Using MPEG-21 and web services to achieve end-to-end QoS management

With the advent of the World Wide Web (WWW), large volumes of multimedia content are now available on-line in multiple formats. Furthermore, with the proliferation in the mass market of a diversity of multimedia-enabled end-user devices, consumers increasingly expect to be able to access any kind of content anywhere and at any time, regardless of the capabilities of their terminals and the networks to which they are attached. Access to content that meets user expectations and demands, must take into account all the different aspects of this heterogeneous environment. This paper describes the approach adopted within the European project ENTHRONE-2 to address this challenge. ENTHRONE-2 has conceived, designed and implemented a distributed platform, based on open standards, notably MPEG-21 and Web services technologies, that supports the kind of network multimedia content access users expect. In particular, it focus on the ENTHRONE Integrated Management Supervisor, the entity that coordinates all the actions required for the provision of quality and context-aware, multimedia services to end-users.