A Market-Based Approach to Allocating QoS for Multimedia Applications
Hirofumi Yamaki, Michael P. Wellman, Toru Ishida · 1996
Allocating quality of service (QoS) has been a focus of recent work on distributed multimedia systems and networks. This paper explores a decentralized approach that allocates QoS through a dynamic market. In our approach, each agent makes decisions according to its local knowledge and interests, and prices adjust to clear the market in each resource. Dynamic changes in agent needs and network status cause the agents to revise their decisions continually. The market prices reflect system-wide values, inducing agents to produce and consume appropriate amounts of the various resources. We describe a market model for allocating bandwidth in an actual networked meeting environment called FreeWalk. Experiments reveal the responsiveness of the market-based approach to dynamic conditions in allocating QoS for multimedia network applications. Introduction Modern multimedia applications can make use of nearly unbounded amounts of network bandwidth. Allocating more bandwidth to the application ...