Multimedia session management

Networked multimedia systems are of high complexity. Many actors like end users, application designers, service providers, and network operators are participating in the realization and operation of those multimedia systems. These actors have different tasks. But they have also different skills and knowledge. Therefore, a set of abstract views to the complete networked multimedia system is needed, especially for the application designers who need not be technical people. The article focuses on application, control and session management functionality like session configuration handling, topology manipulation, quality of service or special resource handling required for future interactive multi-user multimedia applications that will be offered to the residential subscriber. A multimedia reference model is described which introduces application building blocks that facilitate application creation and management in all kinds of multi-user, multi-channel environments in interactive video and other multimedia broadband networks. The multimedia reference model was developed by applying the conceptual modelling technique standardized for intelligent networks by the ITU-T. The multimedia reference model includes a distributed functional architecture which contains-among others-functional entities for application control and session management. The functional design of the architecture enables it to be mapped in various ways onto the physical network components. The new architecture is applied to an interactive multi-user video games environment.