METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COORDINATING END-TO-END QUALITY OF SERVICE REQUIREMENTS FOR MEDIA FLOWS IN A MULTIMEDIA SESSION

摘要

The present invention provides a method to assure end-to-end quality of service for a multimedia session including plural media data streams. The multimedia session is between a first user terminal associated with a first local access network and a second user terminal associated with a second local access network. The first and second local networks are coupled to an IP backbone network. During session setup, the user terminals each request confirmation from the other that its local access network can provide the quality of service requested for the session. The first user terminal determines whether there are sufficient resources in the first local access network to support a quality of service in its local access network to support a quality of service requested for each of the media data streams. Once this is determined, the first user terminal sends a message to the second user terminal confirming that QoS assurance. Similarly, the second user terminal determines that there are sufficient resources in the second access network to support the quality of services requested for each media data stream. A message is sent to the first user terminal confirming that qality of service determination. The IP network supports the requested quality of service for each media data stream in the session without the need for any formal resource reservation signaling using, for example, the fifferentiated sservices QoS provisioning mechanism, network dimensioning, and traffic engineering. Thus, the requested quality of service for each media data stream in the session can be assured without having to use more complex, costly, and less flexible resource reservation protocols.