industrial, e os resultados dessa avalia??o s?o obtidos com o aux?lio de um simulador de redes desenvolvido e compa?rados entre si para avaliar qual dos algoritmos possui melhor efici?ncia em determinada aplica??o

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:55:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RenataPB_DISSERT.pdf: 1489254 bytes, checksum: 88fdf1027875fb6b83dbe203da3c24f7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-11-14 / It s notorious the advance of computer networks in recent decades, whether in relation to transmission rates, the number of interconnected devices or the existing applications. In parallel, it s also visible this progress in various sectors of the automation, such as: industrial, commercial and residential. In one of its branches, we find the hospital networks, which can make the use of a range of services, ranging from the simple registration of patients to a surgery by a robot under the supervision of a physician. In the context of both worlds, appear the applications in Telemedicine and Telehealth, which work with the transfer in real time of high resolution images, sound, video and patient data. Then comes a problem, since the computer networks, originally developed for the transfer of less complex data, is now being used by a service that involves high transfer rates and needs requirements for quality of service (QoS) offered by the network . Thus, this work aims to do the analysis and comparison of performance of a network when subjected to this type of application, for two different situations: the first without the use of QoS policies, and the second with the application of such policies, using as scenario for testing, the Metropolitan Health Network of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) / ? not?rio o avan?o das redes de computadores nas ?ltimas d?cadas, seja em rela??o ?s taxas de transmiss?o, ao n?mero de dispositivos interconectados ou mesmo ?s aplica??es existentes. Em paralelo, percebemos tamb?m este avan?o nos diversos segmentos da ?rea de automa??o, tais como: industrial, comercial e residencial. Em uma de suas ramifica??es, encontram-se as redes hospitalares, que podem fazer uso de uma gama de servi?os, que v?o desde o simples cadastro de pacientes at? uma cirurgia feita por um rob? sob a supervis?o de um m?dico especialista. No contexto dos dois universos, aparecem as aplica??es em Telemedicina e Telessa?de, que trabalham com a transfer?ncia, em tempo real, de imagens de alta resolu??o, som, v?deo e dados de pacientes. Surge ent?o um problema, visto que as redes de computadores, inicialmente criadas para a transfer?ncia de dados menos complexos, est? sendo agora usada por um servi?o que envolve altas taxas de transfer?ncia e apresenta requisitos em rela??o ? qualidade do servi?o (QoS) oferecido pela rede. Desta forma, este trabalho realiza uma an?lise e compara??o de desempenho de uma rede quando submetida a esse tipo de aplica??o, para duas situa??es distintas: a primeira sem o uso de pol?ticas de QoS, e a segunda com a aplica??o de tais pol?ticas, usando como cen?rio para os testes, a Rede Metropolitana de Sa?de da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN)

Coreografias de serviços Web representam uma forma mais escalável e flexível de compor serviços do que uma abordagem centralizada como a orquestração, e seu papel na integração e comunicação de sistemas de larga escala é vital para os objetivos da SOC (Computação Orientada a Serviços) e da Internet do Futuro. Atualmente coreografias de serviços Web possuem vários desafios de pesquisa, dos quais a qualidade de serviço (QoS) e o monitoramento de coreografias de serviçosWeb são linhas importantes. O objetivo deste trabalho é propor e implementar um mecanismo de monitoramento não intrusivo de coreografias de serviços Web baseado em SLAs (Acordos de Nível de Serviço) que especificam as restrições de atributos de QoS de maneira probabilística. Esta dissertação propõe um mecanismo para coreografias de serviços Web que: (1) define requisitos de QoS; (2) especifica contratos probabilísticos sobre parâmetros de QoS usando SLA; e (3) realiza um monitoramento não intrusivo de coreografias de serviços Web para detectar violações de SLA. / Web services choreographies are a more scalable and flexible way to compose services than a centralized approach like orchestrations, and its role in the integration and communication of large-scale systems is vital for the goals of SoC (Service Oriented Computing) and Future Internet. Currently,Web services choreographies have several research challenges. From all challenges, quality of service (QoS) and monitoring of Web services choreography are important research lines. The goal of this work is to propose and implement a mechanism for non-intrusive monitoring of Web services choreography based on SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that define constraints of QoS attributes in a probabilistic way. This thesis proposes a mechanism for Web services choreographies that:(1) defines QoS requirements; (2) specifies probabilistic contracts on QoS parameters using SLAs; and (3) monitors, non-intrusively, the enactment of Web services choreographies to detect SLA violations.