A negotiation and resource reservation protocol (NRP) for configurable multimedia applications

Distributed multimedia applications require negotiation of quality of service (QoS) and resource reservation for distributed application parts and communication links. Negotiation of QoS is a balancing process between the QoS specified by a client, the resource availabilities of the distributed system and the functional capabilities of the distributed application. Negotiation requires application level QoS descriptions and an end to end view spanning the whole distributed application. NRP is an application level protocol meeting these requirements. NRP performs negotiation based on client specified QoS value ranges and given resource availability on endsystems and communication links. NRP is independent of application level QoS semantics. It allows QoS negotiation and resource reservation in three phases and supports a wide range of distributed application topologies.