Michael Adeyeye

My provisional Ph.D proposal lately got accepted at the WEBIST 2009 Doctoral Consortium. The acceptance of this proposal now makes it two papers that I will be presenting at the conference. The other paper is a regular paper, which was accepted weeks back, and it will be presented for 20minutes. The Ph.D proposal will be presented for 30minutes.I would not be able to make the whole proposal available to all for now. It is an idea under development. However, I am happy to give a summary of the proposal.

Provisional Title
Emerging Converged Services in the Web-browsing Context

Introduction
I mentioned the Set and Core Features in Telecommunications, mobility types in the NGN, existing Web Session Mobility solutions in the market, namely Mozilla Weave and Google Browser Sync, and my previous work – Integrating SIP into a Web browser.

State-of-art/Related Work
Here, I discussed related work carried out in the academic environment and the Industry. Related academic work include Vijay Gurbani and Jonathan Lennox’s research work. Vijay’s work is on crossover services originating on the Internet and the PSTN, and smart spaces in the Telecommunication domain. Jonathan Lennox, in his research work titled “Services for Internet Telephony,” develops new ways of generating telephony services over the Internet. I also mentioned related Industry work – The Mozilla Weave, The Apache CouchDB Project and The Google Browser Sync (Please note that Google Corporation no longer supports the Google Browser Sync). In addition, I explained the underlying technologies for each project and the correlation between the academic work and the Industry work. Below is an excerpt from the related work column.

“These telephony services intrinsically use SIP , while the Mozilla Weave and the Apache CouchDB allow users to share their data and intrinsically use HTTP . All works are some of the services available on the Internet. Our previous research work explored the use of SIP to migrate web sessions or share user data and provide multimedia services between two or more Web browsers without the need for a third-party tool. It has emerged as a result of convergence in the Internet and Telecommunication, in a bid to improve the Web browsing experience. This further work now explores new services emerging for the interaction between two or more Web browsers. The services are derived from the telecommunication context, more specifically, features in phones and core of the networks.”

Stage of Research
First, I mentioned that an extended Web browser architecture that integrates a SIP stack has been proposed and implemented. Second, a new service, referred to as content sharing and session handoff between Web browsers, has also been provided to improve the Web-browsing experience. I also mentioned that the integration of a SIP stack into a Web browser has now made it possible for Web browsers to act as SIP clients, thereby setting up multimedia session between two or more users. Most notably, Web browsers now have unique SIP addresses to interact with one another like PCs, which have unique Media Access Control (MAC) or IP addresses [5]. Lastly, I mentioned that although a hybrid-based architecture was proposed in the previous work, only the client side of the architecture has been implemented and evaluated.

The Research Problem
Findings should that the service (content sharing and session handoff), when widely used, would result in unsolicited or unwanted requests among the users. This anomaly would result into spamming among the users. To alleviate the problem, a user should be able to manage requests; for example, he/she should be able to set policies to block unwanted request or redirect request to another PC. In another sense, a user could have more than one request at a time and would want to choose what request should be first fulfilled. A number of these cases already exist in the telecommunication world and there are solutions. The ability to make Web browsers interact with one another like mobile phones makes it feasible for Web browsers to have similar services found in the telecommunication world in the web domain. The primary goal of this research work is to provide these services or solutions in the Web-browsing context.

