The Service Aware Network: Balancing cost and quality for Social Multimedia Communication

This article explores the notion that a ‘service-aware’ network will help in the cost-effective delivery of social communication between communities, when it is enriched by high quality video and audio. While the concept of dynamically managing network components to balance cost and quality of service is not at all new, the paper explains how future plausible use cases for social multimedia communication prompt four key requirements for a new type of service-aware network. A brief summary is then provided of current research into some of the new capabilities needed to deliver these requirements: Quality of Experience Modelling, Dynamic Network Configuration, and Composition in the Network. Finally, an overview is given of a programme of experiments and trials which are being carried out to demonstrate the applicability and scalability of the service-aware network to real services based on the aforementioned use cases.