Synchronous shared experience: Architecture for synchronization support

Abstract

In the era of distributed computing, different components of distributed application need to be synchronized. For instance, two users watching a football match at geographically distinct location require synchronous multimedia display on their screens for synchronous shared experience. Inter-destination Synchronization (IDS) mechanism is a fundamental requirement for synchronous shared experience. Existing IDS mechanisms work well with stream-based media when users have similar computing and network resources. However, in situations where users have varied resources they do not work well. Document-based media provides functionality of alternative content selection on the basis of available resources. This makes document-based media a potential solution for IDS, when users of synchronous shared experience have varied network and computing resources. This paper investigates IDS techniques for stream-based media and adapts them to work with document-based media. We present design and implementation of a scalable and efficient architecture which provides synchronization support to the users of synchronous shared experience. We present implementation and evaluation of a specific techniques, with encouraging results.