Wed. Sep 4th, 2024

“The internet changes pretty fast,” as the great Ferris Bueller once said, “You might miss it if you don’t stop and look around every now and then.”

The internet is a constantly changing and evolving entity, and while browsing AOL via a 56k dial-up connection may seem like a distant memory, in reality, it wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things. On June 24, 1993, a band called Severe Tire Damage, hosted the internet’s first live-streaming concert, which drew a lot of attention. While internet use was gradually increasing in popularity at the time, the majority of people still couldn’t get their heads around it.

ActiveMovie debuted in 1995, allowing internet users to stream video content. Whereas, Macromedia Flash arrived on the scene a year later and quickly became the industry standard for web video. When the peer-to-peer file-sharing network Napster was launched in 1999, it made it easier than ever for people to share videos and music online. However, only 3% of Americans had broadband access to the internet in 2000, which made downloading video and music files a difficult task to perform.

Prior to the rise of social media, most viral videos were distributed via message boards or email chains. Big changes began to occur in the early 2000s, paving the way for the rise of online video and putting the days of sifting through dozens of emails behind us. Sharing videos became faster and easier than ever before as high-speed internet access became more widely available. This, along with the introduction of social media sites such as Friendster (2002), MySpace (2003), and Facebook (2004), crafted the way for the successful launch of YouTube in 2005, which marked the successful trade of video streaming era over the internet. Meanwhile, many individuals also tried to make video distribution over the internet easy and commendable for others; one such individual is Sanjoy Paul.

Born in Bishnupur and raised in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, Sanjoy is well-known for his research on Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), 5G and Wireless Networks, Internet of Things (IoT), Computer Networks, Multimedia Streaming, and Content Distribution. He completed his bachelor’s in Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering (ECE) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1985 and attended the Wharton Business School, the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 for a Master of Business Administration (MBA). With a passion to gain knowledge and expertise, Sanjoy also completed an MS in Computer Science with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with an interest in Computer Networking, both from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Sanjoy’s professional career began in AT&T Bell Labs Research (Area 11) right after he finished his Ph.D. in 1992. Soon after, he became a Distinguished Member of their Technical Staff in 1996 and made vital contributions to the development of Reliable Multicast which led to the formation of E-cast, one of the first ventures supported by Lucent Ventures. During his time at Bell Labs, he contributed significantly to the field of Multimedia Streaming over the Public Internet, which predates the formation of companies like Netflix and Hulu. Sanjoy was also the chief architect for Lucent’s IPWorX caching and content distribution product line.

Streaming video over the internet was previously considered a huge challenge because the is inherently unreliable and introduces unpredictable delays between packets transmitted over it, whereas video streaming necessitates the display of video frames (a collection of packets) at regular time intervals. Typically, video streaming requires one video frame to be displayed every 33 milliseconds, and if the required frame is not available at the end user’s device within appropriate time period, the video quality suffers. Furthermore, when users click on a video link, they expect to see the video immediately. Consider YouTube, Netflix or Hulu, where we click on a movie or a TV show and expect the video to begin playing immediately. However, people tend to become irritated when the video freezes, becomes blurry, or has blotches in it. All of this is likely if video packets are sent over the internet and displayed on the end user’s device as they appear. Intending to overcome such internet obstructions, Sanjoy began working on video streaming over the internet in the late 1990s, when there was practically video available on the internet, and he came up with the concept of “caching” video segments closer to the end-user to enable almost “instant” playing of video, and with the concept of buffering video at the end-user’s device to absorb the variation in the inter-packet delays introduced by the Internet, thereby enabling smooth playing of high-quality video. These innovations are the foundation of the commercial video streaming we experience today from YouTube, Netflix and Hulu.

After leaving Bell Labs, Sanjoybecame the CTO (chief technology officer) of Edgix, where he led the product development of EdgeStream, an edge streaming cache product that incorporated some of Sanjoy’s ideas on caching and optimal video buffering to ensure smooth video streaming over the internet. He combined his expertise in multicasting with his expertise in video streaming to pioneer some fundamental work in the area of video multicast, which is the foundation of live broadcast media streaming oninternet, such as a live telecast of a football game or a music concert.

Sanjoy, in particular, introduced the concept of multicasting a video at different resolutions and retransmitting lost video packets from intermediate points in the multicast tree, allowing for scalable video distribution to heterogeneous end devices under widely varying network conditions. Despite providing his skills and expertise in a variety of organizations and fields, Sanjoy pioneered early innovations that paved the way for better and more advanced video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and others. Sanjoy’s patent on “Multimedia Streaming over the Internet” incorporates all of the fundamental concepts that earned him the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award by the New Jersey Council of R&D in 2014.

In 2010, Sanjoy also authored a book in this field titled, Digital Video Distribution in Broadband, Television, Mobile and Converged Networks: Trends, Challenges, and Solutions.

With technology evolving at such a rapid pace, it’s impossible to predict what video sharing will look like ten years from now on, but one certain thing is that online video will only continue to grow in popularity and researchers like Sanjoy Paul are most likely to uncover discoveries related to it.

