Bridging the gap between multimedia applications and heterogeneous networks using a market-based middleware

The paper presents a middleware that applies a microeconomic model to help multimedia applications utilize available bandwidth in a way that maximizes the user´s net benefit. The key components are a bandwidth broker that puts the supply of available bandwidth on a virtual market, and utility functions for each piece of media, which are used to calculate the relative gain they can offer the user by using this bandwidth. Basic supply and demand principles are used where the broker raises the price if the total demand from all media exceeds the available supply, or lowers the price if the demand is lower than the available supply.