The comprehensive approach of QoS and the evolution of ACSE protocols in multimedia communications

This paper discusses the evolution of ACSE-like protocols in the multimedia communications domain. The ACSE standard has traditionally supported numerous data applications which do not claim quality of service (QoS) guarantees. In a multimedia multiparty call, the end-user of a multimedia application issues diverse QoS parameters values, which are interpreted onto specific performance parameter values in the communication subsystem and the operating system. The notion of QoS is important for the real-time performance of distributed multimedia systems, as it expresses the application requirements towards the communication and operating system frameworks. In this paper, the main weaknesses of existing signalling and connection establishment protocols are discussed. The attractive features of their interfaces are also presented and analyzed. In addition, a novel protocol which adopts a comprehensive approach for QoS is presented in brief. This protocol incorporates resource management strategies for the CPU scheduling and the virtual memory of a conventional multimedia workstation. The new protocol prearranges future trends in the multimedia communications domain, concerning the connection establishment protocols in OSI application layer