Payoff adaptation of communication for distributed interactive applications
Robin Hillary Kravets, Ken Calvert, Karsten Schwan · 1998
Present distributed applications are not typically designed to adapt themselves to changes in network conditions. In addition, network-based adaptation does not typically consider the requirements of specific applications and, therefore, may take actions contradictory to the application's needs. This paper presents a cooperative solution in which a configurable communication layer is used to adapt communication in response to both application requirements and network resource availability. Adaptation decisions are based on (1) payoff functions which capture the requirements of the application in a functional form, and (2) service availability curves which represent network resource availability. Experimentation with multimedia applications and a variable reliability protocol demonstrates the benefit of using payoff-based adaptation. 1 Motivation and Research Goals Interactive applications will continue to push the limits of available network bandwidths, processing speeds, and other co...