 

 

“The internet changes pretty fast,” as the great Ferris Bueller once said, “You might miss it if you don’t stop and look around every now and then.”

The internet is a constantly changing and evolving entity, and while browsing AOL via a 56k dial-up connection may seem like a distant memory, in reality, it wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things. On June 24, 1993, a band called Severe Tire Damage, hosted the internet’s first live-streaming concert, which drew a lot of attention. While internet use was gradually increasing in popularity at the time, the majority of people still couldn’t get their heads around it.

ActiveMovie debuted in 1995, allowing internet users to stream video content. Whereas, Macromedia Flash arrived on the scene a year later and quickly became the industry standard for web video. When the peer-to-peer file-sharing network Napster was launched in 1999, it made it easier than ever for people to share videos and music online. However, only 3% of Americans had broadband access to the internet in 2000, which made downloading video and music files a difficult task to perform.

Prior to the rise of social media, most viral videos were distributed via message boards or email chains. Big changes began to occur in the early 2000s, paving the way for the rise of online video and putting the days of sifting through dozens of emails behind us. Sharing videos became faster and easier than ever before as high-speed internet access became more widely available. This, along with the introduction of social media sites such as Friendster (2002), MySpace (2003), and Facebook (2004), crafted the way for the successful launch of YouTube in 2005, which marked the successful trade of video streaming era over the internet. Meanwhile, many individuals also tried to make video distribution over the internet easy and commendable for others; one such individual is Sanjoy Paul.

Born in Bishnupur and raised in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, Sanjoy is well-known for his research on Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), 5G and Wireless Networks, Internet of Things (IoT), Computer Networks, Multimedia Streaming, and Content Distribution. He completed his bachelor’s in Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering (ECE) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1985 and attended the Wharton Business School, the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 for a Master of Business Administration (MBA). With a passion to gain knowledge and expertise, Sanjoy also completed an MS in Computer Science with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with an interest in Computer Networking, both from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Sanjoy’s professional career began in AT&T Bell Labs Research (Area 11) right after he finished his Ph.D. in 1992. Soon after, he became a Distinguished Member of their Technical Staff in 1996 and made vital contributions to the development of Reliable Multicast which led to the formation of E-cast, one of the first ventures supported by Lucent Ventures. During his time at Bell Labs, he contributed significantly to the field of Multimedia Streaming over the Public Internet, which predates the formation of companies like Netflix and Hulu. Sanjoy was also the chief architect for Lucent’s IPWorX caching and content distribution product line.

Streaming video over the internet was previously considered a huge challenge because the is inherently unreliable and introduces unpredictable delays between packets transmitted over it, whereas video streaming necessitates the display of video frames (a collection of packets) at regular time intervals. Typically, video streaming requires one video frame to be displayed every 33 milliseconds, and if the required frame is not available at the end user’s device within appropriate time period, the video quality suffers. Furthermore, when users click on a video link, they expect to see the video immediately. Consider YouTube, Netflix or Hulu, where we click on a movie or a TV show and expect the video to begin playing immediately. However, people tend to become irritated when the video freezes, becomes blurry, or has blotches in it. All of this is likely if video packets are sent over the internet and displayed on the end user’s device as they appear. Intending to overcome such internet obstructions, Sanjoy began working on video streaming over the internet in the late 1990s, when there was practically video available on the internet, and he came up with the concept of “caching” video segments closer to the end-user to enable almost “instant” playing of video, and with the concept of buffering video at the end-user’s device to absorb the variation in the inter-packet delays introduced by the Internet, thereby enabling smooth playing of high-quality video. These innovations are the foundation of the commercial video streaming we experience today from YouTube, Netflix and Hulu.

After leaving Bell Labs, Sanjoybecame the CTO (chief technology officer) of Edgix, where he led the product development of EdgeStream, an edge streaming cache product that incorporated some of Sanjoy’s ideas on caching and optimal video buffering to ensure smooth video streaming over the internet. He combined his expertise in multicasting with his expertise in video streaming to pioneer some fundamental work in the area of video multicast, which is the foundation of live broadcast media streaming oninternet, such as a live telecast of a football game or a music concert.

Sanjoy, in particular, introduced the concept of multicasting a video at different resolutions and retransmitting lost video packets from intermediate points in the multicast tree, allowing for scalable video distribution to heterogeneous end devices under widely varying network conditions. Despite providing his skills and expertise in a variety of organizations and fields, Sanjoy pioneered early innovations that paved the way for better and more advanced video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and others. Sanjoy’s patent on “Multimedia Streaming over the Internet” incorporates all of the fundamental concepts that earned him the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award by the New Jersey Council of R&D in 2014.

In 2010, Sanjoy also authored a book in this field titled, Digital Video Distribution in Broadband, Television, Mobile and Converged Networks: Trends, Challenges, and Solutions.

With technology evolving at such a rapid pace, it’s impossible to predict what video sharing will look like ten years from now on, but one certain thing is that online video will only continue to grow in popularity and researchers like Sanjoy Paul are most likely to uncover discoveries related to it.

 

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