Autonomic Multimedia Communications: Where Are We Now?

Internet protocol-based multimedia applications are gaining momentum thanks to the great proliferation of the Internet and mass deployment of broadband. The abundance of rich content, heterogeneity of networks, user terminals, and services, along with the surges of multimedia traffic, have convoluted ever-increasing complexity and costs in the operation and management of multimedia systems. Autonomic communications (AutoComm) promotes the autonomy of communication networks with minimum human administration. In a multimedia system that features AutoComm, the networks and their elements strive to realize efficiency, immunity, resilience, and evolvability through intrinsic self-governance. By encapsulating complexity within the networks, exploiting their intelligence, and using technology to manage technology, human administrative efforts can be greatly reduced while management efficiency can be maximized. In this paper, we want to illustrate how traditional way of management and control of multimedia networks can be gradually replaced by network autonomy and self-management. Related work is extensively reviewed and compared to our approach. Initial experiment results are presented as proof of concept.