Multimedia communications with multiple devices using the personal virtual network service

Nowadays the user is confronted with several different devices such as a plain-old telephone, a mobile phone, a cordless phone, and a PC or a workstation as well as more simple devices like microphones, loudspeakers, TV screens, digital cameras etc. In principle, all these devices can be autonomous and function independently of each other without any coordination, but the proposed service will allow the user to handle them all via his personal virtual network service (PVNS) and hence consider them all as his personal virtual network (PVN) i.e. as one big terminal (the virtual terminal). In this case, the user's different devices can act together as one multimedia system offering the end-user the ultimate in multimedia services. This paper introduces the concept of the personal virtual network service, which will take care of the management, coordination and configuration of all the devices that make up the PVN. Furthermore, it will be described how the use of this service can provide multimedia communications to the end-user using only his old-fashioned single-media devices. In addition, this paper briefly discusses the technologies, emerging and existing, that are required for the implementation of the personal virtual network service.