Distributed Multimedia Application and Quality of Service: A Review

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