An architecture for realizing CORBA audio/video stream specification over IP technologies

Networked multimedia applications are sensitive to the QoS provided by the underlying communication networks. CORBA audio/video stream specification provides a programming abstraction and API for developing networked multimedia applications with QoS constraints independently of the underlying networking technology. That specification does not address how the underlying communication network would support the QoS needed by the multimedia application. As the QoS is becoming a key consideration in IP, we address the realization of the CORBA specification over IP technologies and propose a service management architecture for mapping, monitoring, managing and controlling multimedia QoS over IP technologies. We further develop the main components of this architecture. The architecture makes extensive use of document driven programming (DDP) techniques and software agents for performing QoS mechanisms. Advantages and issues with these approaches are distinguished in the paper.