A new differential resource reservation protocol to support adaptive multimedia applications on heterogeneous networks

The recent proliferation of mobile communications systems has gone unnoticed by none and the encapsulation of voice and data services within a single framework is imminent. Future applications and devices demands that full quality of service (QoS) flexibility be available to them at all times. QoS provision for mobile networks is a difficult affair with numerous research efforts abounding in this area. The instability of the radio channel makes bandwidth adaptation unpredictable; consequently a mechanism is needed that enables fast adaptation at the radio layer whilst allowing the network to follow this adaptation in its own way. We present an adaptive extension to RSVP, differential RSVP, which provides this mechanism. Features of this protocol include traffic specification with bandwidth granularity (for layered source coding applications) and independent frequency of adaptation for each node along a network path.