A Service Kernel for Multimedia Endstations

Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for delay sensitive networked mul-timedia applications, such as teleoperation, must be application-to-application. We describe a set of services, a service kernel, required at the end points, for multimedia call establishment with QoS guarantees. These services provide: (1) Translation among diierent domain speciications (layer-to-layer translation) and domain-resource speciications (layer-to-resource translation); (2) Admission and Allocation of resources; and (3) Negotiation and Coordination of QoS speciications among the distributed end-points. For each service we propose architectural solutions. We are testing the service kernel with an ATM-based telerobotics application. Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for delay sensitive networked multimedia applications must be application-to-application. Guarantees are achieved if: (1) the information is carried between end-points using delay-bounded communication protocols 6], 5], (2) the end-points use delay-bounded services of the operating system (OS) 4], 9], and (3) the application, OS and network are able to prepare and conngure the environment for delay sensitive multimedia calls with QoS guarantees. We identify a set of services required for QoS guarantees(in end-to-end multi-media establishment protocols) in a multimedia environment at the end-points. We call this set a kernel, because while additional services may be required (e.g., services for establishment of a video conference), these particular service are essential.