CS 640, Spring 2009
Programming Assignment #4

Due: May 10, 2009

The goal of this programming assignment is to
understand how a network connection affects different
applications. To do this, we will use video applications
as an example.

In the assignment, you are expected to come up with
a single formula that takes a video packet trace as
an input, and provides a single value --- a number
between 0 and 10 --- as an output.
The output will be the quality of the observed video.

To do this, you should download and watch a number of
videos, and capture the packets corresponding to these
videos using a tool such as wireshark.
Subsequently, you should input this packet trace to
your software that will output a video quality number
between 0 and 10 (0 being very low quality, and 10 being
the highest quality).

You should express the video quality as a single formula,
which depends on network layer parameters, e.g., delay,
jitter, loss, bandwidth,  etc.

To do this, you should conjure up as many different network
conditions as possible, e.g., low and high bandwidth connections
between the server and the client, various loss conditions,
variability of latency, etc.

At the end of this project, you will demo the performance
of your system by running some sample videos, and letting
a user score that video in the same scale. At the same time
you should feed the video trace to your software to obtain the
video quality value.
The better the match between the user's opinion and the output
of the software, the better the performance.

For your demo, you will be asked to prepare a presentation
of your work. The presentation should include a precise
statement of the formula used, and a demo of your system.
Further, you should explain what experiments your ran to
arrive at your formula.