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-20T12:33:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Leandro.pdf: 2831865 bytes, checksum: 5804d85c95f338cf4054c799f4dfd45d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-10-07 / Voice calls based on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology are liable to several impairments from both application and network layer, such as codec compression, end-to-end delay, and packet loss. For years, this problem has been challenging researchers and practitioners, who have been designing and improving QoS control mechanisms for VoIP applications. Such mechanisms aim to make optimum use of network and terminal resources so as to minimize the effects of network impairments on voice quality. Among the several proposed QoS control mechanisms for VoIP, some of them seek to adapt the voice flow or other VoIP-related parameters in accordance with significant changes in the network, end users preferences, or service providers requirements. VoIP systems are particularly likely to require a dynamic adaptation solution for dealing with the complex trade-off between speech quality and impairments, because of the decentralized control nature of IP networks and the stochastic nature of data packet delivery. Although the existing adaptive solutions for QoS control of VoIP show some performance improvement and exhibit some sort of feedback, they do not provide explicit focus on the control loop. This document shows the current progress of our thesis, which addresses the adjustment of internal parameters of VoIP terminals (at application layer) that affect the voice flow, with the aim of improving speech quality in response to changes in network conditions. It is not in the scope of the thesis to propose adaptive solutions that focus exclusively on signaling, billing, security issues, or operate at the network layer. Therefore, this thesis addresses the problem of how adjust encoding parameters in response to variations in delay and packet loss, in order to optimize speech quality. The objective is to optimize user-perceptible attributes of speech, under the perspective of self-adaptive software systems. The emphasis is not to develop new audio codecs, but to build a control loop in the core of sender and receiver terminals to adapt voice flow settings according to network conditions. The main contributions of this thesis are the following: determination of user s perception during codec switching; parametrization of codec precedence for supporting codec switching decision; explicit design of a monitoring analysis planning execution control loop as the core of the adaptation process; and efficiency analysis of feedback message exchanging. / Chamadas de voz baseadas na tecnologia VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) estão suscetíveis a degradações diversas, provenientes tanto da camada de aplicação, como da camada de rede, tais como compressão do codec, atraso fim a fim e perda de pacotes. Durante anos, esse problema tem desafiado pesquisadores e profissionais, que têm concebido e melhorado mecanismos de controle de QoS para aplicações VoIP. Tais mecanismos visam otimizar a utilização dos recursos da rede e do terminal VoIP de modo a minimizar os efeitos deletérios da rede subjacente sobre a qualidade de voz. Entre as várias propostas de mecanismos de controle de QoS para VoIP, alguns deles procuram adaptar o fluxo de voz ou outros parâmetros VoIP de acordo com mudanças significativas na rede, preferências de usuário, ou requisitos dos provedores de serviços VoIP. Sistemas VoIP particularmente exigem soluções de adaptação dinâmica para lidar com a complexa relação de compromisso entre qualidade de voz e fatores de degradação, por causa da natureza descentralizada e estocástica das redes IP na entrega de pacotes de voz. Embora as soluções adaptativas existentes para controle de QoS em VoIP mostrem alguma melhora de desempenho e apresentem algum tipo de feedback, elas não fornecem foco explícito na ciclo de controle (control loop). Este documento mostra o progresso atual da nossa tese, que aborda o ajuste de parâmetros internos de terminais VoIP (camada de aplicação) que afetam o fluxo de voz, com o objetivo de melhorar a qualidade da fala em resposta a mudanças nas condições da rede. Não faz parte do escopo da tese abordar soluções adaptativas que se concentram exclusivamente em sinalização, bilhetagem, problemas de segurança, ou que operam no nível da camada de rede. Portanto, esta tese aborda o problema da concepção e avaliação de estratégias adaptativas que explorem as relações de compromisso entre qualidade da fala e os seguintes fatores de degradação: compressão do codec, atraso fim a fim e perda de pacotes. A finalidade é otimizar atributos da fala perceptíveis aos usuário, sob a perspectiva de sistemas de software autoadaptativo. A ênfase não reside em desenvolver novos codecs de áudio, mas sim em desenvolver um ciclo de controle como entidade central de um terminal VoIP, que possa adaptar as configurações do fluxo de voz de acordo com as condições da rede. As principais contribuições desta tese são as seguintes: determinação da percepção do usuário durante a comutação de codec; parametrização de precedência de codecs para suporte de decisão de comutação de codec; enfoque no ciclo de controle baseado nas atividades de monitoramento análise planejamento execução como núcleo do processo de adaptação; e análise de eficiência de troca de mensagens de feedback.