Methodology
Having implemented the client-side of the proposed hybrid architecture, this research work will explore the proxy-side of the architecture. This further research work entails creating new services that could improve the Web-browsing experience. These services would be derived from existing telecommunication services, such as call parking and call pickup in telecommunications. Although the services are peculiar to telecommunications, they are feasible in the Web-browsing context owing to interactions between two or more Web browsers in a way that is similar to how phones operate or interact. An example is the session handoff and content sharing service in the Web-browsing context, which was derived from Session Handoff and Third Party Call Control in SIP, respectively. Figure 2 shows Web Session Mobility Packing and Pickup, which is a derivative of Call Packing and Call Pickup in the telecommunication context. Similarly, Figure 3 shows Web Session Mobility Screening and Blocking, which is a derivative of Call Screening and Call Blocking in the telecommunication context.
These interactions between Web browsers will offer an improved Web-browsing experience for a user or between two or more users, based on the service type that is chosen. However, these interactions or emergent behaviours between the Web browsers could also be achieved via other protocols, which offer interactions, such as Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. SIP is preferred to XMPP because it can be used to establish, modify and terminate multimedia sessions.
This is an additional capability of SIP, aside its support for messaging and presence, which is also supported by XMPP. The framework, shown in Figure 1, requires a SIP proxy server. The proxy, which is a Converged Application Server, is needed to achieve some of the emerging services. It is required to administer the services, and some of its roles include blocking or allowing requests between PCs (Call Screening or Blocking in Telephony) and keeping a session alive when a request is made at a time the destination UAC is not reachable (Call Packing or Pickup in Telephony).
While the former role could be achieved via an integration of a policy control mechanism, the latter could be achieved through a session management mechanism. In Figure 2, the SIP proxy server has an auto-store feature in order to provide Web session mobility packing and pickup, while in Figure 3, the SIP proxy server has a policy control mechanism to screen and block session transfers. These services would also be evaluated in order to see if there is a need for them. The evaluation process would require conducting a survey among the regular Internet users.

Objectives
Based on the implementation framework:

1. To derive and implement new converged services in the Web browsing context, which are mapped from existing telecommunication services. For example, call parking in telecommunication is synonymous to having multiple content sharing requests from two or more users in the Web-browsing context and choosing which one to fulfil first.
2. To implement a SIP Proxy (a converged Application Server) that co-ordinates the new converged services. It would offer policy control, which entails allowing or blocking requests using criteria, such as a SIP address. In addition, it would offer session management, which entails keeping a session alive when the destination UAC is not reachable. The SIP Proxy, as a converged Application Server with HTTP and SIP endpoints, would provide a User Interface that Web users could use to set their preferences (policies), view their usage of services and manage Web sessions.

Expected Outcome

1. Developing and deploying a converged Application Server that provides a GUI to administer the new converged services.

References

1. Luin Dang, Cullen Jennings and David Kelly (2002), Practical VOIP using VOCAL, O’Reilly & Associates, USA, First Edition, pp. 265-272.
2. Vijay Gurbani (2004), Service Oriented Computing: Enabling Cross-network services between the Internet and the Telecommunications network. Unpublished Ph.D thesis, Illinois Institute of Technology, Illinois, USA.
3. Jonathan Jonathan (2004), Services for Internet Telephony, Unpublished Ph.D thesis, Columbia University, New York, USA.
4. Michael Adeyeye, Neco Ventura and David Humphrey (2009), “Mapping Third Party Call Control and Session Handoff in SIP Mobility to Content Sharing and Session Handoff in the Web-browsing Context,” in: Proceedings of IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) 2009, Budapest, April 5-8, 2009 (To be published)
5. Michael Adeyeye (2008), A SIP Integrated Web Browser for HTTP Session Mobility and Multimedia Services, Unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
6. The TransferHTTP Web browser Extension, http://transferhttp.mozdev.org, September 5, 2008.

Conclusion
Here is the summary of the proposal. In the proposal, I mentioned the possibility of rendering IPTV services over PCs’ Web browsers in a way different from what exists today. Here is an excerpt: “IPTV services for end users include Video on Demand and Live Broadcast. Although it is envisaged that IPTV clients on PCs would be standalone programs, such as IntAct IPTV Client and Irdeto IPTV with PC Client, the integration of SIP in a Web browser makes Web browsers potential IPTV clients. “ Here, I referred to the IMS-based IPTV. Although a comment was made on this idea, which I think was one of the reasons the proposal got accepted, I will be dropping the idea (rendering IPTV services over a Web browser). I would rather focus on providing the emerging converged services, and more specifically, implementing the proxy-side of the hybrid-based scheme. I don’t think I will be exploring again the client-side (Web browser extension) of the project, at least for now.

Your contributions are welcome.