Extended Personal Media Networks (XPMN)

Abstract

The recent years have brought many changes to the way consumers interact with media assets. Today, consumers store their media digitally and access them using multiple devices; the role of the mobile phone as a universal control and playback device is still growing. Yet, there is no generic architecture for the various devices at home and on the Internet to interact with each other.In this thesis, we enhance the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) to be the core of an Extended Private Media Network (XPMN). Essentially, we create an end-to-end security layer for XMPP providing confidentiality, data integrity, and peer entity authentication between clients, keeping usability constrains for both the end-user and the developer in mind. In addition, this thesis covers device management, non-relayed TCP connections between peers in a challenging topology, and a generic device architecture - turning XMPP into a powerful peer-to-peer network for inter-device communication.