High level service architecture supporting multimedia multicast

In this papal, we propose the high-level service architecture supporting mu ltimedia multicast. The proposed architecture specifies network-oriented an d lightweight communication management, which includes group management, mu ltiparty call control and multicast: connection/multiple connections contro l. Many of the existing approaches handling multimedia multicast applicatio ns are dependent on specific transport technologies, such as the Internet a nd ATM. and lack effective communication management. On the other hand, our approach defines flexible and extensible communication management that cal l be applied to a variety of multimedia multicast applications, independent ly of transport technologies. Our architecture supports the separation of c ontrol from a terminal, which enables remote control and control mobility, so that a user can use a multicast service in a more various way. The archi tecture is overlaid above legacy transport networks so that the existing ne twork protocols are used for connection control. This minimizes the modific ation to a legacy transport network and enhances the practicality of the ar chitecture. In addition. terminal manager and virtual device concepts are i ntroduced that hide the details of physical devices from an application des igner. The architecture consists of several service components that effecti vely interact with each other on a distributed platform. To verify and eval uate our architecture, we have prototyped the high-level service architectu re on a CORBA platform and analyzed the architecture using a simulation.