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New open service architectures provide a management framework for telecommunications services, telecommunications networks and computing resources. However, the introduction of multimedia applications in these architectures will require the management of the underlying multimedia resources (e.g., codecs, converters, etc). Multimedia resources are the basic components that support multimedia communications. In this paper, we tackle this issue by proposing a generic management information model for multimedia resources and then instantiate it for the management of an MPEG2 video codec. This information model provides a data representation of the multimedia resources in order to manage them efficiently. KeywordsResource management, information model, MIB, SNMP, MPEG 2, video codec. IFIP INDC '96, Trondheim, Norway GZHV 2/17 consequence, the needs of connectivity with other multimedia users and sources across local and wide area networks are increasing. Therefore the new trend is towards networked multimedia applications. These applications are of real time and multipoint nature, and require large amount of processing, communication and storage resources.In this context, several multimedia resources have to be provided, such as video and audio codecs, media converters (e.g., conversion from text to audio), echo cancellors, and so forth. Since all resources (network resources as well as multimedia ones) involved in a communication session take part in the provision of the required Quality of Service (QoS), the characterization of multimedia resources becomes a necessary issue to be studied in order to identify the accurate parameters which are relevant for managing those resources' activities.Multimedia resources (also called information converters or special resources in some literature) are different from network resources, in that their processing tasks can highly affect the content of the incoming information. These observations result in the necessity for providing multimedia resources with a management framework. It is worth noting that this issue has not yet been tackled by the management community. To date, emphasis has been put on service management, network management and computing resources management, and on their integration. However, managing multimedia services will definitely require the management of multimedia resources.We have investigated two approaches for describing the management information related to multimedia resources. First, we have proposed a multimedia resource Management Information Base (MIB) , which contains the relevant objects for the management of multimedia resources. Our MIB has been designed to be compatible with the SNMP management protocol and thus has been specified using SMI (RFC1155, 1990. Secondly, we are proposing in this paper an object oriented specification of a generic information model of multimedia resources, i.e, the representation of multimedia resources in terms of data much easier to read and providing a more structured view of the information to be managed...

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With rapid advances in multimedia processing technologies, and in high bandwidth network technologies, new kinds of multimedia applications are now emerging. These applications require real-time, multimedia, and multipoint interactions involving multiple communicating entities and leading to a need of more sophisticated communication control functionalities. In this paper, a generic integrated and flexible service management architecture for multimedia multipoint communications is proposed, which offers three main generic functions, namely Quality of Service (QoS) negotiation, QoS monitoring and control, and session management.