Message reduction rules (MR²): A methodology to streamline intelligent, message based, distributed multimedia applications

Messages in multimedia systems possess distinct characteristics: they exhibit strong correlations, restrictions and degrees of freedom in end-user utilization patterns. In this work, we introduce application's sense of "correctness" in the transmission, processing and optimization of multimedia messages. We formalize relations between messages in terms of application defined concepts. Resultant formalization has led to Message Reduction Rules, MR², that are hierarchically organized as system independent and system dependent reduction rules. The optimization concepts developed, have been experimented within our testbed, MMTP. Our performance studies on navigation class applications have revealed significant improvements: The end user response time has been reduced by several orders of magnitude. The delay variation has been decreased significantly, providing a more predictable service. The throughput has been increased by a factor of four. The server and network load has been reduced considerably. In our experiments, we have found inclusion rules to be very effective to reduce the maximum delay, the composition rules to boost the throughput, and caching schemes to reduce the server and network load.