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COST 237
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The COST 237 Action, which is part of COST Telecommunications, one of the technical
area of the COST program, started
officially in February 1992 when four countries (Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany) signed the MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) defining the Action.
The effective start of the Action took place at the initial meeting of the
Management Committee in September 1992.
By December 1996 15 countries
had joined signed the MoU.
The Action will end in August 1998.
Aims and Scope of COST 237
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COST 237 intends to be active in the following areas:
1) Specification of the Communication Related Service Requirements
necessary to allow the distribution of those advanced multimedia
applications which have been developed in national and other pan-European
projects (and are mainly standalone). These Communication Related Service
Requirements will have to be mapped into an architecture providing
inter-operability.
2) Assessment of suitable networks, service elements and Quality of Service
(QoS) for the implementation of the Communication Related Service
Requirements of these multimedia applications.
3) Enhancement of the service specification of existing standard reference
models, taking into account user requirements.
4) Enhancement of the communication support for multimedia applications.
The extent of distribution of these open multimedia services is considered
to cover three different areas:
i) Within large businesses (local site, intersite);
ii) Within small businesses;
iii) To the home.
It is the intent of the action to contribute to the standardization by
submitting the results of its research to the relevant Technical Committee.
COST 237 Working Groups
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The work of the Action is carried out through its working groups.
Two working groups were initially created to achieve the aim of the Action.
The WG 1, "Multimedia Teleservices", was established to examine a number of
models used to describe enhanced multimedia teleservices and applications
such as Video on Demand (VoD), teleconferencing or jointworking applications.
Improvements to these models have been suggested and discussed by the group.
Some members of this working group have focused on analysing the security
implications for some of the teleservices examined. A new working group has
been created with new aims and scope ( WG4 Security and Applications)
The work in the WG 2, "New Transport Service Specification", was based on the recognition
of the key role played by the transport service in matching the new
requirements of cooperative multimedia applications to the increasingly
sophisticated support offered by emerging network technologies. After two
years of activity, WG2 has been highly successful in its aims as it has defined an enhanced multimedia transport service incorporating both quality of service (QoS) specification and multipeer connectivity, and made substantial
contributions to the ISO SC6 Multipeer Taxonomy.
Once its objectives successfully completed, this working group closed its
activities on November 1995. The work of mapping the transport service defined
by it to the underlying network technologies has resulted in the creation of a
new working group, the WG 3.
The new WG3, "Communications Support for Multimedia Applications", will build
on the work of WG2 by considering the protocols and mechanisms necessary to
underpin the enhanced transport service. Its concern will thus be the detailed
mapping of the transport service onto network technologies (primarily ATM-based and Internets) and end-systems. The WG 3 will focus on developing an
understanding of the protocols required for multicasting, resource management,
media-scaling, and distributed control (signalling) in a heterogeneous network
and end-system environment. Another important area of study will be the
influence of application characteristics such as media encoding on protocol
design, as well as application-oriented design. In addition, work on billing
and pricing of network services will be taken into account as an influencing
factor in multimedia protocol design.
The WG 4, "Security and Applications", was created by members of WG1 who wanted
to examine the security aspects associated with the production and delivery of a
wide range of Multimedia Teleservices. Pay-TV broadcasting and authentication
for logging have been the most studied secured multimedia mechanisms until now.
The aim of this group is to enlarge those studies in a more general framework.
The group is examining the development of a functional model for the securing
of the multimedia chain, including the actors, the functions and the messages.
An inventory of the existing cryptographic tools will then be performed.
Finally, those tools will be extended in complex situations like CSCW or
intelligent agents remote down-loading.
In a general way, the conditional access to services will be considered through
monitoring and/or filtering. Ensuring the authenticity and integrity of the
data flow will also be considered. In the area of copyright protection the
group will consider the applicability and the management of existing techniques
like watermarking and labelling.
These topics will be studied in four communication configurations, namely,
broadcast, client-server, CSCW and peer-to-peer.
Participation in COST 237
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COST 237 anticipates the participation of telecommunications suppliers,
computer companies and Universities as well as telecommunications
operators. Since 1994, the Action has held an annual international workshop.
