A QoS-providing multicast network management system

Managing a multimedia communication system requires a sophisticated model t hat accommodates many techniques developed in various fields of media trans port, QoS provision and network management. In particular, it is important to establish a QoS-oriented network management model for multicast applicat ions, but there have been little research efforts to integrate multimedia Q oS from the aspect of multicast network management. This paper proposes and implements an integrated network management system to accommodate time-cri tical multimedia applications in multicast network environments. The propos ed system encompasses the key concepts of classical network management syst ems and further extends the concepts to handle the QoS issue of multimedia applications. The concept of the proposed management system is described in detail followed by notes on implementation issues. The proposed system has been validated by applying the implemented system to a real-time H.263 vid eo multicast system. The experimental results show that following the propo sed multicast network management scheme the QoS parameters are successfully negotiated and as a result the quality of the multicast stream is appropri ately adjusted. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.