Cooperative adaptation to quality of service using distributed agents

Presently, many distributed multimedia systems adapt to their changing environments and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements by exchanging control and feedback data between servers and clients. In order to realize a more flexible adaptation to QoS in distributed multimedia systems, this paper seeks to present a new approach, based on distributed agents located in both network nodes and end-systems. By having a good knowledge of local resources at each component, and with their capabilities to communicate in order to share their knowledge, the distributed agents can alleviate the major fluctuations in and QoS, by providing load balancing and resource sharing between the competing connections. We have performed our evaluations for short and long range (i.e. self-similar) traffic patterns. Preliminary results show a viable system, which exhibits a smooth and noticeable improvement in perceptual QoS during a heavy loaded network