Agent-oriented flexible multimedia system considering organization and QoS functions

A distributed multimedia system which not only integrates various multimedia information distributed over computer networks but also provides information in accordance with user requirements during real time multimedia communication, must guarantee a requested quality of service (QoS) even though the computer and network resources change dynamically or statically. We have proposed a flexible multimedia system (FMS) with QoS guarantee functions, which is based on an agent oriented architecture and provides both real time and stored multimedia information services simultaneously to users, even though the multimedia services environment and the resource utility of computers or networks has been dynamically changed. The paper describes the FMS architecture for a multimedia teleconferencing system with QoS guarantee functions, and introduces organization protocols and QoS negotiation protocols. In a multimedia teleconferencing service, FMS is able to realize the multimedia communication services flexibly for service requests and QoS requests from users