The realization of ubiquitous access to Internet services in the next generation
of mobile networks (NGN) needs to address the increasingly important
challenges of networks cross-bridging, mobility and Quality of Service (QoS)
for different kinds of multimedia services. Current mechanisms for providing
QoS cover predominantly single facets of the global QoS management.
However, QoS is a system aspect that crosses all components and layers of a
distributed multimedia system. Consequently, the control mechanisms for
service management turn to be increasingly complex with the growing
system heterogeneity. Significant parts of this work are devoted to the optimisation
of the control signalling for distributed multimedia services. The
major topic of this work is the specification and the implementation of the
End-to-End Negotiation Protocol (E2ENP). The protocol represents a novel
approach to manage multimedia services in mobile and heterogeneous
networks, different from the currently existing static service-coordination
methods. This book is the publication of the doctor thesis of T. Guenkova-Luy
and it addresses the topics of optimization of the multimedia-management
systems in NGN.