Modelling and simulation of a real Internet radio service

Abstract

Internet radios have become one of the most popular services on the Internet nowadays. This popularity has motivated the interest of the scientific community and a lot of research has been carried out in order to improve and study these services. The goal of this paper is to develop a model of an Internet radio service in order to help service managers to predict future situations, avoiding problems in advance. This model has been developed and validated using the information gathered from a real service; thus, it reflects the real behaviour of the users, and the devices and the protocols involved in the service. Also, the model of the service has been integrated in a model of a cable network configured to work under real load conditions. The results of the simulations allow us to draw conclusions about the performance of the service in a real scenario.

Keywords:

• Internet radio
• live audio
• streaming traffic
• user interactions
• statistical characterization
• service models

Acknowledgements

This research has been financed by the network operator Telecable de Asturias S.A.U. and the newspaper La Nueva España within the projects of NuevaMedia, Telemedia, ModelMedia and MediaXXI and the Spanish National Research Program within the project FUTURMEDIA (TSI2007-60474). It has also received the collaboration of the company Asturia Activa, owner of the digital newspaper Asturies.Com.