Client-Controlled QoS Management in Networked Virtual Environments

In this paper, we propose an architecture to regulate the bandwidth usage of multimedia streams in networked virtual environments. In this architecture, intelligent proxies are placed in the network. These proxies can transcode incoming streams to lower quality versions of those streams, thereby decreasing network traffic. A network intelligence layer at the receiver controls these transcoders based on the bandwidth the streams consume, and the importance that the receiving application assigns to each stream. To access this latter information, the network intelligence layer provides an interface between the QoS management of the network and the application’s interest manager. This interest manager assigns a relative importance to each individual network stream. As a result, the network intelligence layer separates application logic from network QoS management, thereby maximizing its reusability. These concepts were implemented in an existing networked virtual environment framework, and experiments were performed to validate the ideas. The experiments demonstrate that bandwidth allocation can be changed dynamically, based on user interest, thereby maximizing network throughput and quality of experience.