Multimedia service configuration and reservation in heterogeneous environments

Widely deployed multimedia services are expected to accommodate clients in a highly heterogeneous environment. Clients of a multimedia service may vary greatly in processing and communication capabilities. In addition, due to workload, location, and service time differences, the availability of end-to-end resources between a client and a server may also vary. Current solutions tend to focus on either the qualitative heterogeneity (in client and resource types) or the quantitative heterogeneity (in resource availability) problem. We present a framework for dynamic end-to-end multimedia service configuration and reservation: an integrated solution to both aspects of the heterogeneity problem. Service configuration is responsible for choosing appropriate service components to compose a customized service deliver to each client; while service reservation is responsible for reserving the end-to-end resources in a coordinated manner and providing the best possible quality within the chosen configuration. We have implemented a prototype of this framework as part of the 2K operating system and tested it by building a proof-of-concept video streaming service on top of it. Our experiments show the soundness of this framework.