Other smaller meetings are held as appropriate to allow researchers to progress
the research goals of the project if budgets allow.
A maximum of two representative per participating country may be funded annually to attend
a maximum of two Management Committee Meetings. Funds may also be available
for workshops and meetings but in continuous reduction.
The majority of participants in COST projects therefore find travel and subsistence
costs from company, national or other European sources.
If you wish to participate in COST 237 and if your country is already a member of
COST 237, or observer, contact the Management Committee Representative.
If your country is not currently a
member or observer and you wish to join the project, you have to contact
your national COST representative who will forward your request to the COST
237 Management Committee for their consideration (if you do not know who
your national COST representative is, ask the COST Telecom Secretariat).
If you want to participate to the activity of a working group, whatever the
situation of your country with respect to COST 237, please get in touch with the
working group chairman (See the page dedicated to the WG of interest).
If you want to be informed of the COST activities, you can subscribe to the
general COST 237 mailing list, COST237-gen@montefiore.ulg.ac.be.
- To subscribe to the COST237-gen@montefiore.ulg.ac.be mailing list, send an email to COST237-gen-request@montefiore.ulg.ac.be with the word "subscribe" in the Subject: line.
- To unsubscribe from the COST237-gen@montefiore.ulg.ac.be mailing list, send an
email to COST237-gen-request@montefiore.ulg.ac.be with the word "unsubscribe" in
the Subject: line.
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Publications
An Efficient Software Implementation of a Forward Error Correcting Code
- J.-C. Henrion
- Telecommunication Systems, vol. 11, nb. 1, Jan. 1999, pp. 17-30
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Towards an Integrated Solution for Multimedia Communications
- L. Mathy, G. Leduc, A. Danthine and O. Bonaventure
- Read the abstract
- Download the PostScript document or the compressed PostScript (gzip) document
- Bulletin Scientifique de l'AIM, Mar. 1996
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Multimedia Telecommunications and Applications
- G. Ventre, J. Domingo-Pascual, A. Danthine (Eds.)
Proc. of Third International COST 237 Workshop, Barcelona, Spain, 25-27 Nov. 1996
Springer, 1996, 265 pp.
ISBN 3-540-62096-6
- Table of contents
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Teleservices and Multimedia Communications
- D. Hutchinson, H. Christiansen, G. Coulson, A. Danthine (Eds.)
Proc. of Second International COST 237 Workshop, Copenhagen, Denmark, 20-22 Nov. 1995
Springer, 1996, 277 pp.
ISBN 3-540-61028-6
- Table of contents
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The ACCOPI Multimedia Transport Service over ATM
- L. Mathy and O. Bonaventure
- Keywords : ATM, multicast, transport service
- Read the abstract
- Download the PostScript document or the compressed PostScript (gzip) document
- Proc. of the Second International COST237 Workshop, 20-22 Nov. 1995, Copenhagen, Denmark, D. Hutchison, H. Christiansen, G. Coulson, A. Danthine (eds.), Teleservices and Multimedia Communications, pp. 159-175, Springer
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A Group Communication Framework
- L. Mathy, G. Leduc, O. Bonaventure and A. Danthine
- Read the abstract
- Download the PostScript document or the compressed PostScript (gzip) document
- Proc. of Broadband Islands '94: Connecting with the End-User, 7-9 Jun. 1994, Hamburg, Germany, W. Bauerfeld, O. Spaniol and F. Williams (eds.), pp. 167-178, Elsevier Science
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QoS Negotiation for Multicast Communications
- L. Mathy and O. Bonaventure
- Read the abstract
- Download the PostScript document or the compressed PostScript (gzip) document
- Proc. of the First International COST237 Workshop, Nov. 1994, Vienna, Austria, D. Hutchison, A. Danthine, H. Leopold, G. Coulson (eds.), Multimedia Transport and Teleservices, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 882, pp. 199-218, Springer
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Multimedia Transport and Teleservices
- D. Hutchinson, A. Danthine, H. Leopold, G. Coulson (Eds.)
Proc. of First International COST 237 Workshop, Vienna, Austria, Nov. 1994
Springer, 1994, 380 pp.
ISBN 3-540-58759-4
- Table of contents
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