An end-to-end connection management protocol for multimedia multipoint communications

In order to efficiently support the communication requirements for emerging multimedia conferencing applications, we need more sophisticated connection control funtionalities. This paper proposes an end-to-end multimedia multipoint connection management protocol, smartMCP, based on out-of-band control. The management services are modelled into three abstraction-levels; association, connection, and synchronization control services, which are directly accessible by applications. The structure of conventional OSI SAP(Service Access Point) was enhanced to provide adequate access mechanism for those services. The protocol was designed to be run over networks with multicasting capabilities, however it can be mapped to point-to-point network services with minor adjustments. The connection management protocol behavior is introduced