A presente tese de doutorado propõe uma arquitetura de cloud broker para ambientes de computação em nuvem híbrida. Um cloud broker tem o objetivo de executar a mediação entre clientes e provedores, recebendo requisições dos clientes e encaminhando-as ao serviço do provedor que melhor se adaptar aos requisitos de qualidade de serviço (QoS) solicitados. A arquitetura de broker de serviços com QoS proposta denomina-se QBroker, características de implementação de seu modo de operação bem como sua interação com os recursos virtuais de um ambiente de nuvem são apresentadas. O modelo de nuvem considerado foi o de nuvem híbrida com uma caracterização de arquitetura orientada a serviços (SOA) na qual serviços remotos são disponibilizados aos clientes. A política de escalonamento de tarefas desenvolvida para o QBroker foi a de intermediação de serviços, considerando tratativas de QoS, diferenciação das instâncias de serviços (SOA) e alocação dinâmica de serviços. Além disso, toda a caracterização do modo de operação do QBroker foi baseada no conceito de intermediação do modelo de referência de nuvem do NIST. O componente QBroker foi introduzido numa arquitetura de computação em nuvem BEQoS (Bursty Energy and Quality of Service), desenvolvida no Laboratório de Sistemas Distribuídos e Programação Concorrente do ICMC-USP de São Carlos. Avaliações de desempenho para a implementação da arquitetura QBroker foram conduzidas por meio de programas de simulação com uso da API do simulador CloudSim e da arquitetura CloudSim-BEQoS. Três cenários experimentais foram avaliados e, segundo a análise de resultados efetuada, foi possível validar que as características arquiteturais implementadas no QBroker resultaram em significativo impacto nas variáveis de resposta consideradas. Assim, foi possível comprovar que o uso do QBroker como mecanismo de mediação em ambientes de nuvem híbrida com SOA promoveu ganhos em desempenho para o sistema de nuvem e permitiu melhoria na qualidade dos serviços oferecidos. / This doctoral thesis proposes a cloud broker architecture for hybrid cloud computing environments. A cloud broker aims to perform mediation between clients and providers, receiving customer requests and forwarding them to the service provider that best suits the requested QoS requirements. The broker architecture services with QoS proposal is called QBroker. Implementation features of its mode of operation as well as its interaction with the virtual resources from a cloud environment are presented. The cloud deployment model was considered a hybrid cloud with a characterization of service-oriented architecture (SOA) in which remote services are available to customers. The task scheduling policy developed for QBroker was the intermediation of services, considering negotiations of QoS, differentiation of services instances and dynamic allocation of services. Moreover, the entire characterization of QBroker operation mode is based on the intermediation concept of the NIST cloud reference model. The QBroker component was introduced into a cloud computing architecture BEQoS (Bursty, Energy and Quality of Service), developed in the Laboratory of Distributed Systems and Concurrent Programming at ICMC-USP. Performance evaluations analysis the of results of QBroker architecture were conducted through simulation programs using the CloudSim simulator API and CloudSim-BEQoS architecture. Three experimental scenarios were evaluated and, according to analysis of the results, it was possible to validate that the architectural features implemented in QBroker resulted in significant impact on response variables considered. Thus, it was possible to prove that the use of QBroker as mediation mechanism in hybrid cloud environments with SOA promoted performance gains for the cloud system and allowed improvement in the quality of services offered.