Multimedia-friendly server and communication design

We report on a set of projects to: design, implement, and evaluate software frameworks for providing performance assurances in emerging Internet services and real-time applications with a focus on multimedia; and design and evaluate video-on-demand (VOD) servers as an application. First we describe the Adaptware project, which investigates adaptive software for server platforms. A complementary project addresses reliable transmission of QoS-sensitive data over packet switched networks. Together, these two prongs compose an end-to-end approach to achieving flexible QoS guarantees for future Internet applications. We discuss VOD servers as a potential application of this two-pronged approach.