Distributed multimedia access system and method

• US 8,688,639 B2
• Filed: 11/05/2008
• Issued: 04/01/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 11/05/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: National Taiwan University (Government of The Republic of China)
• Original Assignee: National Taiwan University (Government of The Republic of China)
• Inventors: Chou, Cheng-Fu, Chang, Yi-Ting, Lin, Ching-Ju, Hsu, Chih-Cheng
• Primary Examiner(s): LE, DEBBIE M
• Application Number:
  US12/265,491
• Publication Number:
  US 20090119265A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,973 Days
• Field of Search: 707/630, 707/636, 707/770
• US Class Current: 707/630
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1837 Management specially adapted to peer-to-peer storage networks topology management mechanisms of peer-to-peer networks H04L67/1042
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

A distributed media access system and method. The method includes making each of a plurality nodes in a P2P network designate at least one nearest neighbors as a first node candidate and perform at least one random walk to obtain a second node candidate according to the peer list; calculating user preferences of the request node and user preferences of the first and second node candidates according to the first and second node candidates and the preference parameters corresponding to the first and second node candidates so as to obtain a plurality of similarity values; selecting the more similar candidate as buddies of user of the node according to the calculated similarity values; and establishing a buddy list according to the buddies of user and storing the buddy list such that the P2P network can quickly find buddies of the node through the buddy list.

Claims

1. A computer-readable storage medium which stores instructions which, when executed by a computer, enables a distributed multimedia access system applied in a P2P network having a plurality of nodes and a request node, a user located at the request node inputting preference parameters to the P2P network to obtain a peer list that contains some of the plurality of nodes, to:

designate some of the nodes in the peer list that are at shorter distances from the request node than the others of the nodes as first node candidates and performs a random walk process on the first node candidates to search the peer list for second node candidates;

calculate similarity between the preference parameters of the request node and preference parameters of the first and second node candidates to obtain similarity values;

select some of the first and second node candidates that have similarity values smaller than similarity values of the others of the first and second node candidates as buddies for the user located at the request node; and

establish and store a buddy list that contains the buddies;

wherein the node candidates store objects related to the preference parameters input by users located at the node candidates;

wherein when the preference parameters are determined through attributes of the objects input by the user located at the request node, the similarity calculation module lets object (c_i) represent the objects input by the user c_i located at the request node and be defined as a vector of weights ({right arrow over (wi)})=(w_ik₁, w_ik₂, . . . , w_ik_n), wherein the weight w_ik_n represents the user c_i'"'"'s preference for the objects and is described by keyword k_n, the distributed multimedia access system is further enabled to perform the following calculation;

2. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the preference parameters of each of the nodes are determined through multimedia file contents input by a user located at the node.

3. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein characteristics of the node candidates are determined through attribute description of the objects, and the objects have at least one attribute and are categorized according to tagged keywords.

4. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 3, wherein {right arrow over (wi)}

5. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the distributed multimedia access system is further enabled to:

receive a query condition of multimedia files sent by the request node;

send the query condition to the first and second node candidates and searches for multimedia files that meet the query condition, wherein the first and second node candidates further send the query condition to other nodes in the peer list and search for multimedia files that meet the query condition until predefined time is reached;

capture the multimedia files that meet the query condition; and

transfer the multimedia files to the request node.

6. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 5, wherein if a plurality of multimedia files are captured by the capturing module, the distributed multimedia access system is further enabled to establish a multimedia file list and send the multimedia file list to the request node.

7. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 5, wherein the query condition is a keyword or a unique identification code.

8. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 7, wherein the keyword is an attribute or an attribute set describing the multimedia files.

9. A distributed multimedia access method applied in a P2P network having a plurality of nodes and a request node, a user located at the request node inputting preference parameters to the P2P network to obtain a peer list that contains some of the nodes, the method comprising the following steps of:

(1) designating some of the nodes in the peer list that are at shorter distances from the request node than the others of the nodes as first node candidates and performing a random walk process on the first node candidates to search the peer list for second node candidates;

(2) calculating similarity between the preference parameters of the request node and preference parameters of the first and second node candidates to obtain similarity values;

(3) selecting some of the first and second node candidates that have similarity values smaller than similarity values of the others of the first and second node candidates as buddies for the user located at the request node; and

(4) establishing a buddy list that contains the buddies;

wherein the node candidates store objects related to the preference parameters input by users located at the node candidates;

wherein when the preference parameters are determined through attributes of the objects input by the user of the request node, object(c_i) represents the objects input by the user c_i of the node, which is defined as a vector of weights ({right arrow over (wi)})=(w_ik₁, w_ik₂, . . . , w_ik_n), wherein weight w_ik_n re resents the user c_i'"'"'s reference for the objects described by keyword k_n, w_ik_n is calculated through the following equation;

10. The distributed multimedia access method of claim 9, wherein the preference parameters of each of the nodes are determined through multimedia file content input by a user located at the node.

11. The distributed multimedia access method of claim 9, wherein characteristics of the node candidates are determined through attribute description of the objects, and the objects have at least one attribute and are categorized according to tagged keywords.

12. The distributed multimedia access method of claim 11, wherein {right arrow over (wi)}

13. The distributed multimedia access method of claim 9, further comprising:

receiving a query condition of multimedia files sent by the request node;

sending the query condition to the first and second node candidates and searching for multimedia files that meet the query condition, wherein the first and second node candidates further send the query condition to the others in the peer list and search for multimedia files that meet the query condition until predefined time is reached; and

capturing the multimedia files that meet the query condition and transferring the multimedia files to the request node.

14. The distributed multimedia access method of claim 13, wherein if a plurality of multimedia files are captured, a multimedia file list is established and sent to the request node.

15. The distributed multimedia access method of claim 13, wherein the query condition is a keyword or a unique identification code.

16. The distributed multimedia access method of claim 15, wherein the keyword is an attribute or an attribute set describing the multimedia files.

17. The distributed multimedia access method of claim 13, wherein the predefined time is determined by an estimation process.