Gateway based approach for conducting multiparty multimedia sessions over heterogeneous signaling domains

Emerging networking technologies are being introduced with their own management protocols for routing, resource reservation and signaling. This diversity restricts the interoperability among QOS-aware multimedia applications written for different networks. We present an approach for managing multiparty, multimedia sessions in a heterogeneous internetwork spanning multiple signaling domains. Participants utilize the native signaling on their respective domains and interact with participants on other domains through signaling gateways that bridge the domains and provide translation of signaling procedures and QOS semantics. Data streams are transmitted using a hierarchical representation, which allows participants to independently adjust the reception quality of each stream according to their resources and interests. We present a particular design and implementation details for connecting ATM and IP signaling domains and conclude with its extension to an arbitrary number of interconnected domains.