COAST Objectives

COAST aims to build a Future Content-Centric Network (FCN) overlay architecture, where the users will just specify which content or service they need, and the COAST framework will find the desired or the most relevant data and forward it to the users in an efficient, timely and network-friendly way.

To realise the above vision, COAST will focus on three key innovation pillars:

“On the fly” identification and distributed “on-line” discovery. COAST will create a content-aware network of intelligent nodes (edge routers, home gateways, terminal devices), which will a) “on the fly” identify/classify content and identify Web services via inspection of the traffic that flows through them and b) discover “on line”, where services are located and content is located/cached, in order to optimal match users’ requests with availability, while meeting specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in content consumption.
Content-Aware Delivery Network Architecture. COAST will efficiently and dynamically discover the underlying network infrastructure as well as user terminal devices and user needs considering the (possibly variable) capacity and quality (especially variable with mobility), the actual foreground (multimedia distribution) and background (other traffic) load, and construct content-aware overlays to offer distributed, robust and network-/service-provider friendly content delivery with optimal utilisation of the networking topology and resources.
Future media content adaptation and enrichment. COAST will provide for scalable, high-definition 3D/free-viewpoint video with interactive virtual panning/zooming, which will be on-the-fly adapted, enriched and optimized to the user preferences, network and terminal characteristics and conditions and optimal streamed over dynamic constructed overlays.

COAST will be validated over two interconnected testbeds: the Pan-European FIRE facilities and the PlanetLab/GENI and b) the TIDs’ FTTH User Experience and Digital Home Laboratories

COAST is a STREP research project within the European Research Programme 7 and it is partially funded by the European Commission under contract ICT-248036

* The COAST logo is based on the painting “Birds Eye View of Sea Coast” by Leonardo Da Vinci