: Distributed multimedia (MM) applications are very sensitive to the quality of service (QoS) provided by their computing and communication environment. This paper surveys the QoS issues behind distributed MM applications. MM applications characteristics and requirements are identified; QoS notions are defined. The role of all system components, namely transport protocols, networks, operating systems, file servers, multimedia databases, and user interfaces, in the provisioning of QoS is described. The need for QoS management to support distributed MM applications is motivated. The different QoS management functions are defined and examples of realizations are presented. Finally some representative QoS architectures are presented, their limitations are identified, and the requirements of an "ideal QoS architecture" are presented. Keywords: distributed multimedia applications, quality of service, quality of service management, quality of service architectures 1 Introduction Currently ...

: Emerging high-speed networks and powerful end-systems give rise to a new class of applications such as video-on-demand and teleconferencing. Such applications are very demanding on Quality of Service (QoS) because of the isochronous nature of media they are using. To provide QoS support on an end-to-end basis, the need for the integration of network, transport, and operating services arises. Thus to support the new emerging services, an end-to-end QoS management is required. This paper deals with QoS management for multimedia applications by taking multimedia newson -demand service as a case study. The example application is introduced and the entities involved in QoS provision are identified. QoS management activities are defined and a basic QoS management architecture for multimedia applications is presented. A general framework for QoS (re)negotiation is defined and an instantiation of this framework in the context of the example application is presented. 1. Introduction Due to ...

: The new quality of multimedia (MM) applications concerns the handling of a various types of media, particularly continuous media, which are timely combined for use in presentation for the user. This implies stringent requirements from the underlying systems to support requested quality of service (QoS). Thus to support the new emerging services end-to-end QoS management is required. This paper proposes a loosely hierarchical architecture to support QoS management functions such as QoS negotiation, monitoring, and adaptation. The domain QoS manager and QoS agent concepts are introduced to build the proposed architecture. A hierarchical negotiation protocol which can be supported by the proposed management architecture is presented. Keywords: multimedia applications, quality of service, management, hierarchical negotiation 1. Introduction Due to increasing demands of distributed multimedia (MM) applications, efficient and effective support of quality of service (QoS) has become inc...