ASCEND is a collective effort to construct programming libraries that will faciliate the creations of
scalable, affordable, and accessible
peer-to-peer (P2P)-based 3D networked virtual environments
(NVEs) where participants may share data (e.g. files, photos,
blogs) and interact with one another in real-time. ASCEND is
based on the scalable
Voronoi-based overlay network (VON)
and a number of important P2P-based NVE (P2P-NVE) issues will be investigated,
including: 3D streaming for P2P-NVEs,
state management in P2P-NVEs, persistent storage designed for
P2P-NVEs, and suitable P2P-NVE overlays. Libraries that support the above functions will be released under
the GNU's Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
ASCEND's motivation is based on three important
Internet trends: the rising popularity of
Massively Multiplayer Online Games
(MMOGs), the scalability potential of P2P networks, and the
rapid growth of user-generated contents such as blog, file and
photo sharing. We hope that ASCEND may bridge the transitions
toward the next stage of Internet communication that is
3D-based, highly interactive, and user-empowering. ASCEND covers
three major research topics:
1)
3D Streaming for P2P-NVE:
We will investigate how real-time streaming delivery of 3D
contents (geometric meshes and textures) may be done in a
scalable manner by using P2P networks. We intend to devise
distributed visibility determination and parallel streaming
methods in order to relieve server load and to shorten
client-side download time.
2)
State Management in
P2P-NVE: We will investigate how
the synchronization of object states and event ordering may be
supported in a distributed P2P environment by assigning
ownerships for each object within a NVE. We intend to adopt a
fully-distributed
consensus-based voting mechanism for the
efficient and correct determination of object owners. An update
propagation mechanism that provides high availability of object
states in the face of a dynamically changing environment will
also be investigated.
3)
Persistent Storage for P2P-NVE:
We will investigate how persistent data may be supported in a
P2P environment by using only a light-weight server for the
eventual data backup. We intend to devise leader node election
protocols and data aggregation techniques to support scheduled
backups of object states without causing server overload.
 
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