A Session-Initiation-Protocol-Based Middleware for Multi-Application Management

The deployment of multimedia services in next- generation networks is a challenge due to the high configuration complexity of the streaming process in different stationary and mobile sub-networks and for various user devices. The session initiation protocol (SIP) has proven to be a suitable mechanism to handle the control of multimedia services in such networks. However, the current standardization and implementation of SIP do not allow the simultaneous coordination of multiple concurrent applications on a single device, as the prescribed realization of the SIP state machines (transactions) does not consider mutual access of applications to a single SIP stack. This paper presents a SIP- based mechanism for synchronized management of services in a shared environment. We have developed a middleware that facilitates the uniform access of multiple applications towards one or multiple SIP stacks to enable prioritization of services and centralized resource coordination of concurrent SIP applications on a single terminal or server.