Payoff-based communication adaptation based on network service availability

Interactive applications will continue to push the limits of available network bandwidths, processing speeds, and other computing resources. These applications present challenges concerning the specification of service requirements for their multiple types of data transfer and the online management of service quality. We present a cooperative solution in which a configurable communication layer is used to adapt communication in response to both application requirements and network resource availability. Adaptation decisions are based on: (1) payoff functions which capture the requirements of the application in a functional form, and (2) service availability curves which represent network resource availability. Experimentation with representative multimedia applications demonstrates the benefit of using such payoff based adaptation.