Quality of Service Management for Distributed Multimedia Applications

Future distribut,ed systems will he recliiiretl t o sii1)port multimedia applications wit,li widely varying service requirements. Sucli a.pplira.t,ioiis in(-liitle inkractive multimedia informa.t,ion services, siic-11 i1.s electronic journals, and t,ools t.o snpport, rp;d t h e i n t w m tions between people, such a.s niult,ipoint, vicleo c-oiiferencing and groupware. The pIat,fbnii for these ap~)l i cations will typically be a high powered workst.n.t.ioii with audio and video capabilit,ies. Tlie int,enwiiiig network will be a heterogeneous int,ernvt,\rork of 1)iiI)lic and private networks. These applications will express t,lieir iieetls t,liroilgli Quality of Service (QoS) requirellielit,s ;i,t t,lir al)l)lication level, using semantics apI)ropria.t,e t,o t.lie a1)plication. For example, an applic:at.ion iri;i.y rrriiiclst, E. Horlait Laboratoy MASI, University of Pierre Marie Curie Paris, France