End-to-end QoS through Integrated Management of content, networks and terminals

Objective

The ENTHRONE project proposes an integrated management solution, which covers an entire audio-visual service distribution chain including content generation and protection, distribution across networks and reception at user terminals. The aim is not to unify or impose a strategy on each individual entity of the chain, but to harmonise their functionality, in order to support an end-to-end QoS architecture over heterogeneous networks, applicable to a variety of audio-visual services, which are delivered at the various user terminals. To meet its objectives, the project will rely on an efficient, distributed and open management architecture for the end-to-end delivery chain. The availability and access to resources will be clearly identified, described and controlled all the way along the content distribution chain. The MPEG-21 data model will be used to provide the common support for implementing and managing the functionalities of the resources.

The project addresses the scalable generation, protection, distribution and usage of multimedia content and resources in geographically distributed environments. ENTHRONE is also concerned with end-to-end QoS in terms of performance, at both the user and network levels and with the mapping between these levels. The adoption of the MPEG-21 framework in the project will contribute to the implementation of the Universal Multimedia Access (UMA) concept, which aims at achieving interoperable transparent access to multimedia resources from any type of client terminal or network. A high-level goal of the project is to bridge the divide between the content provision and the networking worlds, resulting in cross-industry co-ordination on both network and content management issues, and bringing focus to standards such as MPEG-21.

Programme(s)

• FP6-IST - Information Society Technologies: thematic priority under the specific programme "Integrating and strengthening the European research area" (2002-2006).

Topic(s)

• IST-2002-2.3.1.8 - Networked audiovisual systems and home platforms

Funding Scheme

Coordinator

Participants (28)