Performance of Inter-Media Synchronization in Distributed and Heterogeneous Multimedia Systems

this paper. 2 1.2 Problem of Inter-Media Synchronizatio

Optimal Communication Architectures for Multimedia Conferencing in Distributed Systems

: Advances in computer and communication technologies have stimulated the integration of digital video and audio with computing, leading to the development of computer-assisted multimedia conferencing. We address the problem of media mixing which arises in teleconferencing applications. We compare the performance of monostage and multistage techniques for mixing. We analyze centralized and distributed architectures for their suitability to both monostage and multistage media mixing, and propose hierarchical architectures for significantly reducing bandwidth consumption. We present algorithms for designing hierarchies that optimize real-time end-to-end delays. We then propose a packet train protocol in which the routing nodes themselves of a network can be used as mixers and mixing can be integrated with routing. 1 Introduction Recent advances in communication technology have made large bandwidth networks pervasive. Coupled with the advances in computer technology, which have resulted..