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Title

理エージェントの構築

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Multimedia Networks

Kuraoka Takashi

Scho ol of Information Science,

Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

February 15, 2000

Keywords: multimedianetwork,resource managementagent, JAISTVideoLAN,

Digital Video, database.

This paper describesresource management agent for multimedia networks. In recent

years, DV(Digital Video) devices which have IEEE1394 ports for digital connection can

construct networks at home. Middleware like Jini and Havi which provide connection

of DV devices are develop ed. If local area networks make use of these DV devices, it is

possible to construct high quality multimedia network at low cost. However, there is a

problem that it is dicult to construct multimedia network because local area networks

don't havethe resource management system.

Tosolvethis problem, this researchprop oses ageneral-purp ose resourcemanagement

system whichcan manage various kinds of resources. The resourcemanagement system

on network has following advantages: reduction of cost, support of application software,

application of a security module, and so on. This research compares and examines two

resource management metho ds: the integrated management and the distributed man-

agement. This research also covers some examples which make use of each methods in

network.

In the distributed management, resources are managed by each devices. It has high

reliability in a sense that no single fault causes a catastrophic breakdown of the whole

system, but some elaborate mechanism is required to keep the consistency of managed

information.

In the integrated management, resources are administrated by a single device, so

keeping consistency of information, and looking up information is trivial. But a single

faultcausesacatastrophicbreakdownofthe wholesystem,thereforethiscriticalresource

must haveredundantcomponents.

Copyrightc 2000byKuraokaTakashi

can easilyuse this system which integrates DV devices with computer equipments. It is

working in JAIST campus.

This research propose the resource management agent for JAIST VideoLAN. First,

objectsandmethods ofmanagementonJAIST VideoLANare examinedinthis research.

The advantage of integrated management is also examined. The resource management

agentisconstructedwiththreepro cesses: RMAdaemon,SQLdaemonand HTTPdaemon.

The RMAdaemon is the main process in the resource management agentwhichcom-

municates with users and devices by message passing. It is an agent server pro cessing

message requests from users and terminal systems. Messages between the RMAdaemon

and intermediate no de, which will be added to JAIST VideoLAN, are dened in this

research. Flowcharts processing those messagesare shown.

The SQLdaemon isa database serverto storeinformation of resources whichanswers

a inquiry about information of resources from other pro cesses. Conceptual and logical

models forJAIST VideoLANare designed and relational databaseschemais constructed

from it.

TheHTTPdaemonisaWWWserverwhichprovidesGUIcontentsforWWWbrowser.

InHTTPdaemondesign,programmingenvironmenttocreatecontentswithhighfunctions

is examined. As programming environments, JavaServlet is adopted for the server side

and JavaApplet is used inthe client side. Conceptual owcharts which oerservices to

users are shown. These services include authentication of users, management of users,

connection of DVdevices and information of network.

Pro cesses which construct the resource management agent are implemented and ex-

perimentedinthisresearch. Itisshownthattheresourcemanagementagentadministrate

information of users and devices, services and providefor users with services.

Considering processes which construct the resource management agent, we examines

following issues.

Applying the DBMS to database provides stability and scalability. As a fault of the

integrated database causes a critical trouble to the whole system, some solutions are

considered.

Itisdiscussedthattheresourcemanagementagentprocesscannotstanduptoasingle

fault, therefore multi-agentsare given toresist a faultand improvereliability.

ApplyingWWWtechnologytoGUIisusefulforusersbecausemanyplatformssupp ort

WWW browser. This researchmakesuse of Javatechnologytooer GUI contents. Java

has a scalability and Havi also adopts this technology, therefore GUI can deal with DV

devices including Jini and Havi exibly.

The following problems are given for the future work. This includes: the expansion

of management of resources information, the integration of various proto cols for video

networks, the support of dierentdata formats, the coop eration with Jiniand Havi.